Presentation Skills | Leader's Institute Leadership and Management Training and Development

Archive for the ‘Presentation Skills’ Category

Create a Concise Presentation

Presentation Skills for Small Business Owners

Create a Concise Presentation Based on the Needs/Wants of The Audience

One of the things that I do in the first hour of The Fearless Presentations® public speaking classes is give the participants 10 quick tips that will help them reduce public speaking fear almost immediately. Now, I feel like I’m a pretty good speaker. I use lots of examples and stories, I’m very enthusiastic, and I use some fun audience participation as well. I typically spend about 45 minutes giving these tips, so I cover each tip very thoroughly. However, I do this really to make a point, because as good as I am, within about 30 seconds after I give the last tip, I have the group take a little quiz to see how many of the ten tips that they can remember. I’ve given that same test to over 500 different classes, and the average number of items that people remember (just 30 seconds after the presentation ends) is only about three, four, or five points. (And that is with a pretty entertaining delivery.)

The reason for this exercise is to prove a very, very important point about how people retain information. Here I am, a professional speaker, I know my content inside and out, I’m very confident in my delivery, I make the content fun to listen to, and the audience is very active in the process – and most people in the audience still will only remember three to five things that I say. So if that is the case, if I really want to make my presentation impactful, I’ll make the content very concise and only cover a few points per presentation.

Most presenters try to cover way too much information in way too little time.

If you spend an entire hour presenting on just one key concept, one key point, there is a really good chance that most people in your audience will remember your key point (at least for a short period of time). If you spend an entire hour covering two key points, your audience will have a 50% chance of remembering either (not both) of your key points. So, what that means is that an hour or so after your presentation, if you randomly asked people in your audience to name one of your key points, every other person will likely stare at you blankly. If you add a third point, the retention drops to just 25%. With four points, it drops to under 10%. And if you add a fifth point, only about 1% of your audience will remember ANYTHING that you say.

Quick! Think of the last presentation you heard at the office. Do you even remember what the topic was? If so, do you remember any of the bullet points?

I know what you are thinking… Wait a minute. If retention is so low, then why bother?

I’m not trying to discourage you, but I am trying to get you to face reality. If you design presentations the way that most people design presentations, your audience will likely not remember a lot of your content, and even worse, they probably won’t like your delivery.

However, if you follow the structure that I outline in the rest of this chapter, you will increase the retention from your audience dramatically. In fact, when class members finish our Fearless Presentations® class, every class member delivers a final presentation where they put everything that we cover in the class into practice. It is amazing how much of each person’s content that the class members remember at the conclusion of the talk. Not only do they remember the key points and titles, but they also remember names, dates, numbers, and many minute details that typically shock them.

So don’t get discouraged. Just follow the following tips.

Once you have that well written and well defined title, keep thinking like the audience. Ask yourself, “If I were sitting in one of these seats for an hour, and I only walked away with one key concept about this topic, what would be the absolute, number one, most important thing that I’d need to know or remember? What would make it worth my while sitting through this presentation?” Whatever that number one, most important, concept is, becomes your number one key point (your first bullet point).

Once you have that most important concept, then assume that the audience absolutely understands that concept very thoroughly. What would be the second most important key point that the audience would need to know? Whatever that point is becomes bullet point number two.

Keep going until you get three, four, or five points. Just as an FYI, a well-designed three-point talk will take anywhere from ten minutes to thirty minutes to deliver. A five-point talk is typically most appropriate for about an hour-long presentation.

The logic on this type of structure is pretty sound. If your audience is only likely to remember a few key concepts, then why not spend most your time on just the absolute, most important things that they need to know? By the way, on a scale of “most important,” when you identify the most important concept and work your way down the ladder, by the time you get to the fifth and sixth most important items, they will greatly pale in comparison to the number one most important thing.

Next time that you buy something, take a look at all of the options in front of you. Start rating your options from your favorite to your least favorite. Once you get to the sixth favorite, compare it to your top pick. Is there any real comparison? I went shopping for a suit a few weeks back, and I gave the salesperson a general idea of what I was looking for. As the two of us walked through the store, when I saw a suit that I liked, the salesman would pull it out and hang it near the mirror. When we got to about five suits, I went back and looked at each again. I was quickly able to rule out a couple, because compared to my top choices, they just didn’t measure up. Eventually, I tried on a couple of suits and made my choice. As the salesperson was taking my measurements for the alterations, I stood looking at myself in the mirror admiring the new suit. Of course, the two suits that I had quickly excluded were still hanging there. As I looked at them, I was wondering why I had ever even chosen them as finalist.

