Have You Determined Presentation Objectives?

What do you want to achieve with the presentation? Audience need clear guidance about what is expected of your Presentation. A pre-set objective to your presentation helps you and your audience. When asked to make a Presentation, the first thing that often runs through the mind of a Presenter is, “What am I going to say?” A more purposeful response is: “Why have I been asked to give this presentation?” Therefore, the first step in the presentation process, before a word has been put to paper or power point, is to determine the objectives and goals of the Presentation.
Statement of your objectives is a good and safe way to start a Presentation. Here is a caution. Even where it is appropriate to include the objective of your Presentation in the introduction, don’t make this as your opening remark. The Presenter generally chooses one or any combination of the following three forms of Presentation:

(1) To inform or instruct, as one would as an instructional course leader, and is based on thought processes.

(2) To persuade or motivate to action, as would a politician or salesman, and is based on behavior modification.

(3) To inspire, entertain or otherwise elicit feelings and emotions, as would a motivational speaker or stand-up comic, and is based on changing attitudes.

Whatever be the purpose applicable to your presentation, develop clear objectives before you design your Presentation. An objective is the target you want to hit. Your Presentation is then designed to meet the objectives. Be specific. What do you want the participants to know or be able to do by the end of your Presentation? You don’t want them to just know about the topic or you want them to know specifics.

An objective includes an action that can be observed and measured. Be clear and specific about your objectives and what you want the participants of your Presentation to know or be able to do by the end of your Presentation. This approach certainly creates the best form of your Presentation much easier.

Find answers to these questions to determine Presentation Objectives

(1) Does my presentation has core & important objectives?

(2) Is my Presentation objective designed to gain agreement ?

(3) Am I offering new insight of the subject through the Presentation objective?

(4) Does my presentation stimulate involvement with a clear and understandable Presentation Objective?

(5) Am I able to reduce objectives to a single headline statement as YOUR ESSENTIAL MESSAGE ?

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About The Author:

10 Presentation Skills Training Tips to Help You Deliver the Best Speech of Your Life!

Public speaking is the act of speaking in front of a group of individuals in an open forum, private conference or in a well-defined manner for the intention of informing, teaching, influencing, advising or entertaining the audience.

In this article, I’ll be sharing with you the ten (10) public speaking tips you’ll want to keep in mind on how to overcome your fear of public speaking as well as deliver an impactful and powerful speech and presentation.

The first thing to take into consideration will be, knowing that the people want you to succeed. The audience does not want you to let them down, listeners want you to be appealing, inspiring, educative, and entertaining, meaning they are on your side.

Second, familiarize yourself with the place; meaning know the place in which you will speak in. Reach the place early enough, stroll around the speaking arena at the same time exercise using the microphone as well as any visual items.

Third, familiarize yourself with the audience. Acknowledge some of the audience as they turn up to the place, in that it is easier to have a word to a crowd of pals than to a group of unfamiliar persons.

Fourth, create in your mind yourself giving yourself a speech. That is to say operate from your individual brand, visualize yourself communicating, your tone of voice deafening, audible, and confident, when imaging yourself as victorious, you will be automatically successful.

Fifth, understand your material; put into practice your speech and rework as much as possible. If you have not recognize your material or you are unsure with them, it increases apprehension which is bad for public forum.

Sixth, give attention to the message – not the medium. Move your concentration away from your own nervousness and externally towards your own points and your audience, thus uneasiness will fritter away.

Seventh point, relax; ease worrying by doing workouts.

Eighth, gain experience. Fluency creates self-assurance, which every one knows is the key to successful speaking, for instance, clubs can make available the practice you need.

Ninth point, revolve tenseness into optimistic energy. Strap up your nervous force and convert it into strength and passion for talking to the public.

The tenth and final point for delivering a successful speech is – DO NOT apologize. If you talking about your uneasiness or asking for forgiveness for any tribulations of speaking you think you got with your speech, you might be bringing the listeners’ attention to a point they were not aware of.

In conclusion, for you to overcome your fear of public speaking you need to be the boss, the head, the entertainer as well as the listener to succeed.

Again, we found out that audience does not want you to let them down, listeners want you to be appealing, inspiring, educative and with all this you got to use oratory in your speech, the use of gestures in a speech, be in command of your voice (inflection), nice use of vocabulary, register good command of grammar, word choice speaking notes, pitches of using humor and the last one in public speaking workshop is to develop a rapport with the listeners

Phil, Annie and Tim – The Tale of Three Presenters

Research repeatedly has shown that image, not content, is king in presentations. Clip art and bad animation are guaranteed to project the wrong image whether you are presenting your findings to a supervisor or pitching that new account.
Large corporation employees or small company owners can unleash the power of good presentations to kick-start their careers and boost their acquisition of new business, or ignore the basics of presentation and spiral down into oblivion.

Let’s learn a few key elements of good presentation by watching three different presenters from three companies.

The first presenter, Phil Aslide, uses his slides to display every word he intends to say to his audience. In fact, the slides often have many more words than he intends to say. Sometimes it is hard for him to even read the words on the screen, but he knows what they mean, so that’s OK. Right?

Do you know Phil or someone like him?

And maybe you know someone like the second presenter, Annie Mate. Every item on the slide is animated whether it is discussed or not. Each bullet and piece of clipart flies, swirls or spins onto the screen accompanied by screeching tire sounds from the laptop speakers. Annie feels that this displays her commanding knowledge of PowerPoint’s many rich features. Sounds reasonable… if you’re Annie.

The third presenter, Tim Topnotch, has a different approach than Phil or Annie. Before he creates any slides, he assesses the needs of his audience. Then he organizes his content into a succinct outline of his speaking points. From there, he creates slides that support those points. His slides use a clean, simple design that is easily understood by the audience. He animates only the items that need animation to make a point.

All things being equal, which person would you choose? Who made the best impression? Which person will you remember as knowledgeable and buttoned up? We’ve all seen these presenter types. After all, presenting to an audience can be unnerving. It helps us personally to put more words on the slide as a guide.

Unfortunately, many of us have a dash of Phil and a sprinkle of Annie in our presentations. If you’re a small business, your presentation is, in many cases, your only image-generating medium beyond your web site. You don’t do glitzy ad campaigns to promote your company, so a bad presentation ruins your attempts at creating a positive image.

Phil and Annie should have followed these 4 rules of thumb when they developed their presentations:

  1. Understand your audience – Learn as much as you can about your audience before presenting to them. What is their general function within the company? What goals do they need to fulfill by hiring you or your company? What is it about your product or service that will appeal to them?
  2. Outline your thoughts – Pulling together a swirl of information into a concise presentation is not an easy job. It is important that you outline key areas you need to discuss, and if at all possible, arrange that outline around the key needs of your audience.
  3. Use a consistent visual template – Your image is paramount to making the sale. A well-done visual template can give you the professional look you need. PowerPoint offers many canned templates, but your competitor may be using the same template… talk about audience confusion!
  4. Slides support your speech; the speech doesn’t support your slides – Slides are meant to be visual aids that help the audience more clearly understand your point. By all means, do not put every word of your speech on your slides. This distracts your audience and generally creates unreadable slides. Slides should create a meaningful picture of your key points. When possible, use simple charts, succinct bullet points or pointed images to support your talking points.

So, unleash the power of good presentation skills and reach your career or business goals.