No Caning For This Sweet Results Presentation

When you want a sweet results presentation then who better to turn to than Tate & Lyle Sugars? The business was in the news yesterday with their full year results presentation via an audiocast with brrmedia. And what a sweet presentation it was.

This was a two-player team presentation with the Tate & Lyle Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Nick Hampton and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Imran Nawaz. Typically a team presentation should be a recipe for success. And so it was with this presentation as both presenters discussed their own responsibilities and helped one another out during the questions. That's key to a team presentation.

Introduction To This Sweet Results Presentation

Our introduction was succinct. Clearly our presenter, Nick Hampton, was reading from a script. But that's ideal for a presentation such as this. Because it kept the executive team on message and on time. Yes, we did hear the odd word stumble. But, that's also not an issue. Because these guys don't read the evening news from autocue for a living.

We heard a good business outline by way of introduction to the numbers themselves. Additionally, we also heard some key pointers that Nick Hampton would refer to later in slide 15. So, a good technique here for how to outline some structure into your results presentation.

Sharpen, accelerate and simplify

So the start was lively, informative and well-paced. We appreciated the odd piece of industry or management jargon, not least because it didn't distract from the message.

Colourful Results

The Tate & Lyle Sugars colour scheme works well on this PowerPoint presentation, with crisp definition and subtle shades. Equally positive was the choice of typefaces and font size that made just about everything quite readable.

However the sweet results presentation could be sweeter still with less busy slides. But that's a problem with so many management presentations that we come across: PowerPoint text overload. Of course, you can always reduce the amount of information on each individual slide. How? Either cut it out entirely. Or, have more slides with less text.

Organised Results

But, positively, the producers organised each slide well. Yes, there was a lot to take in, but there was structure to each slide.

The all-important handover from the first presenter to the second worked well, with only a slight pause in the proceedings. And then the handover from Imran to Nick was equally smooth, if a bit long. Yes, we do like pauses in speech. But silent moments in the production takes some listening skill from your audience. Perhaps a handover slide might help the transition. Or, the microphone handover iself could be simply quicker. Just a little point.

Both Nick and Imran spoke well with good enunciation and a delivery that helped understanding. Neither too slow, and certainly not too fast. However, we did jump when Imran noted on slide 28...

On this slide we show…

No. Our job as a presenter isn't to show stuff on slides. It's to explain, inform or educate an audience and achieve our goals. And, if a slide helps you explain something, then that's great.

Sweet Results

With a slide deck such as this sweet results presentation we always pick up other flavoursome moments. One was the line…

Let me give you two examples.

Great. This is the sort of continuity sentence that is always going to boost understanding with your audience. And it really did boost our understanding. Not least because we've faced an earlier diet of a Jamie Oliver TED presentation and a Professor Lustig speech. So, it's really good to discover just what healthy steps are being taken in the food and beverage industries. Good work.

So, an effective results presentation from the Tate & Lyle Sugars team.

Of course you can also discover plenty of presentation tips with our regular series of posts, podcasts and videos. And, with more than 100 top tips you should find something that's just right for your next presenting brief. Plus, when you really need to give your own presentation skills a bit of a sugar lift, then you can always consider some skills training, face to face or an online training course. Because a well-timed skills intervention will always do the business before your next conference presentation. So, when the time is right, please don't hesitate to get in touch.