How To Deliver A Business Presentation

Delivering a business presentation is an event that most people find utterly terrifying. A business presentation, however, is just another business skill, combining specific technical aspects with behavioural practise.

There are three distinct components to making an effective presentation:

- Designing a high-powered presentation
- Using PowerPoint properly to support your presentation
- Delivering your presentation effectively

This article, the third of three, will outline how to deliver a business presentation effectively, supported by PowerPoint. It will identify a number of elements which require focus and practise, as well as serious pitfalls to avoid.

Preparation

If you have followed the ideas and suggestions presented in the two companion articles, then you will have developed a business presentation that:

- addresses the strategic interests of your audience
- highlights the salient points
- provides only the most important information
- delivers a compelling argument
- is supported properly by PowerPoint slides
- provides documentation for the participants

You now are ready to organize the delivery of your business presentation. Remember that You are the presentation and that throughout the presentation you need to command the audience’s attention and lead their thinking.

Your Objective

The objective of your business presentation is to engage your audience to support and endorse the resource requirements needed to achieve your business priorities.

In order to accomplish this goal, you must “connect” with the audience. You want to demonstrate that you are the expert of your business portfolio and one way of establishing such credibility is to project ease, comfort and control.

There are two distinct approaches to a presentation. Some people prefer to write out the entire presentation and then deliver it as a speech. Others prefer to identify just the key points. You will need to practise your delivery in order to discover your preferred approach, while also calibrating the presentation’s timing.

Practise

You need to practise, practise, practise. Think of athletes and musicians. They spend many hundreds of hours, perhaps even thousands, honing their skills. In particular, they focus on their weaknesses, striving to transform them into areas of excellence.

Because many of us don’t feel competent and, therefore, aren’t comfortable in delivering a business presentation, we tend to avoid practising it. Intuitively, though, we know that practise will help us become better skilled and, with that, more at ease.

Start by practising alone.

- Time your presentation and make the necessary adjustments.

- Become intimately familiar with the content and details of your presentation.

- Listen to your voice, tone, pitch, and cadence.

- Practise in front of a mirror. If possible, record your presentation.

When you feel reasonably prepared with delivering your business presentation, seek out a confidant who you trust and respect, and have her/him critique your presentation delivery.

Er, Um and Ah

We often encounter business presentations which are peppered with “Ers, Ums and Ahs”. These act as huge distractions for the audience and undermine the presentation. Why does this occur?

If one hasn’t practised a business presentation sufficiently, then in the moment of delivery the mind races to organize thoughts and phrases. The “Ers, Ums and Ahs” serve as brief reprieves to enable our mental processing.

This counter-productive behaviour can be eliminated by:

- Recognizing your current delivery patterns.

- Identifying your preferred delivery style and consciously modelling it.

- Slowing down the delivery of your presentation, coming to a full stop on occasion and silently pausing.

- Practising you business presentation thoroughly and repeatedly.


Contingencies

Spend some time considering what could de-rail your presentation and how you might respond in real time. Some situations might be:

- Questions interrupting the presentation.

- Someone talking on their cell-phone.

- People whispering.

- Losing the audience’s attention.

If you can pre-determine how you might handle these types of situations, you will be able to respond and maintain control of your business presentation. It also is totally appropriate to establish conditions at the outset of your presentation (asking the audience to turn off their cell-phones, for example, or requesting that questions be held until the end).

Delivery Tips

There are a number of techniques in delivering a business presentation that warrant your consideration and deliberate action. With sufficient practise, these will become familiar and automatic.

- Make direct eye contact with as many of your audience, as possible. Do not face the screen, because that cuts off the connection you desire.

- Modulate your voice and inflection for variety. Avoid monotone delivery.

- Talk at an even pace, but provide some variation. Do not talk so fast that the audience can’t process your message.

- Pause, on occasion, for effect. This is not a speed contest.

- Speak loud enough for all to hear you. Use softer and louder volumes for emphasis. Do not speak in a quiet voice.

- Breathe easily to relieve your stress.

- Time your presentation through practices sessions. Never “wing” a presentation.

- Project authenticity and commitment by embodying high comfort and enthusiasm. Avoid projecting doubt or uncertainty.

- Read the body language of the audience and condense your presentation if you’re starting to lose them.

- Use body language to maximize the impact of your delivery.

Presentation Mastery

Although you still may feel somewhat terrified about delivering a business presentation, this article provides the elements for alleviating that feeling.

Through being properly organized, repeatedly practising your presentation and actively seeking out presentation opportunities, you can learn to master business presentations. As a leader, you must confront that which you fear the most.

Conclusion

By combining these ideas about how to deliver a business presentation effectively with suggestions from the companion articles on how to design a high-powered presentation and how to use PowerPoint properly, you will become much more competent and confident in delivering high-powered and effective business presentations.

