The Real Measure of Presentation Success

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Week 322 | Leading & Managing Section | 1

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The Real Measure of Presentation Success

By Nancy Duarte | MIT Sloan Management Review | November 09, 2023

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Historically, it’s been tough to quantify the success of events, presentations, and speeches. We’ve long known that the spoken word is a powerful tool for influence and action, but how do you measure that power?

When many organizations flipped from in-person to virtual and hybrid meetings and events, presentation analytics became a whole new ballgame. But to gauge a presentation’s success, what should you measure for?  What all presenters should be looking for: evidence that they’ve moved people to do something, whether it’s learning a new skill, adopting a new approach to organizational culture, changing a deeply ingrained process or behavior, or treating customers differently.  To measure a presentation’s success, you need to assess your audience members’ feelings and actions before you speak, while you speak, and after you’re done.

Before Your Talk.  To define what baseline result you’re after — that is, what action you want people to take after they walk away from your talk — it helps to know your audience. In studying hundreds of powerful speeches (and even checking out business speeches from the Stanford University library all the way back to the 1950s), the author found that most of their calls to action targeted one of four audience types: doers, who could instigate activity and get things moving in the organization; suppliers, who could provide resources and other types of support needed to achieve a desired goal; influencers, who could mobilize others to adopt a new idea or approach; or innovators, who could generate new ideas and apply their smarts to solve a problem or seize an opportunity.  Specifically, you can take one of the following approaches: delve into your audience’s thoughts and feelings, and anticipate emotional sticking points.

During Your Talk.  You can gauge your talk’s likelihood of success as it’s happening. To do this, you’ll measure audience reactions in a few ways.  Observe audience behavior in the room or online.  Look at the number of attendees.  And spark and track social engagement.

After Your Talk.  Your post-talk metrics can track both satisfaction with the presentation and some of the steps audience members have taken to implement the ideas.  Use surveys to assess audience satisfaction.  Examine the speaker’s own satisfaction.  Examine the speaker’s own satisfaction.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Historically, it’s been tough to quantify the success of events, presentations, and speeches. We’ve long known that the spoken word is a powerful tool for influence and action, but how do you measure that power?
2. What all presenters should be looking for: evidence that they’ve moved people to do something.  To measure a presentation’s success, you need to assess your audience members’ feelings and actions before you speak, while you speak, and after you’re done.
3. Before Your Talk. You can take one of the following approaches: delve into your audience’s thoughts and feelings, and anticipate emotional sticking points.  During Your Talk.  Observe audience behavior in the room or online.  Look at the number of attendees.  And spark and track social engagement.  After Your Talk.   Use surveys to assess audience satisfaction.  Examine the speaker’s own satisfaction.

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Topics:  Personal Skills, Presentations, Communication Skills