How can you tailor presentations to different departments?

To me, it's more like "know what your audience cares about." Forgetting the subject of your presentation: people are motivated by what benefits them. That doesn't mean you have to change what you present on -- it just means you have to frame it in a way that your audience might believe will impact their work, life, or something else. Presenting to a sales team? Know, going in, that they care about making money, and not wasting time. Try using tactical examples of success. To marketing? They care about being empowered to tell good stories and motivate others to act. Engineers? They care about efficiency and the inner workings of subjects and systems. You don't necessarily have to know your audience personally. Just their motivations.

Know your audience and acknowledge your audience. While it may be good to have different presentations, you may find yourself presenting to a diverse group where different people have different expectations and interests. Acknowledge them all, then find a unifying theme to make them all feel part of the same goal. Example: You may be here because..., or perhaps you are here because... whatever reason brought you here. We are all here because we want a common goal and action - e.g. discuss, solve, agree, etc.

Avoid relying on a single presentation for multiple departments. Recognize the significance of understanding your audience. Consider preparing multiple presentations or utilizing various approaches to convey the same subject as you engage with individuals from distinct departments.

The way I think about this is filling the blanks in this sentence. "Remember Adam? He came in and talked about _____? And he had that story about ______. I start with those two blanks and keep it silly simple. Because let's face it: how often do you listen to a keynote and come out remembering more than one thing? For me, it virtually never happens. For whatever reason, I really only ever retain one thing -- it's typically whatever the most striking part of the speech is. From there, I think about audience motivations. That'll determine the hooks I use to present -- humor, emotion, tactical advice, tough-love energy, etc. I spend the vast majority of my planning focusing on those blanks, and then expand from there.

Thoughtful mimicry of your audience's motivations also comes down to what you can give them permission to feel. For management: they want to be in control of their orgs, and feel reassured of the actions they take. For sales: they want to break down doors and rake in cash, and feel reassured of the actions they take. For marketing: they want to think big, lean into trends, take thoughtful branding risks... and feel reassured of the actions they take. At the end of the day, people want to feel comfortable. They're OK with being challenged, just not confronted. Ingratiate yourself as the speaker by giving your audience the permission to feel the way they want to feel through your words.

It doesn't matter how intricate you make your speech, how many charts you use, stats you spout, or tear-jerking stories you tell. Most likely, your audience is only going to retain ONE element from your speech. Maybe two. Attention spans just aren't wide enough to capture more. Nail down those 1-2 things, and focus on them with the majority of your time, and it's hard to go wrong.