How often do you walk away from a business presentation with an unclear idea of the purpose of that presentation? There is no excuse for a dull presentation - even in the business environment. In fact, presentations in the workplace may be the most important to you! A lot of your own success in the workplace depends on your presentation skills and your ability to clearly explain your ideas. The central goal of any presentation is to communicate. Effective communication is achieved when ideas are shaped simply, concisely, and interestingly.
Planning a presentation requires you to ask yourself several questions, as enumerated in the mind map above. I often use mind maps to gather all my main ideas for presentations before even thinking about opening a tool like PowerPoint. Before you start working on the content for your presentation, you should have a clear idea of the goals you wish to communicate and thoroughly research the content of your presentation. More research is better, even if your final presentation does not include even half of the knowledge you end up communicating. There are bound to be questions at the end of your presentation, so having a fully loaded arsenal of knowledge will work to your benefit.
When researching your presentation content, it is essential to keep your audience in mind. Your audience will determine the type of content you will end up presenting and what key points they will want to know. This will help you define your key points you will drive home in your presentation. You do not want to overwhelm your audience with content, so every part of the presentation should be clearly related to your key points.
Guidelines for an Effective Business Presentation
As a guideline, in a five minute presentation you should limit yourself to three points. If you are writing out your presentation, then a five minute presentation should be limited to roughly 750 words. Of course these three points should tie into the overall story of your presention in order to achieve your overarching goals. Tom Peters, a presentation and management specialist, stresses the importance of limiting the key points of your presentation. He also believes that you should limit yourself to one point per PowerPoint presentation. In this way, you will not overwhelm yourself with trying to talk about too much and you will keep your presentation clear and direct. For more, you can look up his "Presentation Excellence" slides.
When putting together my presentations, I find it helpful to get back to the basics. For example, I think back to how the generic five paragraph essay is constructed. In this essay, you start out with an introduction and thesis. The two following paragraphs are for content and are centered around proving your thesis. The conclusion does not introduce anything new and summarizes your thesis and supporting evidence. The flow and structure of your presentation should be similar.
I've put together the following mind map to summarize key tips to more effective business presentations. However, if you look below and download the SmartDraw file, you will find an expanded version of the mind map.
A lot goes into planning an effective business presentation, so I can not stress enough how important it is to thoroughly plan out your presentation. This means you can not leave your preparation to the last minute. With a well planned presentation, you will be more confident and more able to deliver an effective presentation.
Look below for all the SmartDraw files used in this blog post. If you don't already have SmartDraw, download a trial here.
[Example] Questions to ask for presentation preparation mind map.sdr
[Example] Guidelines for presentation table.sdr
[Example] Tips for effective presentations mind map.sdr
