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Source taken from:http://www.whyhowproveit.co.uk/index.htm

Introduction

This site outlines the unique presentation writing method known as 'Why? How? Prove It!'

This method of writing presentations and speeches was developed by Graham Jones, a leading British public speaker and trainer in presentation skills. The method ensures you can:

Write a presentation quickly
Write a presentation that makes your material accessible to the audience
Write a presentation that is easy to remember
If you use Why? How? Prove It! in your work you will be amazed at how quickly you can put together great presentations that will be easy to say and easy to remember.

► The first step is developing a KEY MESSAGE.

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Why?

Having provided your audience with your key message they will inevitably be asking themselves:

'Why should I do that?' or 'Why should I think that?' or 'Why should that be the case?'

In any event, all the questions that follow from an action-oriented key message are of the 'why?' kind. That means if the next stage of your presentation sets about answering these questions your talk is following what the audience perceives as its route through the material. The result is that you have them on your side immediately.

Many presenters prepare material that is only logical if you already know the subject or the information that is being presented. But few audiences will know. Hence they become quickly lost and have to work hard to pick their way through the information. Research shows that audiences that have to commit the least mental effort are the ones most likely to accept the material they are given. In other words, if you follow your own logic you are making it much less likely that your material will be accepted or acted upon by the audience.

If your talk follows the audience logic by immediately answering the 'why' style questions you will be providing just what the listeners want, mentally. As a result, you will make your material MUCH MORE LIKELY to be accepted and acted upon.

Having constructed your key message you simply have to think of all the reasons why your audience should accept what you are saying or act upon your material. These reasons and the detail behind them will form the first main section of your presentation

In our example, the presentation may go on to consider:

That marketing managers can't do their job without market research

That software makes accessing research easier

That there is no suitable program that works quickly enough for marketing managers

► The next step is showing HOW your message can be acted upon.

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How?

So, your audience now knows what you expect them to do and why they should do it. Now you need to answer their next inevitable question - how are they going to achieve what you suggest?

In this section of your talk you need to provide some explanation of how your audience can take the action you suggest or how they might go about changing their minds on a situation.

However, this is the least important part of your presentation. You are merely giving ideas at this stage. Once people have bought into your idea by understanding why your key message is important, the 'how?' they might do what you suggest is nice to know, but not need to know material. Hence, the 'how?' may only be a couple of sentences of suggestions, nothing very detailed.

Having said that, 'how' is an important part of the presentation as it necessarily follows the logical set of questions being asked subconsciously by the audience. Hence to leave it out disturbs the natural logic in the audience's mind and you lose support, reducing your influence.

But don't waste too much breath on it. Your audience simply needs to check that 'how? has been answered. Quite how they achieve tour desires will be up to them after your presentation - you are just providing some guidance.

In our example, the 'how?' section might consider:

Obtaining a copy from the sales team

Downloading a copy form the Internet

► The next step is showing that you can PROVE IT.

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Prove It!

So, you've told your audience what you expect them to do, why they should do it and how they can get on with things. But even though you may have got your message across, you haven't really underlined it as yet. You need to provide evidence for your assertions - prove what you have said is beyond dispute. The 'prove it' section of your talk is the most important part you need to write, after the key message. So spend lots of time in planning this.

You can prove your key message in several ways, but the main evidence will come from:

Personal examples
Case studies
Statistics
Individual, personal examples are immensely powerful - especially if you tell them as stories. Case studies are in depth examples and can be useful, but they are more difficult to tell as stories. Statistics are useful to help prove a point, but they do not carry as much weight as examples and case histories. That's because people know that you can massage the statistics in your favour, so they put less trust in them.

In our example the 'prove it' section may go on to consider:

The story about the marketing manager you met at a conference who said the program had enabled much greater control of marketing programmes

The case study of the company which used the software and achieved a much happier marketing team as a result

The figures from several companies that showed marketing efforts were 30% more successful when the software was used

► So now you know the three steps to a successful presentation, all you have to do is put them together in USING WHPI.

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Using WHPI

There are several advantages to the Why? How? Prove It! method:

Your talk starts and ends with a key message, leaving your audience in no doubt as to what you said - you've grabbed their attention
Writing your talk is easy as you only have to provide a few details and then add some examples to prove your point
Remembering your talk is easy as it is constructed logically -plus if you forget where you are just reflect on what you have said and work out which is the next phase in the sequence.
Your talk follows the apparent logic of the audience making it much more influential and persuasive
If you want, you can download our pre-printed form (a Word document) that lets you fill in the blanks using the WHPI method. You can use this form to provide the outline for your presentations.

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Presentation writing links

The Credibility Pyramid
How to make sure your talks are written in a believable way.

Books on writing presentations
We have chosen a selection of useful books already, but you can search for more at this site.

Public Speaking
Information on public speaking including tips to effective public speaking, techniques of public speaking, fear of public speaking, public speaking course, public speaking training, public speaking skills, public speaking topics, public speaking jokes, and public speaking career.