Effective Presentation Skills

Find out as much as you can about your audience before you begin to prepare your presentation.
Who are they?
How many people will there be? What age range? Men or women? Friend or foe? Are they there by choice?
What do they want from your presentation?
What do they know already about my subject? Why have they come to the presentation?
The more you know about your audience, the closer you can pitch your presentation to suit them.
But what do you do if know very little in advance about your audience? Well the best answer is to try and find out more. However, here are some techniques that we have found will keep any audience interested.
Interpret your statistics. Give them figures and then explain what they mean. Is a five per cent increase in sales in China a good result or a great result? Tell them what you think. Put them in a context they can relate to.
Include some fascinating facts to illustrate your subject. For example, as English trainers, we often use the little known fact that the country in the world where the most people speak English is not the USA or India, it’s China.
Use one or two quotes if they reinforce your mission. You don’t have to name the person who said it, especially if they are obscure. You can say ‘As someone said…’
Native speakers can successfully incorporate jokes into their presentations. However, we have found that non-native speakers often can’t. A joke usually requires timing or pronunciation skills that a non-native speaker doesn’t have. Also different cultures can be offended by jokes that we might find funny.