Diamond Management Institute develops high-performance organizations through

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off

How To Use Powerpoint To Support A Business Presentation

Delivering a business presentation is an event that most people find utterly terrifying. A business presentation, however, is just another business skill, combining specific technical aspects with behavioural practise.

There are three distinct components to making an effective presentation:

- Designing a high-powered presentation

- Using PowerPoint properly to support your presentation

- Delivering the presentation effectively

This article, the second of three, will outline how to use PowerPoint properly to support a business presentation. It will identify two distinct kinds of situations in which PowerPoint might be utilized and when it’s most appropriate to use each.

Presentation Platform

PowerPoint is an excellent platform to use in developing a business presentation. It is visually appealing and is relatively easy to create. In many ways, PowerPoint has become the accepted business presentation platform. But over time, something has gone wrong with the manner in which PowerPoint is used.

Unfortunately, PowerPoint’s proper usage has become confused, because two very different purposes have gotten fused together. What follows will challenge the cultural norms of many organizations and may seem misplaced at first review. The assertion, here, is that the presentation needs to be grounded and focused on You, the presenter, and not on PowerPoint. PowerPoint is but an aid to support your presentation.

Reports In PowerPoint

A report that has been developed in Word readily can be transposed into PowerPoint. The advantage of using PowerPoint is that graphs, charts and other visuals are easily incorporated into the presentation. PowerPoint can provide a crisp and yet detailed representation of the original report in a different format.

In this situation, the PowerPoint Report can serve as an excellent foundation for a voice-over webinar or it can be distributed as a stand-alone document. It also can serve as a comprehensive take-away from a business presentation.

A PowerPoint Report also may be used effectively as a reference document when presenting a business case to a small group. In such circumstances, a hard copy, not slides, should form the back-bone of the business presentation.

The History Of The Universe

Let’s say that someone has been tasked with making a presentation on “The History Of The Universe”. Compiled as a PowerPoint Report, it likely would be quite extensive, with charts, graphs and other representations augmenting and clarifying the text.

Now imagine taking this PowerPoint Report and displaying it in its original form on a screen. This would be an excruciating experience, because the volume and complexity of the information being presented would overwhelm our capacity to process it. This PowerPoint Report is best studied deliberately and methodically.

Reports Don’t Work As Slides

You cannot present “The History of the Universe” on a PowerPoint Slide. Well, maybe you could, but the font would have to be shrunk so small that it would be totally unreadable. And yet, something similar occurs with great frequency in many business presentations.

I recently attended a business presentation where the presenter began by saying “You won’t be able to read this slide”. He then turned to the screen and proceeded to read the slide to the audience for the next five minutes. Does this sound familiar?

Respect Literacy

It is reasonable to assume that your audience has good literacy skills. Being respectful of this, it actually is an insult to read the PowerPoint Slides to them, providing that the font size is large enough to be read by the entire audience. Let the audience do its own reading.

PowerPoint Slides

When making a business presentation to an audience, used correctly, PowerPoint Slides are an excellent accessory for highlighting key points. PowerPoint Slides should be used sparingly and should be spaced throughout the presentation. The slides need to be created in a font size large enough to be read by the entire audience in the room.

Your goal is to ensure that the audience’s attention remains riveted on you, the presenter, and is not distracted by a display of continuously changing slides. This is fundamentally different from projecting a PowerPoint Report on a screen.

Each PowerPoint Slide should have no more than three bullets. A bullet is not a paragraph or even a sentence. It is a few words or symbols, maybe a phrase, which captures a critical idea from your presentation that merits special attention. The bullets might be extracted from the PowerPoint Report, in whole or in some modified form.

The Salient Details

A PowerPoint Report becomes the definitive document, as it is comprehensive and detailed. The corresponding business presentation is derived from the PowerPoint Report. Cognizant of time limitations, only salient details can be presented, not the entire PowerPoint Report.

Attempting to do anything more, unfortunately, is guaranteed to lose the attention of your audience. Your challenge is to frame and deliver the business presentation so that your audience will want to subsequently study the PowerPoint Report in more detail.

Slides And Reports

PowerPoint is a powerful and utilitarian tool for creating slides and reports. Reports developed in PowerPoint can be comprehensive, while at the same time providing visuals which substantiate and illuminate the text.

PowerPoint Slides, on the other hand, should be used to highlight and reinforce key elements of a business presentation, adding to the impact of the presenter.

Recognizing these critical differences will help you to develop high-impact business presentations that engage your audience and gain their commitment.

Conclusion

By combining these ideas about how to use PowerPoint properly with suggestions from the companion articles on how to design a high-powered presentation and how to deliver a presentation effectively, you will become much more confident and competent in delivering high-powered and effective business presentations.

Diamond Management Institute develops high-performance o

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off