If you're presenting, make sure to do this

It happened more than a decade ago. I was part of a team that worked on a RFP (Request For Proposal) for a large-scale IT maintenance engagement with a PBM (Pharmacy Benefit Management) client. Within the organization, multiple business units had to coordinate on the proposal. The proposal advanced to the next round. In the second round, the client requested an in-person presentation of the proposal.

The presentation was to be held at the client's premises in the USA. A presentation team was formed. I travelled from India to represent offshore delivery management and a specialized business CoE (Center of Excellence). When the presenters for different sections of the proposal were decided, I was selected to speak as part of the specialized business CoE.

A day before the proposal presentation, we gathered at a hotel to finalize the content of all of the presentations. The discussions revolved around how to structure each presentation in a specific order, and the overall narrative for the entire proposal.

We settled on the big picture and then reviewed all the individual presentations with our client partner. As part of the review of my presentation, he asked me to present it as if it were a real presentation. In the course of doing it, he suggested a few modifications here and there - including re-ordering the points on a few slides. It took a couple of rounds of modification before the presentation was completely satisfactory.

The client partner gave me one expert piece of advice during this review. The advice was, "While you have adequate and necessary contents for the duration of your presentation, you might have to shorten it in some instances. Your time slot might even be reduced by one-third. Regardless of the situation, you should ensure that you talk through the top 3 points in each slide - the top 3 messages. Be clear on this and do not get distracted in conveying those top points".

Dilip Damodharan Pillai was the client partner I'm referring to. The above-said piece is a lifelong learning that he introduced me to in one review and I continue to use it till today, although we have moved on to different organizations.

I'm not sure if Dilip remembers this today. However, I am sure he will be happy to know that I continue to follow his advice.