Use an interesting format for your presentation if the content is hopelessly dry and you have no other option.  Here is a sample presentation I put together to educate a sales team about revenue recognition. 

revenue_recognition_example.ppt
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The phone rings. It is your boss in the accounting department and he wants you to make a presentation to your co-workers on revenue recognition. 

The co-workers in question all happen to be salespeople who work for a software company. Their definition of "revenue recognition" is the day their commission check is deposited in their bank account.  It seems they have been bundling software and maintenance fees which is playing havoc with your accounting.  They are pulling a few other stunts in an effort to hit their monthly targets.  It is your job to get them to understand the impact of their behavior on the business.


Here's how I would tackle this project. Keep in mind that I am not an expert on this particular topic but the people at Softtrax probably are.

Step 1:  Determine how your audience likes to receive information.  
You can turn to behavioral tools like the DISC profile or the Meyers Briggs research for help understanding different audiences.  But for this exercise, we will assume that salespeople are visual.  They have relatively short attention spans and don't like details.  That makes them polar opposites to the accountant who will be making this presentation.

Step 2: Decide what you want your audience to take away from your presentation. If you are the accountant making this presentation, you want the salespeople to stop entering orders incorrectly.

Step 3: Write down all of the pertinent facts and sources.  
Here’s what a typical accountant is going to write down in his Excel spreadsheet for this step:

¨      Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) 101
¨      AICPA SOP 97-2 – licensing, selling, leasing or marketing computer software
¨      Separate components based on VSOE– “Vendor Specific Objective Evidence of Fair Value”  - yes, this is straight out of the accounting literature.
¨      SOP 91-1 – Recognize revenue only after delivery of the software  
 
Step 4:  Ignore most of what you wrote in Step 3 and decide what part of this topic impacts your audience.
In this case, if orders are entered wrong, it means the salespeople will not get paid their commission. Ahah!  This is why they care!  

Step 5: Determine what your audience will expect you to deliver and do the opposite.
Salespeople expect accountants to be boring.  So make the session fun.   

TO BE CONTINUED --  To see a sample presentation on this topic, tune in to my next post.   

There are two ways to get high marks as a presenter.  You can either be exceptionally entertaining (form) or you can impart information that people are desperate to have (substance). 

"Substance Over Form" is one of those concepts that every accountant learns in their accounting 101 course.  It is the principle that says auditors must look at the substance of a given transaction rather than just its form.  

When you are making presentations, you can be successful with either of these two approaches, but the best result happens when you combine an entertaining style with valuable information.

I have seen presenters who use all of the filler words "um", "uh", "you know" multiple times, and they still get high marks when they have content that is timely and relevant.  These are  what I call the "Substance Over Form" presenters.  They are very successful in making presentations on topics that are required for CPE credits. 

I have also seen presenters who have so much style that they could stand up and read a phone book out loud and make it interesting.  Susan Sheridan Austin was this kind of presenter.  Susan went well beyond form and  took great pains to  have amazing content as well.  But it wasn't necessary.

And style isn't about fancy slides and slick graphics. I have seen a lawyer make a fantastic presentation using no visual tools at all. While working off an outline which he handed out to the audience,he  told story after story and brought his message to life.

I think of myself as a "Form Over Substance" presenter.  To me the greatest fun is to take a boring topic and make it interesting.  And when the audience is expecting a boring presentation on something like Sarbanes Oxley and they end up being entertained instead, that is the greatest thrill in the world. And hopefully they walk away with new insights as a result of paying attention.

Someday if I get enough practice and work hard enough, I might  be half as good as Susan Sheridan Austin.