What’s in a presentation – and can you afford an 8-second distraction?

The average 45-minute presentation contains about 400 sentences. That is about eight sentences per minute, which may contain anywhere from six to 50 words, with the average being around 20 words long. If you think about the fact that the average speed of conversational speech is about 150 words per minute, these numbers make sense.

What's in a presentation?

Out of 400 sentences in their usual presentation, the average manager will say:

• 13 sentences about the level of risk in their strategy and the market they operate in
• 7 sentences about return levels
• 18 sentences about the liquidity profile of the assets within their strategy
• 12 sentences about the time horizon associated with it
• 14 sentences about whether their strategy is better fitted for liability-matching or return-seeking portfolios
• And anywhere around 15 to 20 sentences about their approach to ESG

Airtime versus rapport and engagement

You will notice, this is not very much airtime out of the 400 sentences exchanged between the manager and their audience. In fact, the manager can expect at least four substantive questions from the trustees and CIOs they are presenting to, and about 20 in-depth comments.

Buried within these interruptions, a manager would often find three invaluable points about their strengths, and two about their weaknesses. But how concentrated is the presenting manager to keep close track of these, and would they forget them when they get whisked away to a coffee break or lost in small talk after their session?

Can you afford an 8-second distraction?

The average manager presents between three and six times at a mallowstreet event, over the span of an afternoon or two to three days. Typically, they would hear a total of 14 strengths to increase focus on – and nine weaknesses to address.

A sentence takes about eight seconds. It is easy to get distracted for that amount of time when you’re thinking of the next slide in your presentation deck. What happens if you miss the 'gold dust' - a key point about your strategy or your client?

Thankfully, with mallowstreet SOFI, presenters no longer have to worry about this – and they can trust SOFI to record and surface all the detail they need.

Try SOFI today.