Your audience does the same thing. They may politely listen to all of your long list of 10, 15, 25, or even 50 bullet points, but somewhere along the way, they will disregard whatever they don’t feel is important for them at the time. If you are delivering a bunch of bullet points, this filtering process will likely start to occur fairly early in the presentation. The more focused your presentation – meaning, the fewer key points that you cover – the more likely that your audience will stay in tune with you and remember what you present to them.

Once you have your title and your key points, the final step in creating your outline is to make each of your key points really “audience focused.” The very crass, but effective, test that I like to use is the “Do I Give a Flip?” test. Meaning, if you were sitting in the audience, and you saw this title and key points listed on a slide, would you say, “Cool, I can’t wait to hear this,” or would you likely say, “I hope this doesn’t put me to sleep.” If it is the former, then you are on the right track. If it is the latter, you might want to change things around a little.

The Entrepreneur Boot Camp helps small business owners speak with confidence and be perceived as being the Expert in their Industry. The Boot Camp uses techniques and information from Doug Staneart’s book, Mastering Presentations.

Doug Staneart is the CEO of The Leader’s Institute® and creator of the Entrepreneur Boot Camp Small Business Workshop. He is based in Dallas, Texas, but the class is taught in cities all over the world.

Design Your Presentation Title with the Audience in Mind

Presentation Skills for Small Business Owners

DESIGN YOUR TITLE BASED ON THE MAIN “WANT” OF THE AUDIENCE

Now that we are thinking like the audience, let’s design the title based on what the audience really wants. For instance, in the accounting example that I mentioned earlier (See http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/what-the-audience-wants-and-what-you-want-are-different), most presenters would create a title like “Fourth Quarter Financials.” (Trust me… Even accountants don’t want to listen to this talk.)

Going back through the different audiences, if the presentation is being delivered to the C-Level Executives who are interested in profit, a better title would be “Profit Increased by 2.5% in the Fourth Quarter.”

The title for the sales team might be something like, “Although Unit Sales Decreased in the Fourth Quarter, Total Revenue and Bonuses Increased.”

For the board of directors, “A Small Increase in Profit led to the First Dividend in the Last Three Quarters,” might be a better title.

And for the front line managers, a title like, “Revenue Increased this Quarter, but Rising Cost Led to Just a Small Increase in Profit.”

As the audience changes, the topic title (and the content) will change as well. The more specific the audience is, the easier it is to create the title, because the title is designed for just what the audience wants most out of the presentation. If the audience gets broader, designing the title (and the presentation) becomes more difficult. For instance, if the person delivering the financial presentation above was designing the presentation for a company-wide meeting, and each of these groups would be attending, then the title might be something like, “Although Revenue Increased Last Quarter, Profit was Slight because of Increasing Costs.”

Think of designing the title like picking out a car. In the early days of car manufacturing, choices were limited, and as a result, so was the market. In Henry Ford’s autobiography he wrote, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” In today’s world, though, a black car that only carries four passengers, and tops out at 35 miles per hour won’t go over very well. Neither will a monolithic presentation designed for everyone.

The real key to creating a great title is to think entirely of the audience before you design it, and you’ll end up with a much better presentation.

The Entrepreneur Boot Camp helps small business owners speak with confidence and be perceived as being the Expert in their Industry. The Boot Camp uses techniques and information from Doug Staneart’s book, Mastering Presentations.

What the Audience Wants and What You Want Are Different

Presentation Skills for Small Business Owner

How do we design this compelling presentation without it taking hours, days, or even weeks? The first step is to realize that what the audience really wants to know and what you really want to tell them are often two TOTALLY different things.

