Almost every person in charge of a team has had a similar experience. With only a few minutes to present to senior management, you must communicate a proposed project on behalf of your team. You labor until you perfect the delivery, only to see that the executives were unmoved by your proposal. Why?

I have found some excellent techniques to help gain senior level support through my work with change leaders over the past ten years. I have also seen more than one attempt flop. I decided to talk directly with several senior level leaders both in corporate and public organizations in order to discover best practices in presentations to senior management.

The executives agreed that when mid-level leaders attempt to make a case for funding or other support, they often provide far too much information. Many pitches fail because executives don’t have the time or interest to delve into every aspect of an initiative. Most executives don’t want or need to know each and every task your team is working on. They don’t want to have to weigh in on every decision.

Here are three proven strategies to have a presentation to senior management that will limit the presentation to the most important details.

1. Use visual aids such as PowerPoint to give a summary of your main goals and objectives

A PowerPoint deck is a great briefing tool because it requires you to summarize your points into brief bullets. Keep your points at a high level and mentally prepare stories, anecdotes, and illustrations to bring depth to the words on the page. Plan to spend no more than 3 minutes per page during your pitch. Bring backup information with you, but pull it out only in response to questions about the details.

2. Organize your main objectives and goals into relevant groups.

I recently saw one team leader list every activity his team planned to work on in 2009 in his pitch to executives. Instead of strengthening his case, all of the details turned off the executives he was trying to influence. One leader even spoke up to tell the team leader that they didnt want to know all of the team’s tasks. They just wanted to know the priorities.

Separating goals and tasks into related groups is a helpful technique. One example of this might be to state in your introduction that in the coming year, your groups goal is to focus on cost savings, making processes more efficient and creating a stronger bottom line. Then, your presentation would consist of giving examples of how you intend to be successful in each of these three areas. Using this approach will help senior management to focus on how the proposals you suggest for your team will impact the entire company, and allow them to decide if these are the areas that they want to stress in the coming year.

3. Concisely summarize what you need from the executive team in order to move forward.

A great number of presentations to senior management take on an informational tone. The team leader will update the executives on status of the project and then ask for questions. Their expectation is that senior management will take the initiative and suggest a plan for funding and support of the project, which unfortunately is rarely the case.

Instead, conclude your pitch with a slide that summarizes specifically what you need. This might be money, a decision, or dedicated resources. Yes, there is a risk that your request will be turned down, but it’s better to know that now, than to keep spinning your wheels.

About 10 years ago, General Electric hired an external consulting team to help create a change acceleration process. That team devised a four step process for giving impressive and time effective presentations:

* Our proposal is about . . . * It is very important to the company because . . .* What this means for the companys administration is . . . .* This is the help we need from you. .

Use this approach both in one-on-one conversations with stakeholders and in your formal pitches and presentations. You will find that your ability to argue for your case will improve as you learn to focus on these key elements.

Streamlining your sales presentations so that they are short and to the point, you will be much more successful at communicating your goals and not your tasks. Being very specific and clear about what you need will help senior management to know right away what you are proposing, what you would like from them to help you succeed, and, most important, how it will positively impact the entire organization.