Quick notes – Opening your presentation
Quick notes – Delivering your presentation
This article is a 4 minute read. Enjoy!
This is a quick recap of some of the techniques that help our audience to understand and recall our presentation. We may have covered some or all of this together during our day together on the Foundation Presentation Skills course It's a short reminder of the top techniques and how you can incorporate them into your next presentation.
If you are here and haven't yet taken part in the course, then firstly, well done for finding this post! Secondly, what are you waiting for? Find out more about our foundation presentation skills course here.
The greatest speakers (that’s you!) always structure their presentations to help gain audience attention, support their understanding of the topic and maximise their recall of it too. Here's how you can do it...
Heres the important stuff...
A clear, logical structure to your presentation helps your audience to understand and remember the information that you present.
Which of these strings of characters is easier to recall?
52435132415
Or
111 222 333 444 555
(Yep, it’s that lovely ordered, logical second string, right?)
For maximum recall and understanding, your presentation structure should be logical ordered and have clear, bite-size sections.
A really useful agenda type…
Many of us can put together a template agenda slide, but the best speakers know there is a better way…
The question agenda…
Turn each section heading on your agenda into a relevant question. (See the example in the image).
This style of agenda creates gaps (unanswered questions) in the mind of your audience. They will want to hear more, to know the answers.
Tailor the content of each section to answer the question that you have set. Instantly you are positioned as the speaker with all of the answers (really useful if you are pitching a new idea to someone).
Plus, question agendas can help you to overcome the need for lots of notes. The question heading acts as a reminder to you about what you need to say - you just need to verbally answer the question in front of the audience.
And there’s more… if you’re short on time, question agendas are a great way to quickly write presentation content. Just list out the key questions your audience will want to know the answers to (Who, what, where, when, how?) and then talk around them.
Don’t forget transition phrases…
‘Now that we have covered X, let’s move on to Y…’
‘Next up, I want to talk to you about Z…’
Transition phrases are lines that signal to your audience where you are in the flow of your presentation. Generally we use them as we move from one section to another. They are great for:
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Helping your audience to follow where you are within the journey of your presentation.
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Re-grabbing the attention of your audience if they have become distracted (be sure to deliver your transition line with high, attention-grabbing energy)
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Giving you a chance to breathe, and reset yourself ready to be brilliant when presenting the next section of your presentation.
What are your favourite transition phrases?
Want more great public speaking insight, tips and techniques?
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