Let me repeat that…

What the Audience Wants to Know and What You Want to Tell Them Are Often Two Totally Different Things

Perhaps the absolute biggest mistakes that people make when they start to design a presentation is to ask themselves, “Okay, so what do I know about this subject?” and then start designing slides based on everything that they know. What happens more often than not is that they end up with too much information and too many slides, so to fit the time frame allotted, they will likely cut content out. What the presenter ends up with is a Swiss cheese presentation that is both hard to remember (deliver) and hard for the audience to retain.
A better way to start is to put yourself in the shoes of the audience member and ask yourself, “If I am in the audience (and not the expert) what content would be most important to me, right now?” For instance, if you are an accountant, you are most concerned about the number balancing, but if you are delivering a financial presentation to the C-Level Executives, they aren’t really concerned about the numbers themselves, they are more concerned about how the numbers relate to the profit and trends. If you are delivering the presentation to the sales team, they are more concerned about revenue and bonuses. If you are delivering the presentation to the board of directors, they are more concerned about shareholder equity and retained earnings. If you are delivering the presentation to front-line managers, they are more concerned with costs and expenses. None of these audiences are concerned with the balance sheet, debits, credits or any of the data that the accountant wants to deliver. They are concerned with how the data that affects their day-to-day lives.

Think of designing your presentations like choosing a birthday gift. I love wine. I love to unwind at the end of the day with a glass of fine Pino Grigio. However, my wife, although she likes wine as well, gets a headache if she drinks more than one glass. So a wine-of-the-month club membership is a great gift for me, but would not be appreciated if I gave the membership to my wife. Think of designing your presentations the same way. Stop focusing on yourself and what you want and focus more on what the audience really wants.

About ten years ago, I was working with an Architecture firm who was bidding on a contract with the University of Texas in Austin. The university was adding a high-tech microbiology building to their campus, and they were torn between adding something modern and edgy and keeping with the historic culture of the campus. I came in a couple of days before the presentation to the university, and the team assembled had already identified the key concepts that they wanted to cover.

The first point in the presentation was “Our Experience with University Architecture.” It took me the better part of an hour to convince the team that although their experience was important, the university didn’t really care about how successful they had been in the past. The university was more concerned about keeping their historic culture. After a pretty intense discussion, one of the architects decided to take a walk on campus to get some ideas, and while he was walking, he sketched some of the building that were already on campus. He made these sketches just so he could get some ideas and really understand the campus. For the next couple of hours, the team went over the sketches and identified what key aspects that they wanted to “copy” and add into the new high-tech building.

When the team spoke to the committee, they began their presentation just like everyone else with couple of PowerPoint slides. However after a few traditional slides, they inserted a blank slide that the team used as a spotlight for the sketches that the architect had created. He glued to sketches to a board and placed the boards on a tripod in front of the “spotlight”. He just pointed out the key aspects of the historic culture in the old buildings that he wanted to preserve in the new buildings. With every new board that he showed, the committee members physically moved toward the presenter in their seats. The committee loved the presentation, and awarded the contract to our team within 30 minutes of the conclusion of the last presentation (a record).

After the presentation, one of the committee members approached the lead presenter and thanked him. He told us that every other one of the team’s competitors spent most of their time proving how great they were, but his team spent most of our time focusing on what the committee was most interested in. He said, “We all assumed that the people who invited each of the presenting companies did a good job, so if you were invited to present, we all assumed that you were qualified.” The committee liked our company, because the presenters focused on the university, and their wants and needs.

So start with your audience in mind, and designing the presentation gets much, much EASIER!

The Entrepreneur Boot Camp helps small business owners speak with confidence and be perceived as being the Expert in their Industry. The Boot Camp uses techniques and information from Doug Staneart’s book, Mastering Presentations.

If You Are a Small Business Owner, You Are the Expert

If you are a small business owner, regardless of what industry that you are in or what expertise that you have, you first have to realize that you are the expert at something, and the knowledge that you have is valuable to someone. When I was 14 years old, my dad owned a home remodeling company, and every winter, I crawled under houses helping him repair frozen pipes that had burst. After a couple of winters, I had so much experience doing this, that I could do it in my sleep. So as a teenager, I was an expert at repairing ruptured PVC pipes. After I graduated college, my first real job was working for an oil company doing title work for mineral rights. After a couple of years, I had not only gotten pretty good at it, but I had also trained a number of new people. My third year in the training industry, I generated a half-million dollars worth of sales for the first time, and that same year, I also received a couple of awards for outstanding instruction. It took me five years as an entrepreneur to attain my first million dollars, but it only took about eight more months to generate my second million. With each of these accomplishments, I became the expert, because I had information that the general public didn’t have (even when my expertise was repairing frozen pipes).

