While you are presenting before your audience, it is crucial to prepare before that. Well, advance preparation will help you in making an impressive presentation. Essentially, there are two parts, one is preparation, and the second is presentation. It is said that a winning effort begins with preparation.
How to Prepare – Tips for Impressive Preparation
1. Identify the Objective: Why you are presenting? Figure out the objective of your presentation before you draft your PPT. For example, whether the session is going to be just informative, or you need to showcase your performance, or maybe it’s just an educational/academic presentation, or you need to exhibit financial involving number crunching, or it is for generating the sale, or it is for fundraising, or it could be for any other purpose.
2. Know your audience: Before you start preparing, know who will be your audience. Be it your Clients, Internal, Juniors, Seniors, Team, Public, etc., prepare accordingly.
3. Structure your presentation: Right structure of the presentation will help you in achieving the objective. Ideally, the flow of the presentation should be the introduction, overview, the main body, followed by the summary.
The introduction provides detailing of the purpose and the structure of the talk. The overview is essential to set the context. The main body needs to be structured appropriately to fulfil the purpose. Now, it’s time to summarise the presentation. It helps in the consolidation of ideas and the details for the takeaway. At last, it’s time for the question & answer session. Again, it is necessary to prepare beforehand for the questions your audience may ask.
4. Content: The content on each slide of the PPT has to be crisp and concise. Ensure that you will narrate one story at a time. Don’t add too much in just one slide. Generally, not more than one minute should be devoted to each slide of the PPT.
5. Add creativity: To make your presentation effective, make it visually appealing. For example, add images, charts, videos, music, etc., to your presentation. It helps in expressing your thoughts and ideas swiftly and exhilaratingly.
6. Be Prepared: Prepare well before you start presenting. The more you practice, the more confident you will be. Prepare the checklist alongside to ensure nothing will be missed at the time of the presentation. Make apt use of the tools available.
“It takes one hour of preparation for each minute of presentation.” – Wayne Burgraff.
How to Present – Tips for Impressive Presentation
Once you have prepared your content, make sure it should be appropriately presented. Here are some tips for you to make you stellar in your presentation:
1. Body Language: Various postures of the body give different messages. Body language conveys what we can’t express in words. Eye contact, voice, positive gestures, hand movements, postures, dressing, etc., have a crucial role to play.
2. Virtual Meetings: Body language won’t be visible in virtual meetings, but eye contact, facial expressions, posture, and vocal pitch matter greatly.
3. Don’t read off the slides: An old axiom for actors is not to turn their backs to their audience; reading directly from the slides is the presentation equivalent. Give something more than what is written on the PPT slides. Your audience can also read the slides verbatim.
4. Communication: Whatever language you use to communicate, you should be confident. Make it enjoyable to ensure that your audience is engaged throughout your presentation. At the same time, be careful in cracking jokes. It can be antagonistic towards you. Remember, don’t be too casual.
5. Call to Action: While you present, ask these questions to yourself. What are the key things you want your audience to come away with? What do you want your audience to do with what they have learned?
Best of luck for your impressive presentation!
