How to Deliver a Successful Presentation

George Torok February 14, 2020Presentation Tips, Public Speaking Leave a Comment

A successful presentation is about moving people in the direction you want. What must you do to achieve this during your presentation?

Fulfil these three objectives:

Inform
Engage
Move to act

Inform

It’s important to inform your audience.

But what do you believe is the most frequent mistake that speakers make when giving information? They dump too much information. Why do they do that?

Speakers give too much information

Perhaps they believe that information is valuable, therefore more information is more valuable. Technical experts and unprepared speakers make this mistake.

The reality is that the audience doesn’t want more information. They want only the relevant information.

Engage

People have asked me, “What’s the biggest change in presentations over the past ten or 15 years?”

They seem to believe that it’s about the technology. No question, the technology has changed and will continue to change. What is more relevant is that the attention span of your listener has changed dramatically. This means you need to engage the listener more often during your presentation.

Shorter attention spans require more frequent engagement with your audience.

That relates to another common question, “How do you hold the attention of the audience?” The answer is, “You can’t hold the attention of your audience.”

You can grab it and hold it for a while and then you lose it. Then you need to grab their attention again. You need to consistently engage your audience to grab their attention again.

Move to Act

If your real purpose is to move people, don’t leave it to chance. Don’t assume that the audience will discern what you want. Instead, tell them what to do.

Don’t hint. Don’t imply. Don’t beat-around-the-bush. Tell them what you want them to do. Do you want them to buy, donate, change their ways, advocate your cause, organize their team…?

Tell your audience the next steps.

Don’t make the guess – tell them! Don’t make them guess or worse, forget about you.

They might not agree to do what you want but if you don’t give them the opportunity to know what you want; how can they even comply? Give them the opportunity to say no or yes.

A successful presentation must:

Inform
Engage
Move to action