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What is a great presentation? As you might have already seen on the Internet, or read in books, there are many definitions of great presentations. Nevertheless, they all emphasize one point – a great presentation is one which, ideally speaking, completely holds an audience enthralled. It is not entirely true that only great personalities can give great presentations. To develop great presentation skills, which you will need, especially if you are a Six Sigma professional, you need to understand the anatomy of a great presentation.

Anatomy Of A Great Presentation

Unlike written reports where you have a chance to correct mistakes, presentations are a sort of ‘get it right the first time’ business activity. So, a considerable amount of preparation is necessary to make a presentation great.

1. All Great Presentations Are Well Researched and rehearsed in advance. You must determine how much information or statistics needs to be given in proportion to a plain lecture. Too much statistics defeats the purpose of your presentation and makes it boring.

2. Encourage The Audience To Have Confidence in you at the beginning by greeting them and briefly explaining the points you are going to cover during the course of your speech.

3. Presentations Are All About Scoring Points and winning over others to your opinions. Delivery skill is a vehicle of driving a point home. Statistical information should be presented in logical sequences and in the right doses.

4. Make The Presentation A Light-Hearted One wherever possible but without compromising on the seriousness of the matter. All great presentations are made in simple language using industry specific jargon, but not words that are too hard to understand.

5. Great Presentations Use Audio-Visual Aids for greater impact. This is based on the principle that a picture speaks a thousand words. Even a budgetary speech or an accountant’s presentation can use slide pictures.

How To Give Great Presentations

Begin with greeting the audience; end with asking their feedback and then thanking them. Announce that you will answer their questions later at the end of your speech. Apart from the apparent benefit this provides you, you get their undivided attention to your speech which is vital to your success.

Proven Steps To Give Great Presentations

Whether it is a formal speech to a large audience or an informal briefing, knowing your audience is vital to your speech preparation and helps you to relate it to them. Here are a few steps to making the actual presentation.

1. Judiciously Use Examples from everyday life or from past events to make your point quickly understandable. But don’t let examples occupy center stage.

2. Don’t Forget, Your Audience may have come from different departments within your organization. Each of them has different interests and different levels of understanding on your topic. Strive to address the needs of the entire audience, not just a select few.

3. Grasp Audience Responses that show whether and how much they like your speech. Make midcourse corrections to the tone of your speech if necessary. At this point you can engage them to lift their moods.

4. Extemporaneous Presentation goes a long way to make it interesting as this obviously eliminates the ‘report reading style’ and gives your speech a natural touch. You can use notecards if necessary, so that you don’t forget them.

5. Using Body Language Effectively. Make eye contact with members of the audience. Make gestures like hand waving, nodding and voice. Using body language in this way helps to break the monotony of a possibly long speech.

Giving a great presentations at work is not limited to just benefiting your organization. Use this vehicle to travel that extra mile to reach your career goals.

You’ve prepared your presentation, you know your subject, and you know your audience. You have the presentation internalized. As you progress through it, you have this bad feeling that starts to grow. You’re halfway through, and you hear a little voice in your head that says, “This is not working!”

What do you do?

That was the exact question I got this week from one of my corporate coaching clients. His presentation is a “pitch” for a $150,000 per month contract. It’s extremely important to him and his company.

I took a minute to really think about it… and I remembered an amazing transformation that I experienced long ago during a comedy show.

Three of the best headliners were working a show together in Worcester, Massachusetts. There happened to be a function in the main room, so they had to move the comedy show. If you would’ve been there, you would have seen a room full of 115 people in a hotel basement. It was definitely not the best situation — low ceilings, a warm room, a pillar in the middle of the floor that obstructed the view for many of the audience members.