Don’t under estimate your knowledge. Your experience has made you the expert.

One of my friends in college was going to school to be an elementary school teacher, and she absolutely hated math. However, once she graduated, she found out that in the State of Texas, Math and Science teaches got paid an extra fee, because teachers with this expertise were in high demand. So, she decided to be a fourth grade math teacher. Those of us who knew her pretty well were laughing when we asked her about her career choice, because for the three or four years that we had known her, she complained over and over about the math, algebra, and trigonometry classes that she had to take in school. These classes were her nemesis. After a little teasing from us, she replied by saying, “In order to teach fourth grade math, I just have to be an expert at fifth grade math,” and one of those prophetic life lessons for me was learned. In order to be an expert at something, you just need to have a little more knowledge than your audience.

For instance, let’s say that you are a restaurant manager who turned around a struggling location. How many other managers are there in the world who would want to hear how you did it? You’d be the expert at restaurant turnarounds (especially if you were able to do it a second or third time). Or, if you are a dentist who is really good at getting your patients to show up for every sixth month check-up, then other dentists would pay dearly to figure out how you do it. Whatever you do on a day-to-day basis makes you the expert at that activity.

Because you are the expert, you have credibility in the marketplace.

I had been teaching presentation skills classes for about ten years, and I ended up getting a contract to teach presentation skills and leadership for members of the Associated General Contractors. After teaching classes for these member companies for a couple of years, the participants began to think of me as being an expert in the commercial construction industry. Keep in mind that I had never once built a big skyscraper. In fact, I knew very little about the day to day operations of general contractors. However, because I had worked with so many general contractors in that first couple of years, I had more expertise in the industry than other leadership and presentation coaches. I had developed a specialty.

A friend of mine decided that every sales trainer targets car dealerships as potential customers, so instead, he decided to specialize in conducting sales training for salespeople who sell trailer houses. Since he had very little competition in this industry, he quickly became the go-to expert.

One of my clients hired me to coach a few of his employees who were preparing for what he called a “short list” presentation, which was a presentation where a “short list” of qualified vendors were competing for a really big contract. Although everyone in the room knew more about building skyscrapers than I did, I knew way more about designing and delivering presentations than any of them did. So, with my coaching, they were able to borrow my expertise to deliver their presentation in a much more fluid and effective way.

After doing this kind of training a few times with some pretty remarkable success, I quickly became known as the “short list” presentation coach, and I had developed a brand new expertise.

Ask yourself, “What am I really, really good at?” and you will quickly find out what your expertise is. Once you realize that you are the expert, the rest is relatively easy…

The Entrepreneur Boot Camp helps small business owners speak with confidence and be perceived as being the Expert in their Industry. The Boot Camp uses techniques and information from Doug Staneart’s book, Mastering Presentations.

Doug Staneart is the CEO of The Leader’s Institute® and creator of the Entrepreneur Boot Camp and The Fearless Presentations® public speaking course. He is based in Dallas, Texas, but the class is taught in cities all over the world.

People Judge Our Competence by the Confidence that We Show When We Stand Up and Speak

People judge our competence by the confidence that we show when we stand up and speak, and the person who can stand up and say what he or she wants to say with poise will always be seen as an expert in their field. The person who can’t will have a hard time convincing the people around him that he’s a leader, though.

Let’s say that, God forbid, you get appendicitis, and you have to get your appendix removed. Prior to the operation, the surgeon enters your room to let you know about the procedure. However, just before he speaks, you see a quiver in his lip, and you notice his hands trembling just a little. As he begins to tell you about the operation, he speaks in choppy sentences and even loses his place for a moment and seems confused. There is a good chance that no matter how much pain that you are in, you will likely be clamoring to get a second opinion immediately. This surgeon may have graduated at the top of his class and may have even written a number of books on the subject, but that initial perception that he is generating is one of insecurity and incompetence. It would be even worse if he rolled in the PowerPoint slideshow so that he wouldn’t forget anything.

The point is that the confidence that a person shows when he or she stands up to speak is often perceived by others to be competence in what he or she does. Stand and speak with poise and confidence about a subject that you know thoroughly, and your audience will always see you as being the expert in that field. In fact, if all other things are equal between two people, the one who speaks well will always be seen as being more competent that one who speaks poorly (or not at all).

