3 Tips for Presentations by Jamie Dunn

PowerPoint is dead
Stop using PowerPoint, seriously. I’ve never used slides in my life. Maybe it is just me but I instantly switch off when people are presenting with the same old PowerPoint templates that I’ve seen a thousand times before. Personally, I am a big fan of using a flipchart and coloured pens. It allows me to be creative, think on the spot and most importantly of all, react to what the audience is doing.
There is nothing worse than having a presentation all prepared but then seeing the audience switching off and using their phones whilst you’re presenting. You need their engagement and so doing things differently will get it. If you are a fan of having technology in your pitch, then use “Prezi” instead.
Know your audience
It is important that you spend some time finding out who is in your audience, what their main interests are, why they are coming to listen to you and most importantly, what value you can add to them. People are coming to listen to you for a reason so when they leave, you want to have given them 100 reasons to want to come and listen to you again, or send you an email, or follow you on Twitter or even pay you to work with them.
It’s important that you provide your audience with value, but always leave them wanting more. Your presentation/speech is the perfect opportunity to market what you do and develop your business so make sure you are demonstrating your value to your audience every step of the way. For me, if I am speaking for one hour, I will spend 15 minutes discussing my background and then the other 45 minutes on sharing advice, knowledge and adding value to my audience.
Call to action
So, you’ve delivered a presentation to a room full of great people and they are really impressed and love what you do. What now? What happens next? Whilst you have your audience hooked and listening to what you have to say, that is the perfect time for you to make sure something develops afterwards. There is no point in speaking to a room full of 50 people, but you don’t give them information on how they can contact you next.
Make sure your twitter, website and email address is given in your presentation. Make sure you wait around afterwards for people to talk to you, always leave five minutes in your presentation time for questions and answers and most of all, enjoy it. When you’re enjoying it, your audience will pick up on this and naturally enjoy it more to. There is nothing worse than a nervous speaker as it makes the audience question how confident you are in the content that you are delivering. Confident presentation = confident business.
by Jamie Dunn Entrpreneur