Everyone makes mistakes when presenting with impact. It is inevitable, but how can we limit the mistakes and be the best version of our presenting selves?
This article will give you 10 top tips for presenting with impact.
Did You Know…
- According to research, 32% of people fall asleep during a presentation? That’s over a third of your audience.
- 10 Minutes into a presentation, your audience tune out.
- Only 3% of the content discussed is remembered by your audience.
What is the point? If in the first 10 minutes of a presentation 32% of your audience tunes out, that would mean within a 60-minute presentation, your audience will only remember an average of 1.5 minutes of content.
So How Do You Change this?
When you were at school, think of a mnemonic that you used to remember something. Mine was lefty loosy, righty tighty. This enabled me to remember to turn left to loosen a tap for example and turn right to tighten the tap up. It’s the same with presenting. Let’s use the mnemonic ‘P.R.E.S.E.N.T.I.N.G’, which is 10 letters.
P is for Procrastination
Have you ever put a job, a task, anything off until the last minute? Maybe you are too busy because the presentation is going to take so much time and effort that you just can’t find the time to do it this week.
STOP! Many people put presentations off because of what we like to call ‘the tinkering effect’. This is because, if you start a presentation early, you will keep changing it, adding new images, better content, and changing the font. DON’T DO THIS! Create the presentation until it is ‘Good Enough’. Don’t overspend time on it making it perfect.
R is for Rewarding Stories
You can show content in a table or a graph but this can be seen as boring. If you were to talk about a rewarding story, the chances are, that this will be remembered because no one wants to sit and read graphs and tables. After all, research shows that rewarding stories are remembered 22 times more because we can all relate to a story.
Think of a time when someone has told a story while presenting. You remember it, right? Now that same presentation, what graphs and tables did they show? Not so easy. This is presenting with impact. Tell rewarding stories. It doesn’t need to be a 20-minute story, just let it flow. Maybe start with..’You’ll never guess what happened to me on the way to work…’.
E is for End in Mind
Stephen R. Covey, author of First Things First once said, “everything is created twice”, once in the mind and then in reality. The aim is to create an end in mind within your presentation. Also known as ‘Future Thinking’ meaning what you want to see, feel and hear when your presentation has finished?
Mohammed Ali, when he was training, saw Joe Frazier on the Canvas. He said in a radio interview that Joe Frazier would go down in round 5 with a left hook and Joe Frazier heard the interview. This image was embedded in Joe Frazier’s mind and he went down in round 5. The moral of the story, share your end in mind with your audience at the start of your presentation. This will help with presenting with impact.
S is for Sir Aristotle
Sir Aristotle (Maybe not quite a Sir but he deserved one!) had a technique for presenting. Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you have told them. Also known as the Army Technique.
When presenting, tell your audience what you are going to tell them. During the presentation, tell them the content (what you are telling them) and at the end tell the audience what you have just told them.Embed the content in their minds. Use the Army Technique.
E is for Engaging Headlines
You head to a presentation. You see 4 headlines. 1. Total UK Population. 2. Total UK Population 1962 – 2022. 3. Total UK Population Growth Over 60 Years. 4. Better Health Care Doubles UK Population in 60 Years. Which one grabs your attention? It’s number 4 right?.
You read a newspaper and the thing that drawers your attention is the headline. Why? Because they are not ‘boring’ and they give you an insight. Don’t just label your presentation because every part of your presentation has to earn its place. Use engaging headlines.
N is for Nerves
Nerves will always show up when you don’t want them to. You’re about to do a presentation, you have prepared for this, you know your content, and you know your stuff. You’re ready to start presenting with impact. You step out in front of your audience and bam, nerves hit you. What do you do? You have high energy, you want to calm down but you can’t because you can’t go from a high state of energy to calm in seconds.
Use this technique. You may dismiss this like many others before you but it works. Tell yourself, ‘I am excited!’ This works because you can stay in a high energy state but just move from a negative high energy state to a positive high energy state. This has been researched by Molly Trainor and it went viral on Tiktok.
T is for Targets
We have our end in mind, what we hear, see and feel. End in mind is the ‘right brain stuff’. This is the left brain stuff. Set yourself a SMART target.
Setting a SMART target will clarify your ideas, focus your efforts, use your time and resources productively, and increase your chances of achieving what you want out of your presentation. This will help to understand the point of the presentation and dictate the content you deliver to your audience when presenting.
I is for Individual
We are all individuals and we all have a preferred thinking style. You may have heard of a HBDI Profile or Myer Briggs.
Take the HBDI profile. It is separated into four quadrants. Yellow and Red, the right side of the brain, and Blue and Green, the left side of the brain. Each individual will have a preferred thinking style/colour. Blue is Fact, Green is Form, Yellow is Future and Red is Feel.
As a result, if we only present in our preferred thinking style, we will only engage 25% of our audience because only 25% are in the same quadrant that you are. Write a checklist. Are we covering the four ”F’s? If you do, you will be presenting with impact.
N is for No to Powerpoint
Did you know that 89% of people default to using slides and PowerPoint when presenting? It’s natural to do this because Microsoft has done a fantastic job of creating a programme that is easy and efficient to use.
As a result, we miss crucial aspects to making a presentation with impact, to make sure you are presenting with impact. We miss out on our end in mind and our targets. Use an alternative; a flipchart, a whiteboard, or a mindmap. There are many alternatives. Start with your end in mind and targets because this will enable you to then choose which format is best to use. Not Powerpoint.
G is for Grabbing our Audience
The first few minutes and the last few minutes are crucial to grabbing your audience’s attention. If you start by thanking everyone for coming it’s not an attention grabber.
Start with facts. A quiz, or a few questions, to get your audience’s minds racing. If you can get them to start thinking and interacting at the start and at the end, your presentation has had an impact.
In conclusion, presenting can be very rewarding, and using these tips will ensure that you achieve your goals which are presenting with impact.
Remember, your audience can read 7 times quicker than you can speak so don’t read what you have on your slide because your audience will have read it before you have finished your first section of content, and then they are waiting which leads to disengagement. Don’t use a presentation like a drunk uses a lampost for support, use it as an illumination.
Want to Know More?
A good or bad presentation can be the difference between business won and business lost. Check out this Presentation Skills training course to help you understand that a presentation might just be two people at a table, but that the presentation has to get the message across well.
For even more useful content on presenting, check out our ultimate guide on presentation skills. You can also watch the video of this webinar or listen to the podcast.