Early in my career, I volunteered to speak at local business events in my hometown, and I began to build a reputation for myself as a pretty good speaker. One of the vice-presidents for a big national financial planning firm saw me speak at a couple of events, and he pulled me aside after one of my presentations to discuss a problem that he was having. He told me that his company used local seminars as a way to attract potential new clients to their firm, and he had been looking for a person to lead their seminars.

“All my guys are thoroughly trained in securities, trading, financial planning, and even insurance, but when we invite potential customers to our meetings, we need someone who can really build that trust with the people in the audience,” he explained. “We are one of, if not the, most successful financial planning companies in the world, but we really need someone who can portray that to an audience.” His idea was to hire me on a contract basis and have me “Wow” the audience and build the rapport with them. Then we would let his financial planners follow up with the investors after the presentation.

I understood his thought-process, but his plan would have a tough time succeeding, though. One of the main benefits of being a good presenter is that your words carry a lot of weight with the audience, and if you do a great job, you can really build trust and rapport with the audience. So if I were his speaker (someone outside of his company,) his audiences might like me and even trust me, but when I left the room that trust would evaporate. Especially if immediately after I left, the folks who were having trouble speaking to groups in the first place took over. The tradeoff would have been awkward and clumsy.

What I suggested to him instead was to train his financial planners to present more confidently. Public speaking is just like any other skill and can be learned. In fact it can be learned very quickly and easily if you use a step-by-step process. Once that confidence is gained these presenters have a strategic advantage in the marketplace. It took us about six months, but by the end of the process, each of his financial planners were leading their own seminars and building their client list significantly every single month. The words that they spoke in their seminars and the way that they carried themselves now portrayed their expertise in their industry. Keep in mind that they were always the experts, but before they improved their presentations, the audiences that they spoke to just didn’t see it.

This company’s situation was like having a Lamborghini and keeping it in the garage under a protective cover. They knew what they had, but the world never got to see it. If you have one of the fastest and coolest cars on the planet, then you have to drive it. Once they started “driving,” their revenue and client base increased exponentially.

If you have an expertise that the business world or consumers need, then you have to let the world know about it. Public speaking is one of the fastest and easiest ways to let the world know that you are an expert. (Incidentally, it is often a form of either free publicity or in some of cases, people will actually pay you to do it. Literally—customers will actually pay you to market to them!)

Look for places where your prospective customers gather and volunteer to share your expertise with them. For instance, if you are an insurance agent, offer to speak at the local MLS meeting or Realtor® Association meeting, because if someone buys a new house, they will also need insurance for it. You might let these Realtors® know about trends in insurance rates that might cause a sale to stall or how to help their clients combine policies to save to lower their monthly escrow payment which lowers the amount that the family pays their mortgage each month..

Or if you are a banker, you might volunteer to speak at a local Small Business Association meeting or Small Business Breakfast and teach the attendees how write a business plan that is likely to help them get a small business loan . Or a banker might speak at colleges or universities to help young people avoid falling into the trap of too much debt. Or, this same banker might partner with a financial planner and do a seminar for their clients on how to lower their mortgage payment so that the audience members can invest more in their retirement.

The Presenter Who Speaks with Poise and Confidence Is Always Seen As the Expert

(Picture Owned by The UK Historical Association)

After the German surrender in World War I, The Treaty of Versailles was signed giving a number of German territories to surrounding countries. When Hitler came to power one of his main goals was to reunite the lost cities with the “fatherland”. By August 1939, he has succeeded in reacquiring each of the lost German cities – except for one. The Treaty of Versailles gave the city of Danzig to Poland and allowed the Polish people a land route to the Baltic Sea, so this tiny city was vitally important to the Polish economy. But this last city was also symbolic to the German people, because with Danzig added back into Germany, The Treaty of Versailles was entirely void. So when Hitler requested access to this corridor and Poland refused, war between Poland and Germany was imminent.

In September, Poland turned to Great Britain for help and the two countries signed an Agreement of Mutual Assistance. So if Germany tried to take Danzig, Great Britain and her ally France would likely go to war with Germany. Although the agreement with England gave Hitler pause, the goal to reunite the fallen Germany was too tempting, and Germany and their new ally, The Soviet Union, invaded.

