Archive for the ‘ Planning ’ Category
I know there is a lot of information out there on the world wide web, in textbooks and what we are in school and university. But when it comes to presenting it really is as simple as following a simple plan.
Here is a chart I drew that describes the simple components of a standard presentation.
And really by following this simple guideline when you are planning your presentation you should find that all the various parts fall in to place.
The beginning of a presentation can be a make or break moment in any presentation. So to get the beginning right is very important.
Like “chat up” lines the more complicated, the bigger the chances it will not work. I would always recommend that you use a simple beginning.
For example:
“Good morning, everyone and thank you for coming”
You could then continue and introduce yourself.
“my name is Carl Pullein and I am the Academic Director at the Songpa BCM Language Institute in Seoul”
Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen has a fantastic beginning to his presentations.
Above is a video of Garr at the Synergy Conference earlier this year. Garr uses images from his life, his environment and it tells his audience much more about himself than just standing up with a list of bullet points on the screen behind him.
I also love the way that he uses a little animation to say “thank you” (you will catch all this in the first 5 minutes of the video, but to be honest, you can learn an awful lot by taking 45 minutes out to watch the whole video.
The next stage of the presentation is to tell your audience what you are going to talk about, and how long your presentation will last. For example:
“I’m going to divide my talk into 3 parts – First I will …… then I will …. finally I will …. I expect to be talking for about 45 minutes”
A quick tip: Dividing your talk in to three things is a great number. It is not always possible to do this, but the human mind works much better when it has to organise in threes.
So, getting the beginning right, will set up the rest of your presentation. So when you are planning your presentation, think about how you will begin your presentation, how long the beginning will last, and how can you capture your audience’s attention.
Quite possibly the most important part of a presentation is the use of positive adjectives. Even if your were delivering a eulogy at a funeral, you would still need to use positive adjectives.
Above, is a list of some of the best adjectives to use when presenting a product. However, as I mentioned in a previous post just simply using the adjectives on their own is not enough to give them impact. You need to marry these words to a benefit.
Here are some examples you could use:
“As you can see, it has an attractive case and it is robust enough to be moved around – this means that it is highly portable”
“it has several unique user-friendly features that will be highly beneficial to our ageing customer base”
“It is fashionable which means that it will appeal to a younger customer”
Using positive adjectives gives your presentation a more passionate feel and will give you a way of showing your enthusiasm for the product that you are presenting.
When you are planning your presentation, it is a good idea to write down a list of positive adjectives to describe your product – as in the example below.
Finally, here’s a great clip of an Apple Keynote presentation that isolates the positive adjectives that were used.
Photo courtesy of Flickr House Wallpapers
I am a big fan of House MD, and have managed to see all episodes from season 1 through to season 5.
While watching these episodes I noticed that the show follows a format that we can all learn from when doing a presentation.
The show opens with a scenario that tells you how the illness first became obvious. This could be a scene with the patient doing their everyday thing, then suddenly collapsing and then the opening titles begin. What this does is set the scene. When we do a presentation we need to set the scene early on. Give your audience a sense of what the problem is, why we are talking or what difficulties we experience in our everyday life that your product can solve (but of course at this stage your audience does not know this)
Following the opening titles, we get to see Dr House talking with his junior doctors about the patient’s problem, the initial prognosis is given, and the first treatment is administered. As always, the first treatment does not work and the problem the patient has get gradually worse. When we do a presentation, we need show our audience what the problem is, in detail, set out what we can do to make that problem or difficulty better.
What we need to remember here is that a story is being told, it is unfolding before our eyes, and this is very important when we do our presentation.
During an episode of House we get to see the patient almost die, before the Sherlock Holmes like Dr House comes up with the answer to the illness. In a presentation, we need to build up to the main point. The main message we want our audience to go away with. – Starting with your best point is not going to make your presentation memorable. Revealing the main message towards the end of your presentation will make it much more memorable.
Below, you can see how this transfers into a flow diagram that you can use next time you start planning your presentation.
Finally, you have the happy ending. The happy ending gives your audience that wonderful warm feeling of being part of something special, and that it the most important part of your whole presentation.
Preparation is the key to a successful presentation. But too many people fail to prepare properly. The best advice I was ever given was that when you are preparing a presentation in a foreign language, you should first prepare you thoughts and ideas in your native language.
How to prepare is a very big topic, and I will over the coming weeks go through some ideas on how to prepare a presentation, but the simple procedure of getting your ideas down on paper first is one of the best pieces of advice I could ever give you.