What three ingredients will make your presentation more persuasive?
You might have heard of Aristotle’s three appeals of argument.
As you know, public speaking was a big part of life and politics in Ancient Greece, so they had really developed public speaking practices and public speaking theories.
His three ingredients to include were:
1. Emotional Appeal
This is the part most current business presentations leave out.
Presenters will show a graph of stats going up or going down and leave out the important key – why – why is this important or why does it matter? How do these stats going up or down affect the company, the customer, the employees? If they keep trending this way, how will people fare? What big thing will happen?
Spend just a minute describing the implications if these numbers keep going up or down without assuming it's clear, but also because when you say it out loud, you'll build an emotional connection with your audience you didn't have before.
2. Logical Appeal
Of course, you also don’t want to tip the balance and only talk about the emotional reason and impact of your point.
You need a logical flow and logical organization to your arguments and you need to display hard data to back-up your statements and opinions.
3. Ethical Appeal
This third and final ingredient also should not be neglected. This may sound like a misnomer, but this refers to you as an authority figure in the area in which you're speaking.
For your presentation to be persuasive, you need to build your credibility in this area during your talk.
Find a way to weave in your education or years of experience or your background in certain projects that are related. Weave in anecdotes of your experience and how you've learned lessons as it relates to your content.
Your audience needs to know that they can trust you on this subject matter.