What is outstanding?

30 million every day!

Presentations are an extremely popular form of communication. It's estimated that there are 30 million presentations being delivered every day around the world. How many of those are truly memorable and engaging?

As we said last time, most are frustratingly boring and a waste of time.

So, if our goal is an outstanding presentation, what do I mean by 'outstanding'?

I think that it all comes down to content. The main factor that separates a 'waste of time' presentation from one that is worth listening to is WHAT the speaker says. You can have beautiful body language and stunning eye contact, but if what you are saying isn't important to your audience they won't listen to you. Period.

Focusing on the content of your presentation takes a change in thinking from the very beginning. The speaker needs to start changing who they are making the presentation for – the audience!

It's all about the audience. Everything needs to focus on what the audience expects to learn and what the audience wants to know from the speaker. How many times have you sat through a presentation and thought, 'Why is he telling us this? Why is he giving us this useless information?'. It's frustrating for an audience when they can't connect what you are saying to something meaningful for them.

Therefore, before you open PowerPoint and before you write the first word of your presentation, ask yourself some questions - Why should the audience listen to me? What does the audience expect to learn? What do I want the audience to do with this information?

That should get you started in the right direction. Just these three basic questions will start to make a difference in your preparation and get you on the road to making an outstanding presentation.

© 2009 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved