Step 21 - Giving Presentations

I believe that good presentations will be one of your best marketing tools. If people like you and feel comfortable why wouldn’t they book with you? Remember to touch each person, even if that is through a handshake, it breaks down a hundred barriers.

It is often quoted how people would rather die than talk to a group of people. This reaction seems a little extreme particularly when to my knowledge no one has actually died from speaking in public!!

In actual fact, public speaking can believe it or not be an enjoyable experience especially once we realise that we can make friends with those terrible nerves that cause our hands to shake, voice to wobble and those butterflies to feel more like Kamikaze pilots!!

There is a lot of help out there and I recommend you get that help, or better still, get out there and give presentations.  In fact, that is where giving presentations started for me, when I signed up on a personal development course that involved, each week over a twelve-week period, standing up and giving a short talk. Over that time it finally dawned on me that the only way to give presentations was my way.  To be me, with a few golden rules thrown in for good measure.

 So, what are the “golden rules” of presenting?

• KISS - keep it short and simple.
• Ensure there is a beginning, middle and end, and make sure the beginning and ending have impact. Command attention at the beginning and go out with a big bang.
• Know your subject.
• Know how to use props and visual aids.
• Have simple, clear messages.
• Wherever possible, give examples and anecdotes.
• Get to know the audience.
• Organise the presentation logically and time it.
• Use prompt cards.
• Rehearse and practise.
• Learn to laugh at yourself, you'll need to!
• Use humour, particularly when you make a mistake!
• Be enthusiastic.
• Smile.
• Involve the audience.
• Keep jargon out.
• Act and look confident, even if you're not.
• Scan the room and include everyone, even if they look like they're asleep!
• Breathe!
• Be prepared for the emergency; no flip chart paper, no overhead projector, only a few in the audience.
• Be visual, summon up any acting skills
• Enjoy!

Good luck, you’re a star in the making!

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