7 Ways To Boost Your Skills In Presentations And Win More Business

Would you like to enhance your skills in presentations, to benefit from a boost in business? Some folks feel more like Mr Bean when they reach the stage… how about you? If you’re nodding ‘yes’, then know that you don’t need to remain uncomfortable forever when you stand up in front of a group of people and deliver a speech.  

Luckily, we are here to offer you some helpful advice to enable you to grow and learn. Together with a sharp looking suit and our top tips, you’ll be delivering the perfect business presentations, without hearing the tumbleweed blow past.  

Work on engaging with everyone quickly 

Imagine you’re robbing a bank, you aren’t going to take the time to introduce yourself, you need to grab the attention of the teller and get out of there. A presentation is no different, get in, and with a piranha-like bite, you attack, ensuring your audience hones in. Often you are going to be using a digital presentation that will include your topic title, and they will already know your name. ‘Different’, in this circumstance, is detrimental.  

Focus on winning your listeners’ attention 

As much as we might not like to accept it, no one in life owes us anything — it is up to us to earn their attention. We cannot expect to warrant someone’s appreciation straight off the bat, simply because of who we are. They are going to give up their precious time to listen to us, but why should they? Tell them of your experience in the area, and reason why you are the one standing up to make the presentation as opposed to them.  

Pay attention to their reactions 

If you are expecting your audience to pay attention to you, you need to pay attention to them. That said, learn your presentation, or at the very least, the basic structure beforehand. Yes, off–the–cuff might work for one in a thousand, but no one wants to listen to someone stumble their way through their presentation with Mr Blobby–like co-ordination. Rehearsing a handful of times in front of family, friends, or even the mirror, will give you the confidence to act upon their reactions, as opposed to aimlessly talking to a screen. 

Remember your timing is key  

No one is here to suggest that a slide of a PowerPoint should take an hour, but if you try and rush through the first slide, by the second you will have lost all your audience in transit. Take a step back when you are initially planning your presentation: work out exactly how many ideas you wish to propose and assign an appropriate amount of time to each. Similarly, breathing can be incredibly under-rated — don’t starve yourself of oxygen. 

Deliver some emotion 

No one wants to walk out after a presentation and think, ‘well there goes half an hour of my life I’m never going to get back’. Therefore, add at least the tiniest portion of emotion. You don’t have to put in a performance deserving of an Oscar but showing your audience you are interested in what you’re speaking about is essential —if you don’t care, how can you expect them to? Obviously, we won’t always be tasked with speaking about a topic we would die for, but by racking your brain and coming up with why it’s important to you, you’ve certainly made a start.  

Share a story but make it creative  

This is something that many people will struggle to do — it requires a lot of creativity. Rather than telling jokes, this can be the perfect way to get your audience laughing, and for that, they will remember you. Your story can be whatever you want because it’s your story. Make the detail as extravagant as you like, just be confident that the content of the story relates to the purpose of your presentation.  

Generate a lasting impression with the ending 

What the audience will hear at the end is the first thing they are going to remember afterwards. It is no surprise that the cliché of ‘going out with a bang’ has stuck around for so long — because if we don’t, we’ll be forgotten in a flash.  

Article provided by Where The Trade Buys, a UK company offering display boards for many different industries.