In real estate it's location, location, location. In presentation skills it's preparation, preparation, preparation.
There are lots of little things to consider in delivering a great presentation. Many people seem to think that it's about having that one big thing; be it a powerful point, great story, hilarious humour, or some other ‘wow it to them aspect'. Delivering great presentations is about doing lots of things right, not one right thing.
That said, preparation is the most important aspect of great presentations. ‘Winging it' won't do if you want to impress. There are no short cuts. Great presentations involve much more than just knowing the subject. It takes effort and time to prepare a great presentation, regardless of your natural skill level.
"It takes about three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech" - Mark Twain
Planning and constructing content
Write it out. There really is no substitute for writing or typing your complete presentation. Of course, you're not going to read it out from these notes, however writing down your presentation really is essential if you want your presentation to be the best it can be. A number of reasons include:
- It allows you to rehearse and accurately measure the length of your presentation. The importance of staying on time will vary in differing circumstances. For example, if you are delivering an internal presentation, it may not matter much if you run short or late. On the other hand, if you are presenting within someone else's agenda, accuracy is critical. Finish too early and people might feel that you haven't delivered as promised. Plus it can cause gaps in the program. Finish too late and you run the risk of encroaching on someone else's time or causing the program to run overtime. In either circumstance you will appear to be unprofessional.
- You can easily pick any shortcomings or gaps in the flow of the presentation. Are you droning on, labouring a point too much or repeating yourself? Once you have the core presentation down, you can go over it to add, subtract and modify where necessary.
- It's easy to ‘jazz it up'. Where do I need to include a story, some humour or interaction? You can look for the spots where you need to liven things up a little.
- You become adept at saying exactly what you intended to say - not too much and not too little. You need to stick to the script and not ad lib. When you ad lib it becomes easy to stray from the flow of the presentation and when you ‘throw in something extra' you need to decide on the spot what you'll now leave out if you are to finish on time. Have you ever seen someone rush the end of a presentation, sometimes even skipping over PowerPoint slides? Awful, isn't it?
Tip: Keep with the flow. When writing out your presentation don't stop for punctuation, grammar corrections, paragraphs or spelling. While the thoughts are coming, keep writing. You can think much faster than you can type or write, so don't lose track of good ideas. It's easy to forget great content if you keep stopping. Once the flow has stopped then you can go back and make your corrections.
Key message/clarity
You need to decide right at the start, what is my key message? What are the key points I want to make? Depending on the length and scope of your presentation, you should have a number of key points. It is often of value to outline these early in your presentation e.g. "Today I'm going to cover 4 main areas of the business..." or "Today I will cover 4 key concepts...".
You need to be specific. If you're not specific enough, people may not understand the points you want them to. What you may think is obvious, is often not so obvious to others.
Tip: Take the advice of Stephen Covey and "start with the end in mind".
Creating the correct environment
There is so much to this that it's rather difficult to cover in an article, however, if you think through a few points you will understand the options.
How the room is set up is of importance for both the audience and the speaker. A lot is said about audience comfort, and rightly so. I always talk about speaker comfort, which isn't so often considered. I would go so far as to say that it's probably more important than audience comfort. The fact is, that if the speaker isn't comfortable with the environment, it makes it much more difficult to deliver a great presentation.
A speaker doesn't need the distraction of worrying about the audience being too close, too far away or seated in a poor configuration. A speaker's performance will drop if they are concerned about the poor lighting. For example, too dark, so that the audience can't see them, or the speaker can't see the audience; or so bright that it knocks out projected visuals, or makes the speaker feel like a rabbit in a spotlight.
The simple message here is to think about all the aspects that create the room environment and check to see that they are suitable to you. A common mistake that speakers make is assuming that they have to accept things as they are. Not true! My advice is to check it out, ask for any changes you feel necessary and follow up to ensure it happens.