reco (it’s our version of a quick tip): Besides practicing making perfect, you should focus on delivering three key points that you’re wanting your audience to leave with.
Presenting is a tough skill to hone but one that can really help you accelerate your career. When opportunities present themself for you to present yourself, take them. A solid presentation in front of senior leaders makes you memorable and can open doors when the time arises. Being a good presenter will also allow you to communicate better to a wider audience and build a positive internal brand for yourself. The components that make for a good presentation vary from case to case, but overall here are some areas to keep in mind when improving your own presentation skills:
- Purpose
- Utility
- Polish
Purpose
As the saying goes “tell them what they’re going to say, say it, tell them what you just said”. It really can be that simple, but you can be more granular when you’re planning. Ask yourself :
- “what’s the objective of this presentation?”
- “what are the three key points that support my objective?”
- “what do I want my audience to leave with?”
Your speaker notes and your slides should keep this objective in mind so that they’re always aligned. Talking points that are built to support your objective will help drive the point home and will make sure that there is no confusion as to what you’re saying.
You don’t have to have your purpose written out on one of your slides, but you should consider writing it down for yourself to keep you focused.
Utility
To make sure that your purpose sticks, make sure that you’re taking into consideration the make-up of your audience. If you’re presenting to a sales team then your purpose should be framed in a way that best helps them sell better or adds value to their day-to-day. Likewise, if you’re presenting to a room of engineers then using corporate acronyms that they’re not used to is not helpful. You want to make sure that the information that’s being shared is relevant and in the audience’s language. Some easy ways to make sure that your audience gets the utility you want them to is to provide:
- key tips or strategies for their work
- relevant industry data and/or studies
- resources to check out afterward
Providing some form of utility within your presentation will make sure that your audience stays attentive.
Keep in mind that you don’t want to overwhelm your audience with too many facts or slides. Give them enough value so that you keep them engaged throughout your presentation.
Polish
We were trying to avoid saying it, but practice does in fact make perfect! And to be a great presenter you’re going to have to practice often. An easy to say, harder to do tip here is simply record yourself presenting and watch yourself and take notes of things you want to improve on, then do it again. Along with practicing you’ll want to look the part. When presentation day comes it helps to dress up a bit more than you usually would just so your audience takes you that much more seriously. Finally, to summarize a great presentation you’ll want to finish with a call-to-action that supports your purpose. This could be following up with you to discuss matters more in-depth or filling out a feedback form, whatever it is you’ll know how impactful your presentation was based on how many people follow through on your CTA.
Audience engagement is crucial to a good presentation. Sometimes you can accomplish this by having questions prepared for the audience or setting up polls to get their input.
Check out the resources below for more links on how to negotiate your job offer:
- Article — 6 Key Elements of a Great Presentation (Inc)
- Article — 10 Ways To Improve Your Presentation Skills (Forbes)
- Video — The magical science of storytelling (TEDxStockholm)
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