Pinball wizards and skillful presenters have plenty in common

Recently I stumbled across the Web site of PAPA – the Professional Amateur Pinball Association. The group's literature convinced me that making an effective presentation is a lot like being a pinball champion. Let me explain.



When an audience assembles to listen to you, they're investing themselves in you. Unless they've heard something bad about you in advance, they'll usually give you the benefit of the doubt and concentrate considerately for at least two or three minutes. It's as though they're allowing you to launch their attention like a pinball.



But keeping a pinball moving and racking up points takes persistence, quick reactions and cleverness. So does holding the attention of an audience. In fact, research suggests that people in our media-saturated society lose interest in a flow of information unless something changes about every nine seconds. It's up to you as the presenter to initiate that change.



Here are a few ways to ensure that you keep an audience's attention hopping like a series of skillfully struck pinballs:

• Well before you speak, divide your topic into two, three or four distinct and catchy main points.
• Don't be mushy about your main points. Make sure they're firm and unmistakable in your mind before you succumb to the temptation of embellishing them. Check to see that each point is powerful and that it fits logically into the full list. Save the most important point for last.
• When you begin speaking, announce your main points clearly in the introduction. Make sure the audience understands these points, because if they don't, down goes the pinball into the gutter.
• In the body of your presentation, restate and "decorate" your ideas. Once you've introduced the main points, accentuate their attractiveness and significance by including the following ingredients in your presentation:
• Names. Concentrate on mentioning names of people in your audience or of other people they know. My high-school debate coach in Tennessee was a master at grabbing an unruly or inattentive student's attention simply by describing a situation in which he mentioned the person by name. There's something magical about names; exploit it.
• Numbers and Dates. Make selections which relate to your audience and arrest their attention. Lots of decisions in business depend on numerical data, and we Americans in general are used to having quantifiers attached to just about everything. (A look at USA Today should back this up). I try to include at least a couple of figures in every monthly column I write for our local business journal. Likewise, I deliberately incorporate numbers into every oral presentation I give.
• Stories. Throughout prehistory, human society transmitted its most valuable truths in the form of stories. In fact, some neurobiologists claim that the human brain is actually hard-wired to the structure of narrative. My own experience has been that people perk up their ears almost instinctively when they hear someone say, "Let me tell you about when..." A good story is apt to make a stronger and more lasting impact on your audience than almost any other component of a presentation. If a story from your own life doesn't occur to you, try glancing through Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes or a similar collection for inspiration.
• Well-defined transitions. Transitions are to presentations what gear-shifting is to an automobile: they keep things moving forward as the terrain of a speaker's ideas varies. A barrage of assertions, facts, and figures unrelieved by clear transitional phrases may overwhelm your listeners. Remember: You know your material better than anyone listening to you, and you need to help people follow your reasoning. Strive to be so clear about your points that no one can misunderstand or ignore them.
• Footwork. It's not just the words and phrases you utter that make your audience stay tuned to you. In addition to varying such obvious vocal and physical features such as intonation and gestures, you can subtly refresh your listeners' field of vision by shifting your feet even a little bit, periodically. Don't bob and weave; just take a half step one way or another from time to time, perhaps as you make your transitions between points, and you'll be surprised at the extra attentiveness people display.

According to that PAPA Web site I mentioned, participants in one recent pinball convention scored a total of 1,663,987,694,540 points. That's 1.6 trillion points. Following the suggestions I've made here about content, organization and delivery may not yield a trillion improvements in your presentations, but it may help keep an audience's mental pinballs dancing until you've finished speaking.