Effective Presentations How To Develop And Deliver A: Fill & Download for Free

I have to give many presentations in my line of work and I always am terrified of putting people to sleep. Therefore, I have worked on my presentations skills. Here are some tips.1) Remember that presentations are an impression medium -- the more you make people FEEL the more they will remember2) No matter what you do, people may only remember 1 - 3 points from your preso. Make sure you know what those three points are going to be and focus around them. Ask yourself -- if I want someone to remember just one thing from my preso, what is it.3) No slide or section should have more than 3 bullets4) Before I start, when I am introducing myself, I tell them that I am terrified of public speaking and that I hope they will forgive me if I stutter a little from time to time -- I cannot tell you the number of times people have come up to me later and told me how great the speech was -- and it made them remember more. No one wants to be up there, so they can relate to your fear. Remember -- you're trying to make them FEEL.5) Move around - keep their attention on you while you move and you will keep them awake6) Use your hands like a magician. It's not flailing around with your hands, but practice fluid hand and arm motions choreographed with the slides. You will be amazed how the combination of movement with the material keeps people's attention7) Modulate your voice. You really need to practice what you are going to say and say it like it's important. You can never, ever drone, or use the same pitch -- you want to sound enthusiastic.8) Don't read the slides -- the info is there to remind YOU to fill in the blank spaces with interesting anecdotes and meta-data that captures the attention of the audience. Keep those stories coming.9) Remember the adage -- Be Brief, Be Brilliant, Be Gone - less is always more.10) When you are setting up the preso, tell them what you are going to tell them in the intro, tell them during the body, then tell them what you told them in the conclusion. Three things told three times.11) Remember that your preso should lay out the facts, tell them what the facts mean, and then tell them what to do about the facts12) Never forget that even if you haven't convinced the audience that disbelief of the data is not necessarily criticism of YOU. Do not become so identified with the data or the conclusion that you become hurt or blind to other points of view. Accept what people say and follow up on it.13) Never be afraid to look stupid -- in fact, do something stupid to get over yourself (or at least consider it). It's not about YOU up there -- it's about the data. If it takes you making a fool of yourself to get them to remember the important point of your preso, is it worth it to do that? Is it?14) Don't forget to breathe, laugh or take a drink of water, especially if you need to think for a minute.There's more, but this is all I can think of at the moment and I hope it helps.

Over the last 11 years of my career, I've delivered over 1,000 Powerpoint presentations.This includes sales presentations, training seminars, webinars, meetups, customer events and internal meetings.The audience size ranged from 1 person to over 300 people.When I graduated from an intensive Cisco 1 year training program with around 200 graduates, I was considered to be one of the top 3 presenters in the entire class.Here are my top 10 tips for delivering an amazing PowerPoint presentation:Tell a story - Many years ago, I saw the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company present. He talked about the vision of the company, discussed the previous year’s financials and also highlighted our product strategy. It was a fine presentation. And then something amazing happened. He told a story of how he traveled to Asia after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. This is the same earthquake that left about 4.8 million people homeless. He showed photos of the families he had met and told us that it was our job to help them through our culture of giving back and with our technology. It was incredibly moving. I remember looking around and seeing people in tears. At that very moment, we were a group with a strong sense of collective purpose. We were unified. We were inspired. That’s the power of a great story.Memorize your presentation - If you have notecards in your hand while giving a presentation, you need to toss those. Now. Seriously, throw them as far as you can and run away. You need to learn to memorize your presentation. One of the best ways to learn this skill? Take a theater class. Learning to memorize acting lines is very similar to memorizing a presentation. If you can’t memorize an entire presentation, you can lean on the slides to help you jog your memory, but do not read off the slide. That’s a recipe for boredom. Don’t take the easy way out. Challenge yourself and rise to the occasion.More visuals, less words - Seriously folks, take a look at the world around you. We live in a world where people are visually driven. Don’t believe me? Check out this fact: Instagram has over 500 million monthly active users. I’m pretty sure you believe me now. So make sure you use visuals to help convey your message. For example, if I told you a story about my best friend who nearly died and now inspires me to live life to the fullest, wouldn’t that story have more of an emotional impact on you if you actually saw his photo? Thought so. Visuals helps make a personal connection.Use huge font - Have you ever seen a slide before with a million words on it?I bet you’re nodding your head right now. Did you ever enjoy watching someone talk through all those bullet points? I bet you’re shaking your head now. Here’s how you can avoid that mistake: Start with font size 40. I’m dead serious. This will force you to be concise. Want to know where I got this idea from? Guy Kawasaki. He was Apple’s Chief Evangelist for 4 years. He’s one of the best presenters I’ve seen. Learn from the best. Go big.Strong eye contact - Don’t stare at people. That’s just creepy. Do hold strong eye contact for a few seconds. It shows that you’re engaging the audience.The audience is your friend - So engage them like they’re your friends. Bring out your charisma. Get them to laugh. Inspire them. Motivate them. Excite them. Want to know an easy way to do this? Ask them questions. Get them involved! I do this all the time at executive dinners that I host. Guess what happens? Usually the audience provides answers that are hilarious and it can completely change the mood of the room for the better. Is it a little bit risky? Sure, because you never know what someone will say. But most of the time, it turns out really well. Don’t be afraid of the unknown.Own the room - When I was in the Cisco training program, one of the things we would practice is “owning the room.” As we practiced our presentations, we would walk around to different parts of the room. I’m not telling you to pace around like a mad man. I’m asking you to explore the room. Find out what feels natural to you. And then take your strides in confidence. Own it.Gesture with intention - Don’t wave your arms around like an air traffic controller. Do gesture with intention when you’re emphasizing a point.Hands by your side - Because if you’re simply holding your hands together the whole time in a triangle, you’ll look like Monty Burns.10. And most importantly, have fun - Because life’s too short for boring presentations. And you want to know a secret? A presentation isn’t just about presenting the numbers. A presentation isn’t just about giving an operations update. A presentation isn’t just about customer satisfaction ratings. A presentation is a chance for you to make a difference in someone’s life.What are you waiting for?It’s time for you to deliver the best presentation of your life. Go out there and make it happen!Did these presentation helps? I’d love to hear from you if it did!Follow me on Facebook and send me a note!Want more tips on professional development?Subscribe to my site to get more writing like this: www.ceolifestyle.io