As the new Head of State for England, the announcement that Great Britain would again be going to war with Germany fell on the shoulders of King George VI, but King George had a big problem. King George suffered from a chronic stammer making simple words almost impossible to pronounce. He had particular trouble with the letter “K” (which had the potential for great embarrassment for a “K”ing). Prior to the speech, he had spent years working with a speech therapist, Lionel Logue, who helped him reduce this stammer but, King George was on the verge of his biggest, most important speech in his life. The pressure was mounting.

On September 3rd, 1939, King George VI had to address his subjects to inform them that “for the second time in the lives of most of us, we are at war.” For a little under six minutes, the King spoke without stutter and without stammer. His poise and confidence was an inspiration to the British people. For literally the first time in his young reign, England saw King George as a real leader and a powerful statesman.

The British people needed a calming voice to relieve their fear of the imminent war “that would not be on the battlefield, but on their doorsteps.” What would have happened if King George had addressed the people with the hesitation and the nervousness that had been a part of him most of his life? This one successful presentation changed King George and changed the future of Europe.

THE PERSON WHO SPEAKS WITH CONFIDENCE IS ALWAYS SEEN AS THE EXPERT

Ways to Add Impact to Presentations

People often have to give presentations in the work place, so why is it that some presentations are very memorable and others are not? Do some people just have better presentation skills than others? Not necessarily. There are a number of things you can do to add impact to presentations, which will surely leave a lasting impression with an audience.

One of the best ways to make presentations memorable is to incorporate stories and examples. People have been communicating through stories and examples for centuries. Just go to a cafe and watch a group of people having a great time. Chances are, one person told a story, which led to someone else to think of a similar instance, and the same for everyone else in the group. In this way, stories help bring a group together by connecting through common experiences. As a presenter, telling a story will bring you closer to your audience.

Another great way to make presentations have that “wow” factor is to add analogies. Analogies are especially useful in technical presentations. Why? Let’s say you’re attempting to explain a concept that you know may be difficult for your audience to understand. By comparing the concept to something completely unrelated, it can significantly clarify the point. The best thing to do is to first explain the concept in your industry, and then use the analogy to help explain the point. That way the analogy is more meaningful when you utilize it.

These are just a couple of ways to add impact to presentations. Not only does the Fearless Presentations® class go over these and many other ways to add impact, it also allows each participant to practice delivering presentations with these impact ideas in a supportive environment in front of other people. Just check our schedule of classes for the one nearest you!

Chris McNeany is a Vice President and Instructor for the Fearless Presentations® public speaking course. He is based in Los Angeles, California, but he teaches classes in San Diego, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Seattle as well.

If you like this Public Speaking Tip, Check Out More Below:

PowerPoint Presentation Tips and Presentation Skills Training http://www.leadersinstitute.com PowerPoint Presentation Tips and training to create good a PowerPoint outline. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.
Top 5 Myths about Public Speaking Fear The Top Five (5) Biggest Myths about Public Speaking Fear and Stage Fright By Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader's Institute(R) It's time to set the record straight. ANYONE can be a fantastic, world-class speaker with a little bit of training, a little bi...
Reduce the Data on Your PowerPoint Slides-Video PowerPoint Tip Reduce the Data on Your PowerPoint Slides-Video PowerPoint Tip Too Much Data on Your PowerPoint Slides: Your PowerPoint slide deck should be a visual aid to help you explain your point, so if you put too much data on a slide (too much text, too many numbers, or charts and graphs – gasp – Is
VIDEO-Reduce Public Speaking Risk and Reduce Public Speaking Fear Public Speaking Video: Reduce Public Speaking Risk and Reduce Public Speaking Fear. The fear of public speaking basically comes from an increased risk of failure. The bigger the risk, the bigger the fear. So if you lower the risk associated with public speaking — in essence insure that you have a success when you stand
Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact- Part One- Touch Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact Communication has changed. My dad grew up listening to radio. The family would gather around and sit attentively as the radio broadcast news, variety shows, and serials. I grew up with televisio...

How to Engage Your Audience From the Very Start in Presentations

Quick Presentation Skills Tip

We all want to deliver presentations that will engage our audience from the moment a presentation begins, but there’s something you can do to capture your audience’s attention before the presentation even starts.

Have a great title.

