Presentations: Do You Love Them or Hate Them?

As a small business owner you’ll have to give presentations from time to time about your business. It’s a brilliant (leveraged) way to tell others about what you do.

Whether you’re presenting a proposal to potential clients or presenting the results of your work to someone, your goal is to inspire your audience. Why? Because presentations can generate good income and lead to new clients 😊

So what can you do to give an inspirational presentation vs one that puts everyone to sleep? Here’s 5 simple tips that I’ve used in the 16+ years I’ve been giving presentations …

1. Understand that people can only absorb a limited amount of information at any one time, so you need to keep your message simple and involve them!

• Ask questions and get feedback;
• Interact with the audience;
• Use games or practical exercises to reinforce a learning

Do whatever it takes, every 20 minutes to “change their state”. Making your audience feel involved in your presentation and “doing things” keeps their interest glued to what you have to say.

2. Be Personable and Interesting

As you know humour “makes the world go around” … so even when you’re presenting in front of a “serious” client, allow them to see the real you – be yourself and remember to use humour in your presentation. Enjoy yourself! This doesn’t mean you have to crack jokes the entire time, it simply means being cheerful, upbeat and personable. Share your stories, fill your presentation with cartoons or pictures that you think your audience will appreciate. Relax!

3. Don’t Read from Your Slides!!!!

People can read for themselves. If you do, it’s boring!!  Your slides cannot be a “crutch” in case you don’t remember all that you want to say. They won’t know what you’ve missed anyway! It’s important that you:

• Keep the text of your slides short just to highlight or emphasise important points;
• Use bullet points;
• Include simple graphs & charts that emphasize your points;
• Include images that make an impact

4. Make Your Examples Personal

Personalize your talk for your audience on each occasion and give examples that that show how your solution will benefit or impact on them.

The minute people realize that something can directly affect and benefit them personally, they’ll pay attention!

Even better, if possible, have some advocates in your audience who can rave about you and your work too. Anything they can say on your behalf is gold!

5. Add music before, during or after presentations! 

This may not be common practice in most presentations you’ve been too, but it sure makes a difference and has been proven to work! Especially if the music is upbeat and has relevance to your topic. One of my client’s theme song became “Money, Money, Money” – the classic Abba song. Their topic – budgeting & finance. They were a hit!

The key thing to remember, is to focus on your message and not how you’re feeling prior to your speech. Learn to look forward to and love presentations. It’ll show 😊

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