Effective Presentation Strategies: Tips to Rock Business Presentations
You may be curious as to how you can knock your next business presentation out of the park. Click here for some effective presentation strategies and tips.
Recent studies have revealed that the average person’s attention span ranges somewhere between five and ten minutes. There are also numerous factors that could lower this span even more.
It is therefore understandable that a good speaker will try to work and insert points that will break the seriousness of conversations and retain the attention span.
If you often give a presentation, you need to learn a few effective presentation strategies that will make your presentation excellent. People who give presentations at conferences, during the TED talk and marketing new products understand how to make presentations that wow audiences.
6 Effective Presentation Strategies
With these effective presentation strategies, you can easily make a presentation on a relatively boring subject so interesting that people talk about it in the hallway. A great presentation could easily be the defining factor that wows the clients and seals your deal.
Here are 6 effective tools to use in business presentations.
- Use Effective Presentation Strategies and Tell a Story
Always tell people to tell a story with their presentations. You do not have to bore your audience to tears. A great thing about telling stories is that they help you create a genuine and often unbreakable connection with your audience.
Tell stories that not only add depth to your message but also ones that add meaning. With personal stories, your presentation will be interesting, likeable and you will feel trustworthy to the audience.
Research has shown that adding statistics and facts to the presentation will only stimulate two areas of the human brain. However, with stories, you can easily stimulate as many as seven areas. In addition, you will trigger emotional responses within listeners.
- Be Brief and Keep It Simple
The last thing anyone wants to sit through is an over-explained presentation. There are people who cover all their points in the first ten minutes and spend 15 more just re-explaining the points over and over.
Remember by the 10-minute mark, your audience has already heard enough. They need a break.
You can also use the 10-minute content to keep the audience engaged. You can also use some engaging activities like quizzes, poll, and ask the audience for the opinions through a chat.
You should also avoid using excessive animations, words, and graphics. Keep in mind that less is more when you are creating a presentation.
- Find out more about the Audience
The power of your speech lies greatly on your ability to compel, convert and persuade the audience. Therefore, it is critical that you find out what your audience likes.
This is important because if you make a joke that does not sit well with the audience you may lose their confidence in you. If you are selling a product, they may not buy it.
So make sure that you are research about the audience you are talking to. What are they like and why they are attending your presentation. Remember to be respectful of the audience and their time.
Of course, you need to keep in mind that millennials and seniors have a much lower concentration and will need more jokes and stories. Always ensure that they will speak about your presentation days after they attended it.
You also need to be aware that your audience is a perfect balance of introverts and extroverts. If you want, you can test this theory but be assured that it is true. What should you do then?
Make sure that you never lean towards one direction. For instance, if the presentation has numerous activities therein, the extroverts will love it. However, the introverts will hate you.
The opposite is also true. If you lecture the audience the entire time, the extroverts will hate you. Therefore make the extra effort to balance the activities and the message.
Like with everything else in life, this too requires motivation.
- Squeeze Everything into Three-Point
The human brain is wired to only remember a certain number of points at a go. The truth is, and you may need to hear this twice, few will remember your tenth point.
It is, therefore, unnecessary to showcase everything you know about one topic. You can also look at the SlideCrew Congress Presentation Management Tools for more information on how to do this.
With the sad reality of short attention spans ringing at the back of your head, you need to win hearts by being brief and straight to the point. This is not the perfect time for you to exhibit the depth of your knowledge and the 17 points you have researched.
No one will remember you for speaking about all these many points.
- Smile and Make Eye Contact
Making eye contact is a tricky one for most speakers. Many end up making eye contact with just one person within the audience. This person will leave feeling uncomfortable and they may not hear what you are saying because they will second guess themselves.
Eye contact, when speaking to a crowd, means looking in their direction. Never look at the roof, the floor or at the slides you are showing for too long. Remember that smiling makes you look confident and sure of what you are talking about.
Remember not to make it so that only the slides are visible. The audience also needs to see the face of the person talking to them.
- Remember First Impressions Are Everything
The way you start the presentation will tell the audience a lot about you. You need to grab their attention and run with it. If you entertain them within the first minutes of the presentation, they will remember both you and what you talked about.
You can start your presentation with an interesting story or a joke. Once you have their attention, hold their attention with your slides and presentation methodology. The slides should not be more than 10 slides, the entire presentation should never be more than 20 minutes and the font should be 30 or higher.
Effective Presentation Strategies Are About Proper Articulation
However, it needs the skill to understand just how much repletion is too much. Basically, effective presentation strategies state that a presentation should start with an introduction, a body that speaks more about the topic introduced and a conclusion that summarizes the entire speech. Remember to stay calm and relaxed.
If you are looking for more tips on how to speak publicly and sell products, check out our website.