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I just spent two days with a private equity firm preparing the executives of a portfolio company for a sale to another financial buyer.

As you may know, the practice is standard:  Potential buyers meet with company executives to perform due diligence on the past performance, future opportunities, and to get a feel for the executives themselves.

In this case, an investment bank had prepared the slides.  The first order of business at the meeting where the current owners, the company executives, and the investment bankers gathered was to go through the deck, page by page, and attempt to agree on what should be said on each slide.

It was not pretty.  The executives were seeing the deck for the first time.  They knew their business inside and out, but they were not accustomed to seeing it presented as the bankers did.

A long day of haggling and nit-picking ensued.  Some executives were tongue-tied and frustrated trying to deliver the content as the bankers had drawn it up, and scripting by committee continued into the wee hours.

The prospect of a slide deck making the executives look less than professional and knowledgeable began to loom over the group. And the subsequent reduction in the perceived value of the enterprise also flitted through the collective consciousness in the room.

While there are many lessons here, the simplest take-away is to let the speaker find his own way into the vast terrain of his knowledge.  A deck prepared by outsiders sends him into his own head from a point he’s unlikely to have encountered before.  As a result, he feels lost—a stranger to his own experience.

Don’t start with the slides, unless they ignite your passion and curiosity about the subject.  Start instead from a place that seems right to you, the speaker. 

Some of us prefer a wide angle shot of the topic, a broad overview supported by a deep dive into the underlying information.

And others prefer quite the opposite—a close-up view of one telling detail followed by an explanation as to why that granularity is representative of the whole.

Still others want to speak of their own experience, why they love the topic, or simply give a clear outline of the points they will make.

In fact, there are as many ways of organizing a talk as there are people.  But the way should be suited to the person, not to the third party that wrote it for hire. 

The speaker must find the thread that leads his own mind into the dense fabric of his expertise, and allows him to weave for the listeners a vision of his knowledge.

Once he’s got that, he can prepare the slides.  Without it, he will stumble around in a web of information, with no grasp of a through-line, and create at best a patchy image of the thing he’s trying to describe.

Don’t start with the slides.  Start with what you want to say, and say it the way that makes it yours.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Science is making progress in understanding sexual desire.

Birds Do It. Bees Do It. People Seek the Keys to It by Natalie Angier was published in the New York Times on April 10, 2007.  It’s fun reading, and should provide even greater motivation for men to become more effective presenters.

Stephanie Sanders of the Kinsey Institute and Indiana University compiled a new, female-friendly questionnaire.  They asked 655 women ages 18 to 81 to complete a survey that they had used for men and then tweaked slightly.

It turns out men and women differ in many ways.  For instance, women do not accord so much importance to physical appearance.  In fact, many expressed a greater likelihood of being aroused by evidence of talent or intelligence–say, while watching a man deliver a great speech.

This is very good news for me, since I spend my waking hours trying to convince male executives that their ability to speak well is their greatest professional asset.

Now I can offer scientific proof that, if they work with me and give a knock-out presentation, they will have women fantasizing about them.

And since exaggeration is the backbone of marketing, I could even say, “Women will come up to you after your speech.  They will take off your glasses.  They will remove your pocket protector, undo your tie, and whisper in your ear, ‘I really like they way you nailed that market analysis.’

“Would you like to explore my SWOTs after work?”