The first comedian was experienced and very talented. He took the stage and only received mild laughs. He continued to follow his routine and didn’t waver. The second comedian took the stage, and had almost exactly the same results. He, too, didn’t waiver from his original “planned” routine. The last comedian, Vinnie Favorito, took the stage, and started with his planned routine. He was about three minutes into it… and he stopped. He put the microphone down, pulled up a stool and said, “Guys, what’s the matter? What’s going on?” Vinnie changed gears, and abandoned the original plan that he always used – the plan that almost always worked for him.

He realized one crucial thing. The original plan will only work when you’re “connected” with the crowd. Sometimes a connection is easy to make. On occasions, like this, it’s not.

I was just amazed at how Vinnie stopped his flow and confidently changed directions. If he had kept going, he would have suffered the same mediocre laughs that the other comedians received.

If you find yourself in the middle of a presentation and it’s not working. Stop. Talk to them. Check-in. It’s perfectly legal to ask the audience where they are, and what’s wrong. It takes a true professional to do that.

By “checking in” I mean – literally – black the projector screen, step forward, and separate yourself emotionally and physically from what you were doing. It gets the audience’s attention and helps engage them right away. They feel the change, and they know it was not planned. You might instantly gain a connection. If you don’t gain that connection right away… I promise, “checking in” is taking a huge step forward to creating one!

How did it turn out? Amazing! He took a tough audience and completely turned them around. Will it work every time? It depends on many factors. However, if it is not working the way it is going, please change something!

We learn the most from the toughest presentations. Witnessing a master like Vinnie perform under difficult circumstances has taught me a great deal. What will you do the next time you notice it ain’t working?

I have a good number of friends and acquaintances that work or have worked in sales environments, typically for the IT multinationals. Today, I received an email from of one such individual who has just switched companies in an attempt to move upwards in the sales hierarchy. Typically, when you join a new company, each new hiree is called upon to make a product pitch in front of a panel of sales managers and coaches. The idea being, of course, to ensure that all sales representatives have mastered the art of making the perfect sales presentation, well before they ever have the opportunity to step into a corporate boardroom to do a sales presentation or demo. My friend asked for my input, and I wanted to say, quite simply, get a hold of it.
The thing is, today, no matter how rehearsed you sound when doing a sales pitch, it’s gotten stale. Procurement teams have heard it all, from the polished sales pitch, to the mediocre sales pitch and even the dreadful sales pitch. And the good sales pitches are all starting to sound alike. It’s time to Up the Annie, and this means, in part, bringing in the props. What better prop than the Banner Stand.

These are ideal actually because once you’ve set one up, you can literally forget about it. Forget you may, and yet, it will serve as a constant branding statement as you make your presentation. These are literally like colour screen televisions that are frozen on one particular advert – your company’s advert. A typical Banner Stand has the company’s logo, its mission statement or business vision or logo, and reference to your company’s product and/or service range. As soon as it’s set up at the front of the room, a Banner Stand serves to enhance a company’s brand image and reputation.

The most popular Banner Stand is the Retractable Banner, more commonly called the Roll-Up Banner. It’s well-loved by all presenters who have had to walk into a presentation room, and have managed to set the Banner Stand up in a matter of seconds. Quite simply, the Retractable Banner helps make a perfect entrance statement. In today’s marketplace, potential clients want to see results, even before they’ve actually started doing business with a particular provider. This is why, walking into a presentation room, with authority, appeals so much. Quite simply, it suggests ‘we mean business’.

The Retractable Banner Stands are practical to bring along to any trade show or exhibition or even to any of the annual social events. With time, sales teams find that they start to use their Banner Stands as a centrifugal force. The sales rep. may initially step out from behind a sales booth or presentation table to walk towards a potential client. He or she may then do some active listening, and probe into the potential client’s needs or desires. And then, at a well orchestrated moment, the sales representative will turn to the potential client and say something like, “Would it be beneficial for you to see a little more about what we, here, at Company ABC, are about?”, all the while directing the potential client over to the Banner Stand.

Trust you me, if my friend were to present with a Banner Stand, I’m willing to bet that he would walk out of the presentation room, having closed the deal.