How to present messaging to a group of people (while also preserving your sanity)
You just got asked to present your company’s shiny, new messaging to your executive team and board. Are you panicking yet?
How many times have you presented your tagline, snippets, and boilers to the big wigs, only to have them tune out, interrupt, make unhelpful suggestions, or get wrapped around the axle on irrelevant stuff? Marketing isn’t an exact science — messaging even less so — so getting a group of people to agree on it can be tough.
Take a deep breath and read on. Here’s your practical checklist of 11 must-dos for presenting core messaging painlessly, getting what you need from your executive audience, and earning credibility for yourself and your team.
Bring stakeholders along
Solicit input from key stakeholders as early in your message-creation process as possible. Talk to them one-on-one or in small groups about your customer discovery process, competitive input, and positioning ideas. Hit them up casually for a quick whiteboard session, in the hallway, or over a 15-minute check-in call. Show them early prototypes, handle their objections, and negotiate key points, and circle back to share progress. Your day-of messaging presentation should not surprise anyone, and your job is to know about any naysayers ahead of time.
Say what you need
Give your audience guidance about what you want to achieve in the meeting. Are you showing them final messaging? Soliciting feedback on draft messaging? If so, what kind? Hint: Don’t open the session up to wordsmithing, or you (and your messaging) will be sorry. For final messaging, I suggest: “Here’s a final messaging read-out based on our team’s effort. We’re pencils-down at this point to hit our launch deadline, but will refine it as we battle test it over the next quarter. Feel free to send feedback and ideas our way.” And for draft messaging, I suggest: “Here’s a late-stage draft of our core messaging based on the team’s work. We’re pretty confident about the value pillars from our research, but could use your input on which of three top-level messages is strongest. As always, other feedback is welcome. You can shoot me a note or we can talk at the break.” (Notice how these talk tracks curb real-time negotiations while offering some flexibility so your audience doesn’t feel totally locked in.)
Take a first-principles approach
Before you present messaging, be clear about your foundational arguments — the “why” and the core assumptions that guided you through the project. Your talk track could be, “Now that we’re introducing a new platform and two new products, entering a new vertical, and gaining ecosystem traction, we are encountering new competitors and customer personas. We need our positioning and messaging to reflect the new reality and appeal to new targets. Our research shows that x, y, and z are key areas of value our customers and prospects have highlighted, so we want those to be front-and-center.”
Show your framework
In addition to highlighting your foundational principles, conduct your presentation using a clear framework. You want your audience to buy into the how before asking them to buy into the what. Just like showing your work in math class gives your teacher confidence that you understand the material, showing your logic and methodology will minimize the questions and challenges that can come from a lack of trust or understanding. Two of my favorite frameworks include:
(for determining your positioning)
(for messaging around your positioning)
Share your (sound) process
Yet another must-do early in your presentation is detail how you approached your messaging project. (Of course, make sure you have a sound process in the first place!) I like to start with the positioning framework above, and then be methodical about filling in the pieces by interrogating the most instructive sources for my needs. I usually create a visual indicator of my methodology (with links to details), and then chat through each of the details. It can be a funnel, process diagram, or even a simple table, like this:
Right-size your presentation
Make your presentation crisp, targeted, and visual. For an hour meeting, that’s no more than about 10 slides, and ideally fewer. Hint: link to exhibits if you think your audience may request more details. Your deck should address the following:
- Why new messaging
- What you need from the group
- Your frameworks and process
- Requirements and constraints
- New messages, with explanations
- How your messaging translates to the “real world”
- Calls to action or questions for the group
You may choose a different medium than slides, but I would urge you to use the cleanest, most visual medium you can (maybe a FigJam or a Miro board). That said, it also needs to be something your audience can refer to later or share with others, so slides are probably best for that.
Get visual and break things up
Don’t include big blocks of text in your presentation. Your audience doesn’t need to see everything. Write your 25- or 50-word with a link to the longer document for those who are interested, and be sure to chunk up your text into bite-sized pieces. Also consider color-coding and identifying key elements, such as capabilities and benefits, so your audience can see the sausage-making (and the science!) behind your messaging. This will also give them confidence that all the pieces are there. And remember to tie these elements back to your foundational “why” during your talk track.
Here’s an old example from a past company:
Bring the words to life
Always show your messaging in action. Sometimes core messages can come across a bit dry if they’re just words on a page. But if you show how the words translate to sample website messages, ad copy, billboards, social posts, and t-shirt slogans (have a little fun!), they become way more relatable and help your audience imagine how your messaging will come to life.
Here’s another old example from the same company:
Offer choices (but have a point of view)
If you’re presenting draft messaging, it’s always good to give your audience a choice. It isn’t a vote; just take their temperature on options A, B, and C, and ask follow-on questions about their preferences. I usually try to lock most things down and then offer choices on one or two items to limit complexity and stay within the meeting time limit. So, for example, I might say, “We feel confident about our value proposition and messaging pillars, but could use your input on our top-line positioning statement. Here are three options: A emphasizes our robust architecture, B emphasizes our platform’s flexibility, and C is a mix of the two. We have a preference for A because our sales data seems to point to architecture as the real kicker in competitive deals, but we would love your viewpoint. Would you each take a moment and say which you prefer, and why?”
Be ready for objections
By getting input from stakeholders early, showing your work, and breaking down messages visually, you’ll be giving yourself a huge leg up. But even if you do everything right, you still may get push-back in the meeting. So, be prepared for it. I don’t mean have a clap-back for every possible criticism, but just think through all the feedback you may get, and have a plan for how you’re going to respond. (This is a great team exercise, so involve your product marketers or even some of your friendly stakeholders who are going to be in the meeting with you.) When someone does object, in virtually every case you need to acknowledge and validate the feedback without being defensive. Then, calmly share your thinking, ideally hearkening to your “why.” I recommend something like this: “I hear your point about highlighting our scalable platform. We gave that some thought, and ultimately concluded that, because that capability will soon be table stakes for our market, we should address it in our ‘about our technology’ drill-down versus in our top-level message.” And then check in: “Would you agree with that approach?” By the way, some of your audience’s objections may be valid, so listen for those with an open mind.
Don’t agree to anything too readily
Listen carefully, acknowledge feedback, and agree to consider ideas. But no matter how much sense someone’s idea makes or how easily you can slip in a few suggested words, do yourself a favor and wait. Evaluate feedback when you have a quiet moment alone or with your team. Sometimes a simple change muddies your message, disrupts your flow, introduces different issues, or simply weakens your words altogether. You may need to massage the whole message to achieve the change. So, take it slowly and make sure the change doesn’t just solve the identified problem, but also makes the whole message better.
Now you have strong messaging based on a super solid foundation, you’ve vetted it with key stakeholders, prepared for objections, and organized your information in an easy-to-grok way. You got this. Go get ‘em.
