Effective Presentation Skills are rapidly becoming one of THE key factors in the business world. However, there are still many people who are unable to deliver compelling presentations.
With that in mind, I decided to create a set of tips that might help you to develop effective presentation skills.
Here are my Top 5 Tips to help you give a great presentation. In order to develop effective presentation skills you should...
1) Know you subject. Sounds obvious, but stay with me. Everyone in your department may know the subject as well as you, but that doesn't stop you from finding a unique spin on your presentation. Instead of giving dull, emotionless statistics why not try finding a vivid, imaged-filled comparison? For instance, instead of telling your listeners the distance between Washington and Sydney you could tell them how many pick-up trucks would have to stretch end to end to cover that distance.
Also, what point are making with your presentation? The bad way to do a presentation is to talk continuously at length showing your listeners slide upon slide of text until your time is up.
Get clear on what message you want to convey to your listeners. Then everything that you say and show them is connected to your main message, if it's not then it should be edited out!
And please - try not to clutter up your slides with text. Have clear, succinct bullet points that pinpoint what it is you want to present. Then tell them the rest verbally. You should be expanding upon the ideas in your bullet points and delivering them with all of your natural charm and not just mindlessly reading your points off the screen.
2) Structuring. Just like a good book or movie, your presentation needs a beginning, a middle and an end.
Try your best to provide your listeners with new information or put a new interpretation on existing facts. Remember, what you want to give them is great content not empty spin!
3) Relevancy. Keep asking yourself "is this relevant to my main message?" If it isn't then trash it and find something that is. I've been in the audience listening to a presenter and I found myself thinking: "how is this relevant to me?" And I never found out. I never found out because it wasn't relevant to me.
4) Enthusiasm. Try to let your enthusiasm for your subject come through without being too over-the-top and evangelical. If you're not passionate and enthused by your topic why should your listeners be?
5) Practice, practice, practice! You can't hope to develop effective presentation skills if you don't go over what you're going to say before-hand.
In order to "nail it" and win over your listeners you need to know the presentation inside-out. Make sure you know how your equipment works and what to do if there are any technical problems. Don't just rely on the temporary worker who may or may not be able to help you out.
If you can implement these techniques then you will be well on your way to developing effective communication skills!
