6 Essentials of Your Winning Presentation
From sharing your latest sales strategy, to convincing potential investors to fund a new venture, knowing how to deliver your ideas with a persuasive message is the first step of any presentation. Public speaking or just presenting in front of an audience can be intimidating at first, but practicing your routine beforehand is a surefire way to get through it. Try some of these tried-but-true techniques on delivering your next killer presentation with ease:
- Watch your posture. Slouching can make you look intimidated, and standing up straight with shoulders back and chin up high will give you the confident look immediately—even if you’re feeling less than confident underneath it all. Think about how people are perceived on stage; how do they stand? Do they look poised and confident, or seem to be shrinking away? Your overall presence in front of the group will help you carry and deliver your idea with much more promising results.
- Use your hands to convey the message. Body language is everything when it comes to presenting to an audience, and you can use your hands to demonstrate and ‘show’ your ideas. Too many movements can be distracting, so keep it simple and practice in front of a mirror if you need to.
- Vary your volume (voice inflection). Maintaining a monotone voice is boring and encourages the audience to simply tune out. Keep things upbeat and move through your list of topics by varying your pitch and speed.
- Keep it short and simple. You’re delivering a message, not reading from a script! While it’s a good idea to use flashcards or notes as prompts, avoid reading directly from anything when you’re trying to explain something. Try ‘reading’ your audience instead, and talking as if you’re having a conversation.
- Breathe! It’s common to feel nervous at the prospect of speaking in front of people, and rapid breathing or shortened breathes can end up leaving you speechless. Breathe deeply and calm your nerves naturally. You’ll be much more likely to speak clearly and openly when you’ve got a steady flow of oxygen running through your system!
- Add some humor. This will depend on your audience and topic, but adding humor to your presentation is a great way to ‘break the ice’ and help people become more responsive and open to what you have to say. Laughing itself is an instant stress reliever and makes people relax; the more relaxed the audience is, the more likely they’ll be to tune in and listen. Successful marketing campaigns have plenty of humorous qualities—look at some of the most effective viral and ad campaigns, and you’ll see how humor is used to make people notice and deliver the marketing message.
A winning presentation can help you score that next deal and lead you to success, helping you overcome that next hurdle. A poor delivery can lead to less positive results, and probably leave you with less resources than you would have hoped.
What are some other ways to create a presentation that delivers results?
2 Comments
lawrence
September 14th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
not bad tips.
but you left out some more good ones…
1.) walk around, well as much as you can - as the space permits. don’t stand in one spot, look active, loose, and mobile.
2.) look at the audience, each and everyone of them. but don’t stare, or focus too much on one person - you’ll make them feel uneasy.
3.) don’t look too overtly scripted. have some small dialect with the audience during your presentation.
Warren Greeley
September 14th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
This are some great tips that you can easily see the pros use when speaking. Look at Steve Jobs or even Mark Zuckerburg and you’ll see they all do these things. I try to when giving a public speach (as rare as that may be).
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