If you are like me, your sales are down. How do you differentiate yourself from the rest in such competitive times. Whether looking for investment, trying to win a sale or going for a new job, those who can present and communicate their message most effectively will inevitably stand out from the crowd and succeed over their rivals. Most notably human resource managers are looking at people’s ability to communicate their message in bite size chunks with influence and impact. Why do you need good presentation?
Working with a presentation design company over the past 8 months I have seen a lot of presentations and have realized their is a huge variance in peoples ability to communicate effectively when delivering presentations. However what this also tells me, is that their is huge opportunities to improve. When we deliver good Presentation training we not only look at delivery but also content and interactivity these 3 go hand in hand and are not mutually exclusive. All too often one of these 3 is missing and subsequently we have a bored and disengaged audience.
Often when you are given the opportunity to present or pitch you may have anywhere between 60 seconds to 20 minutes to present. So how do you make the biggest impact with such a short amount of time? Here is my 3 top tips:
Tell stories
Create compelling stories, don’t overwhelm people with facts and figures yes data can help persuade people but it generally doesn’t inspire them to act. To do that you need to wrap your presentation in a story that stimulates the imagination and entices the audience to want to learn more about you, your product or service.
Create an emotion
When you create emotion in your presentation it is much more impactful and resonates better with the audience. When telling your story think of ways that you can connect with your audience on an emotional level.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”― Maya Angelou
Call to action
Often I see people stand up in front of an audience or customer complete their presentation and have no call to action. Ask yourself after each slide, so what? Why am i presenting this? Is it to get people to my website? Is it to connect on Linkedin? Is it to buy my products or service? Tell the audience what you are looking for.
Time is a valuable resource and when it comes to presenting we often have a very limited time to get our point across. Be creative when delivering your presentation think outside the box, tell stories and have a call to action. If you stick to these 3 tips alone you will be ahead of the rest. Now go and make a good presentation.