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Presentation Training for C-Level Executives: For the Rooms Where the Decision Gets Made

The board is watching the clock. The analysts are on the line. Five thousand employees are reading your face. At the top, every presentation is a leadership moment, and almost nobody will tell you honestly how it went. Jess Todtfeld, a former ABC, NBC and FOX producer, trains CEOs and C-suite leaders to walk into those rooms with a message that moves the outcome.

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Jess Todtfeld teaching presentation and message structure in front of a projected slide
Jess Todtfeld13 years producing at ABC, NBC and FOX
Format
One or two days, on camera, with playback
Where
Your offices, fully virtual, or the Madison Avenue studio in New York
Who it is for
CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CTOs, CMOs and the leaders who present beside them
  • Guinness World Record holder
  • 13 years at ABC, NBC and FOX
  • Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), held by fewer than 1% of speakers worldwide
  • Has trained leaders at AIG, the United Nations and AARP
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Quick answer

Presentation training for C-level executives prepares CEOs and C-suite leaders for the rooms where a presentation decides the outcome: the board meeting, the earnings call, the investor pitch and the all-hands. Jess Todtfeld, a former ABC, NBC and FOX producer, builds each session around your real material, records every run and plays it back.

Updated

Presentation training for C-level executives starts from an uncomfortable fact: the higher you rise, the more your results depend on how you present, and the fewer people are willing to tell you honestly how you did. Board presentations, earnings calls, investor meetings and company-wide addresses are the moments where leadership is either reinforced or quietly undermined, and almost nobody in your building is positioned to say which one just happened.

Jess Todtfeld built this program for that gap. After 13 years as a producer at ABC, NBC and FOX and more than 20 years training executives, he does what a candid, experienced outsider can do: put you on camera with your real material, show you what the room actually received, and rebuild it until the decision you need is the one the room makes. Analysts, investors, directors and employees all judge leadership partly through how you present. A leader who communicates a vision clearly attracts better talent, earns more favorable terms from partners, and builds the culture that drives execution. This page starts where most C-suite leaders start: with the presentation already on the calendar, and what is going wrong with it.

The rooms that cost C-suite leaders sleep, and what changes

None of these is a skill problem in the ordinary sense. These are capable people working inside habits nobody around them is positioned to name. Each one below is a pattern Jess sees in C-level sessions, followed by what the High Stakes Presenter approach does about it.

  1. Pain 1

    The board meeting where the deck wins and the decision does not

    You are presenting the three-year plan to a board that is skeptical of your direction. You have 30 minutes, several agenda items and a deck built to survive being forwarded. Pages of detail later, the conversation is about one footnote, the plan is tabled for further discussion, and you leave unsure whether anyone understood what you were asking for.

    What changes

    We start at the end. What do you need this board to approve, fund or believe when you stop talking? Your material is rebuilt on a one-page blueprint: the opening that earns attention in the first 30 seconds, the two or three points that carry the argument, the proof for each, the objection you know is coming, and the close.

    The deck becomes the leave-behind. The decision is the deliverable. One executive used this approach to turn a 45-slide internal strategy deck into a single-page conversation and had board approval in under twenty minutes.

  2. Pain 2

    The earnings call that is fine until the questions start

    Analysts and investors are listening live. The prepared remarks are clear and tight. Then the Q&A begins, and under pressure you reach for the rehearsed answer even though it is not what was asked. Everyone on the line can hear the mismatch, and every word is recorded, replayed and dissected.

    What changes

    We prepare the unscripted half as deliberately as the script. You get a forecast of the questions you hope nobody asks, then hostile Q&A rounds on camera, including the interruption at minute two and the challenge to your assumption.

    You practice answering the question that was actually asked, moving to your message without sounding evasive, and saying you will follow up when that is the honest answer. It costs far less credibility than a wrong answer delivered smoothly.

  3. Pain 3

    The all-hands where the message lands differently in every room

    You are addressing 5,000 employees after a difficult quarter. Morale is fragile. Your presentation has to be honest about the challenges and still inspire confidence in the path forward, and every word will be analyzed and quoted internally for weeks. Say too little and people fill the silence. Say too much and it sounds scripted.

    What changes

    We rebuild the message around the audience, not the speaker. For hard news the sequence is simple: say it in the first minute, name what happened in ownership language (“we missed our target”), give the two or three real reasons, bring a plan with dates and owners, and end forward with what you need from the room.

    A CFO Jess coached opened a down quarter exactly this way. The team left energized and confident they were in good hands.

