Why it’s important to perfect your presentation skills?
Public speaking comes naturally to very few people, but get it right and it can make the world of difference to you and your organisation.
At some stage in our working lives, many of us will be faced with delivering a presentation, and for a large majority of people this is a disconcerting prospect, but with a bit of focus and practical advice we can learn how to turn a daunting prospect into a positive experience.
Understanding how to turn nervous energy into a positive and dynamic presentation is just one area to focus on, there is a wide range of skills that we can learn to help us develop our presentation skills so that we make the most of our time in front of our audience.
Developing your presentation skills can help you to:
- Build confidence when engaging with the media
- Deliver a successful pitch to potential investors
- Present confidently to key decision makers
- Deliver successful training workshops
- Fine tune workplace leadership skills
The key to engaging your audience and delivering a memorable and positive presentation is through preparation, practise and performance and our top tips below are a proven way of achieving results:
Perfect Your Presentation Skills- 13 steps to success
1: Start big!
The opening of your presentation is vital – this tends to be when you have the highest levels of audience attention, so you need to grab them at the start. Think about newspapers; they use big ‘loud’ headlines to draw you in to reading more. Consider using; humour, an emotional story, an unusual fact, or a question/problem for them to think about.
2: Slow down…
Your delivery will lose impact if you rush and the audience will find it hard to follow. Think carefully about the right pace that will work with the audience.
3: Don’t underestimate the pause
Using pauses allows you a moment to gather your thoughts and it can be used to add some drama to your presentation. They can be helpful in getting the audience’s attention and in giving them a moment to digest what you have just said.
4: Adjust your tone
This will help you to highlight certain elements of your presentation – it REALLY helps ENSURE certain words HIT home, which is very useful in delivering messages that you want remembered.
5: Use repetition
If you have an important message to get across, don’t be afraid to mention it more than once. Using a quick recap towards the end will help this to be more natural.
6: Examples
Supporting and illustrating what you are saying will bring it to life. Ideally make these ‘human’ stories that you have experienced and the audience can relate to – there’s a saying that; ‘facts get forgotten and stories get remembered’. Each of your messages should have examples to ‘prove’ them.
7: You know too much
It can be easy to go off track in a longer presentation and this is why it’s so important to have a strong structure that will help you to stick to your content. Remember to only give the audience the information they actually need rather than trying to squeeze everything in.
8: Be yourself
If you are comfortable using humour then it’s usually ok to add that into your presentation – but don’t try and force a style you are not used to using.
9: Bullet points
This simple technique helps you to remember your content and allows the audience to follow what you are saying more easily. It’s normally best to use 3 or 4 bullets at a time.
10: Eye contact
The best way to lose an audience is to look away from them; engage with them by making contact with each person in the room (or by looking at sections of the room if it’s a large audience).
12: Important and interesting
Think about what the audience will want to hear and think about your most important message – try and address these early on in the presentation.
12: Passion
Even dry subjects can be helped by a passionate presenter – inject some emotion into the topic to keep the audience interested.
13: Practice
Whether it’s in a training session or just using your own camera, make sure you practice, practice, practice to become familiar with the content and work out any nerves.
Want to find out more about Presentation Training?
Sometimes a bit of extra help can go a long way which is why we offer our clients a tailored workshops to suit their individual needs and the needs of their organisation.
Our bespoke presentation training courses are highly interactive sessions which give you invaluable techniques to improve your approach, as well as the opportunity to trial different methods to polish your style.
GET A FREE course outline or speak to one of our highly skilled trainers to find out more on 0845 230 2601
Written by Will Edwards, Director
