Presentation skills are highly important in today's business world. Salesmen, marketers, entrepreneurs, those seeking non-profit funding, and many others rely on good presentation skills for their job success.
What follows are the top ten tips for giving effective presentations.
1) Keep people immersed in what you're doing. Everyone learns best from and is most stimulated by active participation rather than just observing or having something shown to them — especially in our fast-paced culture dominated by tiny attention spans. So find ways of making people take part in your presentations so that they remain attentive and feel compelled by what you're saying and showing. If you are giving a presentation on plants, give out free seed packets of people's choice, or give everyone a cut rose.
2) Give some dynamics to the visual aspects of your presentation. PowerPoint is excellent for this, as is the use of video. Don't just show still photographs or images; people tend to not pay close enough attention to them.
3) Turn up the music! You should have some background music playing as you present. People respond to music, even if they don't always realize that they are doing so. Choose music that fits the mood and topic of your presentation. If you're giving a presentation on plush carpeting, you might play some Beethoven. A presentation on using free market solutions to address environmental problems might call for some rock 'n' roll (not too loud, though).
4) Give your audience a quiz on the key points of what they learned. You should make it clear that this is going to be done at the outset of your presentation, and you'll need to offer some kind of reward for those who get every question right. If you have door prizes for audience members, they'll be much more apt to take notes and pay attention. (Yes, most adults are still just like school children at heart.)
6) Dress for success. You should wear clothing that makes you immediately stand out as both authoritative and in tune with what you are going to be presenting about. If you're doing a presentation about life insurance, you can wear a two- or three-piece suit with a “power” tie, but if you're presenting about outdoor gear, you should dress for that, too: wear khakis, nice hiking shoes, perhaps a nice-looking flannel shirt with a jacket.
7) Have a great display set up. When your audience enters the room, they should see a well-organized, eye-pleasing display of your products or services which will serve as your backdrop. You can then interact with this display, making yourself more dynamic. Pull things that you are talking about out of their place, hold them up, show them around, then put them back. This keeps people's eyes moving, and it also helps them to visualize themselves in your place, using the items you're presenting about.
8) Serve refreshments! Now, of course, this is another one of those things that you don't want to overdo — this isn't a feast or a party. But if you have free sodas in a cooler or something else unobtrusive like that, people will be kept attentive and they will feel more closely connected to and appreciative of you.
9) Make it personal. Tell personal stories about your life that can be related to the product or service you are presenting about. People love a good story, and they hate someone who seems to be talking down to them. Personal stories make you seem real, and they make other people begin to try and recall personal stories that relate to you, which keeps them stimulated and interested.
10) Have a question-and-answer period, as if you're the press secretary to the President taking questions from a room full of journalists. Also, make it clear that you'll have this session toward the very end of your presentation; this stops the audience from interrupting your flow, and it keeps them more alert so they can get their questions answered later on.
This is just a brief list of useful presentation skills tips, but if you practice presenting, you can easily put these presentation skills to use in your own work.
