Many times a presenter starts his presentation with an agenda, list of things to covers, some data and even acknowledgements. By the time the presenter has finished his introduction, he has completely lost his audience by boring them to death or leaving them without answering the most crucial question; why should they bother. In this article, you will learn how to avoid this common phenomenon by focusing on a critical sequence of topics in your presentation to make sure that your presentation is as effective as possible.

Where to Start?

Most people who decide to give a presentation and are new to the realm simply revert back to what they have received in university or school as a template to present. Unfortunately, they are not always ideal or suitable since a lecturer or a teacher usually has a very different goal than a person who is presenting the latest research, revealing a new product or trying to gather political support around a particular view.

When preparing for a presentation you should ask three fundamental questions from yourself, in the following order:

Why

The most fundamental question is to ask yourself “why” you are giving the presentation in the first place. Are you here to convince the crowds of your ability to talk and present (i.e. been there, don’t that) or is there something deeper and you really have a message to pass on.

Focusing on your message is not necessarily straight forward. There might be many messages you want to pass on and it is easy to confuse the audience when you want to convince them of so many things at once. It is critical to identify your “core message” first. This is where the bulk of your energy and effort should be spent in your presentation. You may have a few “side messages”, but these should be in line with your core message and should only be in a supporting role. For example, your main message can be “We need to have a cheap method to recycle water in the developing world”. Your “side messages” could be, “we can use X,Y or Z to achieve this cheaply” and “if we invest in T, we can bring the price of X and Y down by 10 folds”. Here, if you can’t convince the crowd with your core message, it is very unlikely for them to care about the rest of your presentation or how you want to achieve your objectives.

How

Once you have identified your answer to “why”, you need to think about “how” you can pursue your audience. This is where you need to think of your “side messages” in more details and see how you can sequence them together to tell a convincing “story”. You need to think of your presentation much like a TV documentary. You have certain amount of data, research, historical work, etc. which can be used to serve your story. In this stage, you need to think about what to bring to the presentation and what to leave out. This is a critical process since so many presenters get it wrong. Many presenters are too attached to their work and see value everywhere. Besides they also think that the time they have spent on something represents its relative value. This kind of mentality can leads to really boring presentations where an audience really doesn’t care about all the sleepless nights the presenter has gone through simply because they cannot be bothered with the message or the content. They don’t find it that interesting or relevant and simply switch off. Choose the most engaging and relevant content irrespective of the effort gone into producing them.

What

Now that you have selected “how” the story is going to be told and sequenced, you need to see “what” you can deliver in your presentation. This is when you start to think about visualisation techniques, your slides, demos, videos, images and so on to create an engaging presentation. Your aim is to make the presentation memorable while also focusing on delving your “core message” and achieve your overall objective.

A great way to practice presentation skills is to use a systematic presentation skills training where you can practice with the help of a trainer and simulated audience (other delegates) and immediately see the effect of your techniques and habits.

Trainers who are interested to train others on presentation skills can take advantage of premade presentation skills training materials to accelerate the process. For details see the training resources provided below.