“The success of your presentation will be judged not by the knowledge you send but by what the Listener receives” – Lily Walters
Today’s competitive era is all about how you present yourself – the one who knows the skills, precedes. For instance, if you are an engineer envisaging your project to outshine, it’s your presentation skills that would make your hard work worth it.
A corporate world demands presentation at every ladder of your career. The presentation would hold no importance if it does not have the demanded impact on the audience.
Let’s take a look at some pointers that can enhance the presentation impression:
- Know your audience: To whom are you pitching your professionals? The first step towards making a presentation is knowing your listeners. The level of presentation differs according to the audience. You won’t use the same methodology for a management meeting used for a school presentation as their level of understanding would not be parallel. Understand the industry well enough and do every possible depth research.
- Structure your presentation: Proper categorization and structure of the content help the audience to understand your proposal in a better way. If it is unstructured, it is likely possible audience would not gain much from your presentation. Your structured presentation will help understand complex issues in a much simpler way.
- Use visuals: A picture speaks a thousand words. The graphical presentation is another great idea to pass on the information to your audience. Most of the spectators are visual learners. Visuals have a more powerful impact than text material. It is much more convincing especially when the information is in figures. A graphical chart would represent data in a much decent way than a table filled with rows and columns.
- Build a story: An information portrayed in the form of a story will keep the listeners engaged and makes it easier for the presenter to convey the statistics. This also makes the presentation memorable.
- Be Relatable: Be Honest and authentic to your audience. Don’t try showing off, be natural. This will help to be mentally connected with the listeners and create a relatable bond. Being relatable will also create enthusiasm in the audience to be connected with you.
- Build your confidence: Be confident in every word you speak during your presentation and that will happen only with practice. Prepare yourself thoroughly before every presentation. Try doing it in front of the known audience and ask for feedback for possible improvements. No one gets the right first time but ‘Practice makes a man perfect’.
- Make it interactive: A one-way presentation is nothing less than a monologue where most of the oration is just being overheard by the audience. Ask questions in between to ensure your message is travelling in the right direction. Interrogation has two benefits – you get feedback on your demonstration & addressees are active and will never get bored.
- Repetition in Climax: Once you reach the climax, ensure you summarize all the points captured through the presentation. Somehow, this gets more interesting for them to listen to since they already know about it and encourages them to ask related questions.
These small tips would help you a long way in your career as you have to present yourself at every stage of life.