A PowerPoint presentation is a story, so it should have the structure of a story. Let's walk through that.WHY AM I TELLING THE STORY?One of the most common mistakes in presenting is not knowing why one is presenting. Walking into a room and just spouting off a bunch of stuff that one knows is not a good presentation. The presentation has to address needs. It has to address WIIFM (What's in it for me?). Write down the following two questions and answers for them, before making the first slide:What do I want to accomplish for me?What does the audience want or need?The presentation will be built to fulfill the answers to those two questions. Am I seeking funding? Am I seeking permission? Does the audience seek understanding? Is there something they need to know to make a decision? Am I trying to inform, persuade, or both?CHOOSE THE STORY ARCHETYPEWhat is the archetypical story you will follow? Are you detecting changes in the environment that you want the audience to prepare for (Gathering Storm)? Are you describing how a product or situation has evolved and will evolve? (Evolution)? Do you see yourself and the audience at a crossroads where a decision needs to be made and you are describing the options? (Crossroads)?Identifying this theme and sticking to it is important. If you don't, there can be a tendency to bounce around during the presentation, changing the nature of the story and confusing the audience.WHAT IS THE BEGINNING? WHAT IS THE END?Every story begins with an incident. Something has happened that initiates the story. What is that incident, for your story? It can be an actual event that happened (e.g. sales were down last quarter) or it can be a question (e.g. What if [X] happened?)Every story needs a satisfying ending. If the beginning was an event, the ending might be the result. If the beginning was a question, the ending might be the answer. The ending should reflect the beginning.The middle is where we tell the story that leads the audience from beginning to end.Now that we know why we are doing this and where we are starting and where we are ending, we can talk about structure.STRUCTUREAs far back as Aristotle, it has been known that the three act structure is an effective and efficient way to tell a story.Every day, many of us watch television and movies or read books that follow this structure. The stage is set in Act 1. All of the players are put in place and the inciting incident occurs. We know everything will be resolved in Act 3. We might even feel confident we can guess what the resolution will be (the two people will marry, the bad guy will be punished, the treasure will be found). It is Act 2 we care about - the developments that get us from beginning to end.This works so well in a presentation, because it aligns with our goals. As we deliver a presentation, we want to engage the audience with our setup, we want to help them understand something with our development, and then at the end we want them to respond to our conclusion.HOW MUCH TO INCLUDEIt is easy to overwhelm an audience with information. A good presentation sticks to the essentials needed to tell the story. Aristotle's Rule of Three and Miller's magic number seven tell us to keep it simple. We can't always follow the rule of three, but aiming for it will improve the presentation.Sketch a diagram like the one above and fill in all of the boxes. Use that to outline your presentation.How do you plan on getting the audience's attention and how will you motivate them to maintain that attention? If you don't complete those two items, at the beginning of your presentation, then the presentation will be a waste of time.What are the three ideas, key points, or assertions you want to make? For each of those, what are the three best pieces of evidence you can provide?At the end, how will you regain their attention and remotivate them? What resolution do you want them to leave the room with? What action do you want them to take?ORGANIZATIONNow that we know what we want to say, we pick an organization.CHRONOLOGICALIf we are telling a story about events that happened over time, chronological is an applicable organization. We talk about event one and then event two and then event three. We will be sure to include transitions between each event to explain how one led to the other.TOPICALSometimes time doesn't play a role in our story. We may just want to talk about a series of topics. For example, maybe our presentation is about the components of a home theater system and our topics might be the screen, the sound system, and the seating.CAUSE AND EFFECTSometimes we want to talk about how something happened. For example, if we are presenting about an airplane crash, we would talk about each contributing cause, in sequence, showing the failure chain that led to the end result.PROBLEM SOLUTIONSometimes we want to get the audience to make a choice and the best way to present the story is through describing the pros and cons for each choice option.DEFINING ROLESThe last, but not least, thing is to look at your outline and identify roles for both the speaker and audience. Presentations are more effective if the audience is involved. It keeps their attention and motivation high and allows them to feel like a contributor. Find places to ask them questions. Find places to encourage them to ask you questions.