Giving a presentation may not be a easy job for many. At least it is not that easy for me. For people in sales and marketing presentation is their key skill. Apart from that it is a skill which is good to have for everyone.
Well this is not my expert subject to write on, but I have been giving presentations of late to too many people, which includes customers, peers, mid and senior management and next month I have to give a presentation to CEO & President of my company. So what I am going to write further is my first hand experience from a engineering perspective. You may agree to disagree.
- Know your audience
- If the presentation is for the customer, find out what they are looking for. Before the presentation speak to sales and marketing folks to find out that information. Also, find out how technical they are.
- If the presentation is to senior management, bring out the key differentiators form competitors, challenges by the team in developing it, and the benefits customers are going to make. Leave revenue details for sales and marketing folks. You only concentrate on what you can do best.
- Keep your presentation short and simple
- Short presentations are important to get the full attention of your audience. You may loose your audience in between if the presentation is too long.
- Use simple language and not jargons. Remember it is not a sales presentation. Avoid using local phrases. They may not make sense to a person from a different locale.
- Unless it is not a technical presentation, do not include too much of technical stuff
- Run demo on multiple machines
- If your presentation includes a demo, keep multiple copies of your demo running on different machines. You never know what may go down.
- Do not put too much on a single slide
- Make your presentation humorous
- What you seek is the attention of your audience. Include light humor, that keeps everyone awake and make the presentation interesting.
- Be ready for last minute changes
- If there are many stakeholders, then be prepared for last minute changes. Different people have different views, and sometimes it is difficult to get aliened with each of them. Do not try to take everything from everyone. That will create a mess. Instead take best from everyone and leave the junk.
- If possible, make it interactive
- Prepare list of probable questions & answers
- It will not catch you unaware.
- And last but not least, Practice a lot
- Prepare your script and practice according to it. This way you will not miss important points. And remember. “Practice makes a man perfect”. :)
- Practicing also help to finish your presentation in the allotted time.
