How to make a beautiful and successful presentation

16/02/12

It is not easy to correctly and successfully conduct a presentation. Especially when presenting to a potential customer of your IT solutions. Using our advice you will be able to conduct a successful presentation and show your professional knowledge, or at least not leave your audience with a bad impression.

In this article we will tell you what the listener and presenter should do to make the listener interested in the presentation and to bear fruit in the form of further cooperation and partnership.

Create a plan

Every presentation should begin with your representation: What is your name? What is your position? And what are going to tell?

You should create a plan for the presentation like a table of contents in a book to which you will occasionally refer, letting the audience know what stage in the material you are at.

The main method and the result

A very simple piece of advice: select from the whole report the points that you think should reach your listeners. No matter what you will say, the most important thing is how you say it. Try several times to repeat the most important ideas during your presentation so that listeners can catch your thoughts. Don’t emphasize excellent results, they will not be heard anyway. Give the listener specific ways and methods of solving tasks or goals.

Slides only accompany your story

Often some speakers simply re-read the slides, adding another one or two sentences to what is already written. This is completely incorrect. Slides have a supportive and visual function. Interesting presentations begin with your interesting narrative, your gestures and your intonation. Any pictures and charts will not be interesting if you monotonously chat into the microphone while staring at a piece of paper with your main points. Take the equilibrium position with your feet shoulder width apart. Try to gesticulate, with a brief pause after each sentence. Maintain eye contact with the audience. Experts advise switching from one listener to another, talking to each person for one paragraph or constantly cycling your gaze among the whole audience. If you feel that the audience begins to get bored, ask a question or get a vote on any question by having listeners raise their hands.

With feeling, sense and deliberation

Do not hurry, do not delay. Speak clearly and deliberately, watch for the intonation, and focus your listeners’ attention on important details. Include a pause at the end of semantic phrases.

Beautiful and informative slides

Nobody canceled the fact that 80% of the information people receive is by eyesight. And naturally if this information is nicely framed, it is much easier and more pleasant to receive. Take care when creating slides, presentation content, pictures and diagrams. It is better to use a gradient background and medium-sized print. It is not worth using tables, and multilevel lists.

Rules of preparing presentations and its duration

10 slides is the maximum quantity that the listeners can fully assimilate. More slides shows that you failed to highlight the main points of your theme. Think of everything, discard superfluous points and display the most important things. Twenty minutes is the time allotted for the story because during the allotted hour you will have to first adjust the equipment and later answer the questions of your audience. The print size 30 is the best choice for writing text on slides. You should briefly state your thesis and write them on the slides to fit all. This kind of text will be more pleasant to read for the audience and they will focus their attention on your story.

Adapt the content

The Narrator often forgets to whom he is speaking and what kind of knowledge the listener has. As a result it is possible for the director to listen to how C++ is suitable for this solution. And did he hear about it? Does he need it? You must use in your report expressions that are familiar and understandable to the audience and if you talk about something completely new, don’t feel sorry for detailed explanations and don't let the listener question your knowledge of the topic or your firm confidence.

Humor never hurts

Humor never hurts. To make your presentation less tedious, add a couple of jokes. It is very suitable to tell jokes about competitors offering similar solutions. The main thing is not to overdo it. In any case, you should be correct and serious.

Keep the momentum

Often among the audience during the presentation there is strong desire to ask a question. It is not worth dedicating a lot of time to such issues. You can simply say, "All questions will be answered a little later", or provide short answers. This is very important. Nobody should muddle thoughts; you should follow the rules of presentation and not waste time in vain so you can talk about everything that you’ve planned on. However, if an audience member is very intelligent and begins to pester you with tricky questions invite him to the platform and ask him to talk about something. In most cases, people refuse to go and calm down and if the call to the board doesn’t scare him you can always thank him for the presentation, showing your democratic side.

Be ready for the unexpected, don't fear it

Have you ever seen during a presentation the demo program wouldn’t compile, the PowerPoint presentation didn’t run, the projector refused to show the image, or the presenter’s computer froze? So have I. And in all these failures who was to blame? Yes, it is the presenter. If you created a presentation you should make a copy, switch to a different format, and save the file to another format to be able to run the presentation without PowerPoint installed on your computer. If you need to demonstrate a working application, run it at home and using a program for capturing video from the screen get video of the running application. You will be able to show this video if something goes wrong at the presentation. Ask the organizers to be ready to provide you with a new projector, laptop or a room not to disrupt the presentation for technical reasons.

Think about the ending

Don't show that you are tired of presenting, save a sense of climax from the middle of the story, and speak the whole time in the same rhythm. Perhaps in summing up the presentation your listener will take a final decision on the proposed question. Think about the last part of the presentation and restate the main points. Underline the positive aspects of your solution, and point out once again any key details.

Learn to speak

Any public speaking is an art that you should want to learn. There are a lot of training programs and courses where experienced teachers will be able to tell you how to speak, how to maintain contact with listeners, how to stand in a correct posture and follow the speech. Take advantage of them if you want to conduct professional presentations and reports.

This article will be useful not only for sellers and managers advertising their product, but also teachers, students and all those who would speak in front of a large audience.


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