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Many people make one common mistake when preparing for a presentation. They spend most of their time preparing their presentation slides, and not enough time on the actual delivery of the presentation. Why so? Because it is easier to focus on the presentation material rather than on the presentation proper – which is the delivery and manner how the presentation is received by the audience.

During your school or tertiary education days, you may have been taught that one of the golden rules of a good presentation is to dress appropriately, well-groom and look presentable. That rule still applies, and should be taken for granted. The saying “the first impression is always the last impression”, especially when you need to stand in front of any audience to deliver any presentation.

The reason why first impressions are so important is that they last forever. Eg: If an entertainer comes on stage, his/her first few minutes performance will determine whether the audience will like or dislike the rest of his performance. Similarly, when a speaker steps up to the podium, his opening remarks will determine if the audience will pay attention to the rest of his/her speech.

Top Five tips to presenting professionally

1. Create an impactful opening and a memorable closing.

In a business and corporate presentation, it is not appropriate to use humour, entertaining or creative style opening. Meaning, no jokes, no fancy animation or performance. A good opening is to state upfront the main message or keypoints for the audience to take away. 

Eg: If presenting a proposal project, an attention grabbing opening could be “How would you like to be able to complete this project within XX months, Y months ahead of schedule, and save RMXX,XXX in cost savings?”, or “We are going to show you in XX minutes our proposal that will save your company RMXX,XXX in project cost in less than Y months”.

                     For closing, do repeat your key message and add an additional sweetener as a next step for your audience to do. It is best that the closing includes some next step for the audience, or if there is no next step required, just repeat the main message in summary and leave behind a memorable quote, phrase or statement they can take away.

Eg: “To generate a cost-saving of RMXX,XXX in project costing, let’s meet up in XX days time to finalise the technical details. Let’s aim to achieve this ultimate vision”, or “To make all these concept and idea happen, let’s nominate a working committee leader to spearhead this project. Together we can move mountains !”.

2. Keep it Simple

Every presentation is a speech, but not every speech is a presentation. When you write your speech, write it for the ear. Your audience should be listening to you mostly, and not spend time reading lots of words from the slides or whiteboard or posters you may be using. Unless you are giving a lecture, a seminar or a teaching session, all business and corporate presentations should be simple, straight to the point and use easy to understand words.

3. Follow the 10-20-30 rule

For any non lecture, non teaching or non technical type business or corporate presentation, the general rules are:

· Presentation should consist of no more than 10 slides. This allows the presenter to talk more, have discussions and engage in conversation with the audience. An additional rule is that each slide should not have more than 5-6 lines of text. You wouldn’t want your audience to spend their time reading instead of listening to you.

· Presentation should not be longer than 20 minutes. Meaning, the actual presentation, minus the discussions and interaction, should not be more than 20 minutes. Assuming there are discussions and interaction with the audience, the entire presentation would last at least 60 minutes or more.

· The text on each of the presentation slide should not be smaller than 30pts in size, as a general rule. Of course if the room is small and audiences are few, or if the presentation is done around a conference room table, font size 24pts is acceptable, but not any smaller.

4. Create a compelling story

A good presentation is like storytelling. Prepare your presentation speech with a script that flows from beginning to end. The story should continue from the first slide to the end, and should not require you to jump back and forth, unless of course if questions are asked, or discussions require you to do so.

5. Use visual aids

Visual aids are meant to AID you, not take over your presentation. The most popular visual aid for business or corporate purposes are still the presentation software tools available. However, if the situation requires so, you can prepare your visual aids on whiteboard, flipchart papers, large A0 size sheets (for displaying plans or large drawings) or posters.

SUMMARY

Overall, the secret of presenting professionally is practice, practice, practice. You must run through mentally the entire presentation in your head first, know exactly what and how you want to say, then actually rehearse your speech in front of an audience. Ask a colleague, a family member or a friend to sit in front while you present. Ask for feedback on your voice, body gestures, speed of delivery and overall presentation. Then, make the adjustment. Rehearse two more times. By the time you actually deliver to your customer, management or project team, it will be your third time.

For more about developing a professional presentation, enroll into one of our Business Productivity courses.

Contributed by: RICHARD CHIA

The author was previously senior management with a global MNC that emphasises strict global standards in written documentation and presentation communication. He currently lectures at a local University, and is a HRD Corp certified and accredited trainer.

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