The key to a great title is to include the result of the presentation in the title. For example, a title such as “2011 Financials” is not so great because for one thing, it’s not very interesting, and secondly, we don’t know what the result was. A title such as, “2011 Was a Year of Growth in X Industry and a Year of Challenge in Y Industry” is better for two reasons: it’s more interesting and gives the audience a clear idea of what the outcome was in 2011. In most cases, it’s better to give the result at the beginning so that the audience knows exactly where the presentation is going. It will make the presentation more memorable in the long run.

For more public speaking tips or for information about the Fearless Presentations ® public speaking class, click either of these links.

If you like this Public Speaking Tip, Check Out More Below:

Public Speaking Fear Leads to Missed Opportunities

Once you overcome the fear of public speaking, you’ll be amazed at how you capitalize on opportunities that you previously missed. If you experience stage fright or public speaking fear, then there is a good chance that you are missing opportunities. …
Get off the Short List: Winning Bid Presentations By: Doug Staneart
In past decades, the contractor who had the lowest bid typically got the job. And while low bids are still critical, today that same contractor is likely to be placed on a “Short List” where the contractor will have to sell himself an…
Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact- Part Six- Synergy Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact- Part Six- Synergy
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Here is a lesson we need to take to just about every part of our lives, including our presentations. Too often we prepare just wa…
Presentation Tips: How to Show Less Public Speaking Fear http://www.leadersinstitute.com Presentation tips to help reduce public speaking fear and design a good business presentation. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.
PowerPoint Presentation Tips and Presentation Skills Training http://www.leadersinstitute.com PowerPoint Presentation Tips and training to create good a PowerPoint outline. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

June through August Public Speaking Class Schedule

Upcoming Public Speaking Classes

Below is a list of the upcoming Fearless Presentations ® presentation skills courses in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Fearless Presentations ® is a 2-Day public speaking course that is held in select cities all over the world, so if you don’t see your city below, just visit the seminar schedule webpage for all classes and an interactive map where you can access upcoming workshops by city.

If you want to reduce public speaking fear or develop presentation skills, there is no better way than with Fearless Presentations ®. In two-days, our certified instructors can help you get rid of the butterflies, think more clearly when you stand to speak, and deliver confident, professional presentations with a whole lot less preparation time. Participants receive all manuals and training materials, one-on-one presentation coaching from their instructor, and video taped feedback so they can easily see their progress as the class progresses.

Click any of the Links Below for Details about a Class or Seminar

Not sure yet or have questions? Complete the form below, and an instructor will contact you.

Presentation Skills Checklist

When folks go through our presentation skills classes, they are often surprised at how simple we make designing and delivering fairly complex presentations. In fact, one of the things that we cover in the Fearless Presentations class is how to design an entire presentation, from start to finish, complete with a slide deck in fifteen minutes or less. Class members are often shocked at how fast they can design presentations that would have typically taken hours (or weeks) to complete. Below is a simple checklist that you can use when you design PowerPoint presentations in order to speed up the preparation time and reduce your fear of public speaking.

Presentation Skills Checklist

Step One: Start with the Presentation (what you want to say) and finish with the slideshow. Most people start with the visual aids and, eventually, realize they have too many slides or too many points and start cutting content. So they end up with a Swiss-Cheese presentation. Start with the presentation first, then choose slides that help you better explain the content.
Step Two: Choose a Compelling Topic (Title). Pretend that you are an audience member, and ask yourself what you’d what to hear about related to the topic. This is more difficult than you might think, because, since we know so much about the topic, we tend to want to tell the audience EVERYTHING that we know. However, that is not practical, so you have to give the audience only what they need, right now. For instance, if you are giving a financial report to the board, they are going to want to know about profit, but if you are giving a report to the sales team, they will be more interested in revenue compared to prior years. think of your audience when you choose your topic.
Step Three: Choose three to five key points to expand upon. Literally… three, four, or five points… TOTAL. Thinking about your topic, choose your key points by determining what are the three to five most important concepts related to the topic that the audience needs to know about. If you cover more points, the audience won’t remember them anyway, so focus on the most important points.
Step Four: Insert Proof for each Point. Insert a few stories, examples, facts, analogies, demonstrations, or samples that prove that your key point is true. If you prove each point along the way, then the group will very easily agree with your conclusion at the end of the presentation.
Step Five: Now Create Your Slides: Once you have the speech designed, now go back and choose visual aids to better explain your content.

Follow this checklist, and you will be able to create any presentation very quickly.