Presentation Training Boosts Confidence!
Are you a manager, salesperson, business owner or public speaker who gives business presentations as a regular part of your career? Maybe this is a skill you are looking to develop. Either way you will want to read on and discover some of the best ways to add impact to your presentations.
Simple changes can lead to big results. With some focused presentation training you will see a more engaged audience, focused energy and momentum, and better results on the back end.
Keep Your Audience Engaged
This simple tip alone can add lots of energy and impact to your presentation and ironically you don’t have to do more. You need to do less! For a more high energy, high impact business presentation, consider shortening the length of your presentation. I highly recommend that you watch a few presentations from TED which are limited to 20 minutes each regardless of the content. Everyone from Al Gore to Bill Gates has presented and “wowed” audiences in just 20 minutes.
Take a cue from presentation expert Garr Reynolds and learn from the Japanese art of presenting. Less is More. Sometimes we feel pressure to have crowded slides packed with information and long presentations jammed with detail after detail. More information does not equal a more effective business presentations.
Keep your presentations to 20-30 minutes. You will hold your audiences attention better and it will require you to remove non-critical words or sections.
Like a great movie or song, when you are forced to say only the most important things, you end up with a high impact, highly effective presentation that lasts 30 minutes. Meanwhile your full hour long monologue would have killed the room and drained the energy. Momentum is everything so keep it moving forward! I promise that it will show up in your results.
Improve Your Slide Design
In your presentation training be sure to include learning more about Powerpoint and Keynote slide design. You do not have to be a design expert, but educating yourself is important to your success. Your slides will impact your presentation and can enhance or detract from your results.
It doesn’t matter if you are leading a business meeting, sales presentation, sales training, marketing video or if you are a professional public speaker, your slides can move and inspire people into action, or bore and confuse your audience.
Each slide should focus on just one point. Limit yourself to 6 words or one large picture (or graph) with few or no words at all. The picture ideally should be expanded to fill the page. So that ultimately your slide will look like a billboard, rather than a newspaper article. Your slides will then become a support for your message, helping you further it along, but never distracting for you or your core message.
Memorize Your Presentation
Lastly, be sure that your notes or cue cards are not taking over you, or your presentation. Know your material well so that you can relax and focus on conveying your message and connecting with your audience. Never read your slides, or stand fumbling with notes. That is a sure fire way to appear nervous and novice. We will be sharing more information on the best way to quickly memorize material in upcoming articles and programs.
Presentation Training does not need to be complicated or overwhelming. Small changes will make a huge impact on how you connect with your audience, how you inspire them into action, and how confident you feel.
The next time your stand before a group of your peers, or an audience of strangers, apply these presentation training tips and rule the room!
Action Steps:
• Time your presentation.
• Keep under 30 minutes.
• Remove non essential content.
• Review and reduce slide content.
• Know your material.
• Look like a pro!
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