Presentation skills for effective presentations

Effective presentation skills have become an essential skill in the modern business world. Gone are the days when you could just throw together a quarterly report in PowerPoint and impress everyone with your technical prowess. Now you have to ensure that your message actually speaks to your audience and that they care enough about it for it to matter.

'Death by PowerPoint' has become a catch-all phrase to illustrate the common misconception that the more PowerPoint slides you have the more impressive the presentation. If you want your presentation to be effective there is just three skills you need to learn:

Tell a story.
Less is more.
Be relevant.

Tell a story

Ever since we were children we loved being told stories. Stories are fun, entertaining and makes us want to hear more. One of the best ways to tell a story during a presentation is to use pictures instead of words. As the saying goes: A picture is worth a thousand words.

The right presentation skills won't put your audience to sleep

Get it?

Less is more

People will only remember three things about your presentation. What are the three things you want them to remember? Focus the presentation on those three.

By having less content on slides, you have more scope to provide the voice over and telling a story. If you have too much content, people will split their attention between what you are saying and what the presentation is saying. Let it be either one or the other, but not both.

When you have to say less, you have to take your presentation up a notch and it forces you to be more precise (and concise). Being efficient is what it is all about.

Make it relevant to the audience

Tailor your message to be relevant to your audience.

Talking to the finance department about how you are going to market your new product is not going to work. They are only interested in the financial bottom line. Determine who your audience is going to be and make the presentation relevant to their interest in it.

You might have been very deeply involved in what you are presenting but everyone wants to know how it is relevant to them. Why does what you have to talk about matter to the people you are talking to? Address this issue and you will address the audiences' most important need.

Getting your presentation right doesn't require complex or technical presentation skills. What it does require is making it relevant to your audience in an enjoyable and concise manner. Getting these three presentation skills right will make you a wanted presenter. So get out there and start presenting.