10 Tips For a Powerful Business Presentation

Posted by Stephanie Snyder on June 1st, 2021

Research About Your Audience

The starting point of any presentation is understanding your audience's goals, emotions, and expectations. Match your presentation with their interests and needs to make it easier for your audience to understand your points. If you know your audience, the examples you give and the issues you address will be relevant.

Familiarize Yourself With the Presentation

Before you try convincing anybody about your ideas, products, or services, you need a great mastery of your presentation. This way, you can confidently answer questions that come up. Even if you use charts or slides in your presentation, they are only supposed to help you communicate. Overlying on these materials will make you seem unsure and make the presentation boring.

Use Factual Content and Materials

Once you bring out a point, you need to back it up with statistics or a quote related to your topic. You can also support your information with graphs and charts. This will make your presentation more detailed, and it provides a persuasive aspect of your idea. You should, however, ensure that the facts are relevant and use the most current data.

Make Your Goals Clear From the Beginning

Your audience should know the purpose of the presentation from the start. During the introduction, ensure that you lay out the objectives you intend to achieve. This will help you focus on the presentation's core purpose and prevent you from straying from your main points. It also tells the audience why they should listen to you and what to expect.

Be Enthusiastic

The level of energy in the room during the presentation depends on you. If you are bored, your audience will feel the same way, but people will be more interested in listening to you if you present yourself so passionate about the subject. This includes everything from your body language. Maintain eye contact to create a rapport with your audience and connect them with your topic. Make gestures confidently, move around the stage and even among the audience when possible.

Speak Naturally

Most people tend to use too many technical terms when making business presentations. You should, however, ensure that your presentation flow naturally. If you have a gentle voice, you don't have to yell. Instead, get a microphone. Still, ensure that you change your tone and pitch for emphasis to grab your audience's attention.

Express Your Idea Visually

The human brain processes visual information 60 000 times faster than words. Therefore, find creative ways to put across essential points using pictures, videos, charts and avoid texts only presentations to prevent boredom. Bar graphs and pie charts make number presentations more engaging. You can also use flow charts to summarize complex topics.

Grab Your Audience Attention From the Start

Keep in mind that most people have a low concentration span. So, aim at capturing their attention and holding onto it from the introduction. You can start with a fact about your topic that might shock your audience. Alternatively, you can tell a touching personal or business story related to the topic to establish an emotional connection with your audience.

Interact With Your Audience

If you are the only person talking throughout the session, it makes your presentation dull. Engage your audience by asking them questions. You can also ask them to raise their hands if they agree with specific points. Talk from a collective perspective since there is a probability that your audience could be going through similar issues.

Organize Your Slides Well

You need to use the proper business presentation design that allows an uninterrupted flow of ideas. Present a single point in each slide to avoid confusing your audience. Summarize your points in ten slides, use a simple font that is large enough for everyone to read. Identify the key phrase of your topic and use them throughout the presentation. Finish off with a quote related to your topic, a solid call to action, or a question and answer session.

Bottom Line

The secret to delivering a powerful business presentation is to connect with your audience and show them the value of your ideas.