  4. Pain 4

    The strategy people nod at and never act on

    The room agrees. Heads nod. Three weeks later nothing has moved, because nobody can repeat the strategy in a sentence without you in the room. Data alone rarely changes an executive audience, and a confused mind says no, or says nothing.

    What changes

    We build the persuasion layer: a story, an analogy and the one visual that makes the abstract concrete. Then we stress-test it. Could a skeptical board member repeat your point correctly after hearing it once?

    In a retention test Jess runs with senior teams, the sections that dumped data left almost nothing behind, and the sections built around a story came back at near 100 percent. One biotech CEO replaced three slides of mechanism diagrams with a 40-second analogy that the board repeated back to him verbatim two weeks later.

  5. Pain 5

    The deck your team built that does not sound like you

    Your team works hard on the presentation. By the time it reaches you it is accurate, polished and written in a voice that is not yours. You read it, the room hears a read, and the conviction you have in private never makes it into the room.

    What changes

    Read material sounds like read material. We work from your words, not the team’s: the blueprint is built from how you actually explain this strategy, and the style layer of pace, pause, emphasis and posture is rebuilt so you sound certain where you are certain.

    If a full script is the problem, we shrink it to five points that must survive and leave you free to deliver them as yourself. With a whole leadership team, the same method lets the CEO, CFO and COO tell one story instead of three.

  6. Pain 6

    The feedback vacuum at the top

    Nobody tells a CEO that the opening ran long. Direct reports soften it, the board does not coach, and a competent presentation produces no feedback at all. You can sit in the middle of your own role for years without hearing a single note that would move you.

    What changes

    The camera gives the feedback nobody else can. You deliver, we record, you watch the playback immediately and run it again. The recording has no agenda and no career at stake, so there is nothing to argue with.

    Most executives brace for the worst and see something better than they felt, and that image becomes the new target. The first run and the last run of the same content, played back to back, is the most honest measure of change there is.

Facing a reporter or a podcast host rather than a boardroom? That is a different set of rooms, covered in media training for CEOs and the C-suite. For the wider program, see executive media training.

Which of these is on your calendar? Tell Jess the date.

A short call is the fastest way to scope the format, who is in the room and the timing. He will work backward from the date you have.

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What you will learn in C-level presentation training

Jess Todtfeld filming a client in a mock interview in front of a studio backdrop

  • Board presentations

    Deliver board presentations that demonstrate command, transparency and strategic vision.

  • Earnings call Q&A

    Handle earnings call Q&A with composure, precision and message discipline.

  • Investor pitches

    Present investor pitches that build confidence in you and in the plan.

  • All-hands meetings

    Lead all-hands meetings that align, inspire and energize the whole organization.

  • Hostile or skeptical questions

    Navigate hostile or skeptical questions with grace under pressure.

  • Executive presence

    Project executive presence through voice, posture and pacing.

What a C-suite session actually looks like

Executive presentation training here is not a lecture on slide design. It is a working session built around the specific room you are walking into next: the board meeting, the earnings call, the investor roadshow, the all-hands after a hard quarter. Most C-level engagements run as a one-day intensive, in person at our Madison Avenue studio, at your office or fully virtual, and every hour is spent on your material rather than on generic examples.

  1. Step 1

    Define the decision, not the topic

    We start at the end. What do you need this audience to do, approve, fund or believe when you stop talking? Executives routinely arrive with a topic (“the FY plan”) and leave with a decision (“approve the reallocation before the March board call”). Everything after this step is judged against whether it moves the room toward that specific yes.

  2. Step 2

    Rebuild the structure on one page

    Your content is compressed into a single-page blueprint: the opening that earns attention in the first 30 seconds, the two or three load-bearing points, the proof for each, the objection you know is coming, and the close. Board members and analysts do not remember decks. They remember the shape of your argument.

  3. Step 3

    Build the persuasion layer

    Data alone rarely changes an executive audience. We work on the story, the analogy and the one visual that makes the abstract concrete, then stress-test whether a skeptical board member could repeat your point correctly after hearing it once.

  4. Step 4

    Pressure test on camera

    You deliver, we record, you watch the recording immediately, and you run it again. Then we run the hard version: the interruption at minute two, the CFO who challenges your assumption, the director who asks the question you were hoping to avoid. Repetition under pressure is what converts a good plan into something you can execute when the stakes are real.

The intensive is followed by a 365-day continuity program: coach access before your next high-stakes moment, a full retake of the online course, and a library of short refresher lessons you can pull up in the car on the way to the meeting. The point is that six months from now, before an unplanned crisis address, you are not starting from zero.

The C-suite habits we fix first

Senior leaders rarely have a delivery problem in the ordinary sense. They have specific, high-cost habits that nobody in the organization is positioned to name. These are the ones that come up most often in executive sessions.

Jess Todtfeld coaching a room of executives during an on-camera training session

  • Leading with context instead of conclusion.

    Boards want the headline first. Building up to the point the way you would in an internal review reads as hedging to a director who has 30 minutes and four agenda items.

  • Answering the question you prepared for.

    Under pressure, executives reach for the rehearsed answer even when it does not match what was asked. Analysts notice immediately, and it costs more credibility than admitting you will follow up.

  • Overloading the deck as insurance.

    Slides built to survive being forwarded are the wrong slides for a live room. We separate the presentation deck from the leave-behind and stop them from fighting each other.

  • Flat delivery under stress.

    Many leaders compensate for nerves by getting quieter, faster and more monotone at exactly the moment they need to sound most certain. We rebuild pacing, pause and emphasis so pressure reads as command instead of tension.

  • Treating the Q&A as an afterthought.

    On earnings calls and in boardrooms, the unscripted portion is where reputations are made. We prepare it as deliberately as the prepared remarks.

  • Different stories from different leaders.

    When the CEO, CFO and COO each frame the same strategy differently, the audience hears uncertainty. Team sessions exist largely to close this gap.

Each of these is fixable, on camera, with enough repetition that the new habit holds when the stakes are real.

The day the deck snapped in half

Jess spent eight years training AIG’s country presidents, senior leaders flown in from around the world. One morning, minutes before a presentation workshop began, a participant leaned against the front screen and cracked the thumb drive holding Jess’s entire PowerPoint in half.

“I realized how body language was influencing my message.”

Michael S. JensenPresident, AIG Europe

About sixty seconds later it was time to start. Jess told a story about the exact topic the first video would have covered, and said nothing about the disaster. The room noticed nothing. At the end of the day he asked whether anyone had spotted a problem at the front of the room. Nobody had. Then he told them, and they talked about what they would do in the same situation.

The lesson is the one every C-suite leader needs before a board meeting. Preparation is not the deck. It is knowing your message and your stories well enough to deliver them when the deck disappears, and staying audience-focused instead of me-focused when something goes wrong.

Read the full AIG case study

What leaders say

“The audience was laser focused. It was unbelievable... we closed a million dollar [deal] assignment.”

Les RichmondHay Group / Build America Mutual
Les Richmond, in his own words 0:23Play video, testimonial, 23 seconds

“I stopped dreading board meetings. That alone was worth the engagement.”

Division PresidentFortune 500 Healthcare Company

“Being in front of the camera and watching the evolution from the initial take to the last take, especially under heavy questioning, was very helpful to me.”

Max A. StempelGerente General, AIG Panama

Read how a Hay Group team won a million dollar bid by skipping the projector

Jess Todtfeld speaking in front of a projection screen, wearing a lapel microphone
Jess presenting: the same skills he trains, practiced in front of a live room.

Why work with Jess Todtfeld

Jess is one of the country’s leading presentation and media trainers. He spent 13 years as a television producer at ABC, NBC and FOX, where he made editorial decisions about who got interviewed, what aired and how executives came across under pressure. That is a different vantage point from a coach who has only ever stood at the front of a room. A producer learns quickly what holds an audience and what loses it.

He holds the Guinness World Record for Most Media Interviews in 24 Hours (112 interviews completed, 96 officially certified) and is a Certified Speaking Professional, a designation held by fewer than 1% of professional speakers worldwide. He has been training executives for more than 20 years, including at AIG, the United Nations, AARP and Fortune 500 companies across every industry.

His approach is direct, practical and focused on results. He gives C-level clients the candid feedback executives rarely get from their own teams, aimed at the specific behaviors that project executive presence, build credibility and drive action. Most C-level work is private: sessions are confidential, materials are secured, and no client is referenced publicly without permission.

Formats, group size and scheduling

C-level engagements are scoped to the situation rather than sold as a fixed package. These are the formats leaders choose most often.

  • One-on-one intensive

    A full day with a single executive, private and completely confidential. Best for a CEO preparing for a specific board presentation, a new leader stepping into a public-facing role, or an executive who wants a system built around their own voice.

  • C-suite cohort

    A small leadership group trained together, usually four to eight people over one or two days. This is the format that produces consistent messaging across the top team, and per executive it is the most efficient option.

  • Targeted pre-event prep

    A half day or a focused block before a named event, such as an earnings call, an investor day, a shareholder meeting or an integration announcement. Short, specific and built entirely around that one appearance.

  • Virtual delivery

    Fully remote sessions work well for distributed leadership teams and for on-camera practice, since most of the moments you are preparing for now happen through a lens anyway.

  • NYC studio

    In-person training at our Madison Avenue location with broadcast-quality cameras. See presentation training in NYC for studio details.

Standard scheduling for a one-day intensive is typically two to four weeks out. When there is a fixed date already on the calendar, tell us the date and we will work backward from it. Urgent pre-event prep has been delivered on far shorter notice when the calendar allows. If you are weighing individual coaching against a team session, we compare the two in one-on-one versus group presentation training.

What it costs, and how you will know it worked

Pricing is per engagement rather than per hour. Engagements generally run between $1,000 and $15,000 depending on scope and number of attendees, and two things move the number: how many executives are in the room, and the level of ongoing support attached afterward. Every engagement includes the 365-day support program at no extra charge. For an exact figure scoped to your situation, request a quick quote or book a call with Jess. See also what presentation training costs.

Measurement at this level is not a smile sheet. Before the session we agree on what would count as a win, and it is almost always situational: the board approves the plan, the analyst questions get shorter because the prepared remarks answered them first, the all-hands generates questions about the strategy instead of about whether leadership is being straight with people.

We also use the recordings. The first run and the last run of the same content, played back to back, is the most honest measure of change there is, and it is usually the moment an executive stops treating this as a soft skill.

To see how other leaders think about the return before you commit, read whether presentation training is worth it, how to measure presentation training ROI, and 50 of the most common presentation training questions. Before you sign with any vendor, how to choose a presentation training program covers what to ask, including how many recorded practice repetitions your team will actually get.

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Frequently asked questions

Is this training confidential?

Absolutely. Jess works under strict confidentiality with all C-level clients. Sessions are private, materials are secured, and no client information is ever shared or referenced publicly without explicit permission.

How long is the training?

Programs are available as a one- or two-day intensive or in a custom format. Many C-level executives prefer a series of focused sessions around specific upcoming events such as board meetings, earnings calls, or industry keynotes.

Can you help prepare for a specific upcoming presentation?

Yes. Many executives engage Jess for targeted preparation before a critical board presentation, investor meeting, or public address. He works on content, delivery, and Q&A preparation.

Do you work with entire C-suites?

Yes. Team-based executive presentation training ensures your entire leadership team presents with a consistent, polished standard that reflects well on the organization.

What does a C-level presentation training day actually include?

A one-day intensive covers message and structure work on your real material, persuasion tools such as story and analogy, on-camera delivery practice with immediate playback, and a simulated hostile Q&A. You leave with a one-page blueprint for the specific presentation you are preparing, not a folder of generic tips.

How much does presentation training for a C-suite cost?

Pricing is scoped per engagement and generally runs between $1,000 and $15,000 depending on scope and number of attendees. The two things that move the number are how many executives are trained and how much ongoing support is included. Every engagement includes a 365-day continuity program at no additional charge. The fastest route to an exact number is a quick quote or a short call with Jess.

Is one-on-one coaching better than training the whole leadership team?

They solve different problems. One-on-one is better when a single leader has a specific high-stakes appearance coming up or wants a system built around their own voice. A team cohort is better when the goal is consistent messaging across the C-suite, and it costs less per executive. Many organizations do both: a cohort first, then individual prep before major events.

How do you measure whether executive presentation training worked?

We set the success condition before the session, usually a real outcome such as board approval, a cleaner analyst call, or measurably better all-hands engagement. We also compare the first recorded run against the final run of the same content, which gives the executive an objective view of the change rather than an opinion about it.

Is this only for leaders who struggle with presenting?

No. Most C-suite leaders who come to Jess are already competent. They get through the deck, nobody winces, and nobody repeats what they said. Obviously bad presenting gets flagged and fixed because someone eventually says something. Average presenting gets no feedback at all, which makes it the more expensive problem. The training is built for capable leaders who want the room to remember what they said and act on it.

Does a CEO need presentation training or media training?

They cover different rooms. Presentation training is for the rooms you control: the board meeting, the earnings call, the investor pitch and the all-hands. Media training is for the rooms where someone else asks the questions, such as a reporter, a podcast host or a live TV interview. Many C-suite leaders do both, and the on-camera practice carries across. See media training for CEOs and the C-suite, or the broader executive media training program.

Walk into the room that matters ready.

Tell Jess what is on your calendar and he will build the session backward from it.

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Personal reply from Jess’s team within one business day. Prefer the phone? Call (646) 233-1424.

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