How To Be A Successful Presenter

When we present, we want to be successful
When we present, we want to be successful
Image Credit: Mercy For Animals MFA

Let’s face it, making a presentation is a lot of effort. When we agree to make a presentation just exactly what are we signing up for? We understand the importance of public speaking and so we’ll spend one, two, four, twelve hours on speech research, creation, and practice not to mention the effort of actually showing up and giving the thing. If we are going to put all of this time and effort into something that just might scare the daylights out of us while we do it, it sure seems like there should be a point to all of this. We’d like our speech to be a success. We’d like to connect with our audience, have them understand what we’re telling them, and in some small way change their lives. What can we do as speakers to make this happen?

Come Prepared

How could any of us expect to be successful if we didn’t show up to give a presentation prepared to do our best? Although this sounds like very basic advice, it turns out that it really does bear repeating because we are all living very complicated lives. What this means is that when we agree to make a presentation in a month’s time, that month can slip by very quickly and if we have not spent the time getting ready, then there is a good chance that we’ll be showing up unprepared.

What we need to realize is that being prepared has a great deal to do with time management. Every presentation that we will be giving has a set amount of time that it is going to take us to present. New presentations that we’ve never given before will take the longest, but ones that we’ve given many times before will still require time to customize for the audience that we’ll be addressing. Make sure that you know how much time will be required and then make sure that you allocate the time that will be needed to do your work. This is the one part of any presentation that you actually do control

Believe In Your Message

Just how crafty are you? Do you think that you can fool all of the people all of the time? If you do, then you are wrong. When you are asked to speak on a topic, you had better make sure that you believe what you are saying. If you don’t and then you try to give a speech in which you say that you do believe what you are telling your audience, what is going to happen is that your audience is going to pick up on the inconsistency in your message. Your body, tone of voice, and facial expressions will all give you away. Your speech is going to be a disaster.

We have all been placed in a positon where we have been asked to give a speech on a topic or an idea that we may not fully support. When you find yourself in this situation, and you will, what you need to do as a presenter is to take a very, very careful look at what you have been asked to say. What you are going to need to find is some part of your message that you do believe in. When you’ve found this, then you are going to have to wrap your speech around this point. Your audience will be able to see that you do believe in what you are telling them and you will come across as being genuine.

Match Your Message To Your Audience

Creating and delivering a speech is a complex set of interconnected actions that can take a great deal of time in order to accomplish. One of the major problems that we can run into as speakers is that during this process, we can lose our way. There is a reason that we’ve been asked to deliver a presentation on a given day to a given audience. If we lose sight of why we are doing this and get caught up in what we will be doing, then we’re going to end up doing everyone a disservice.

Instead, what we need to do is during the speech creation process we need to make sure that we take the time to keep asking ourselves the right set of questions. These include things such as what do we want to get out of delivering this presentation? A big question is if it is going to be possible to get what we want out of doing this presentation – things are always changing. Finally, during the presentation we’ll need to be asking ourselves if we are truly getting what we came for from the presentation.

What All Of This Means For You

Presentations are not easy things to do – otherwise everyone would be doing them. When we agree to make a presentation we are really committing ourselves to spending a considerable amount of time preparing and then delivering the presentation in order to share the benefits of public speaking. As long as we are doing this, it sure seems as though it would be a good idea if we could take some steps to ensure that our presentation is going to turn out to be successful. The good news is that this is possible, we just need to do the right things.

No presentation will ever be successful if we don’t show up prepared. Being prepared is making sure that we’ve managed our time so that we’ve been able to create a presentation that will allow us to connect with our audience. When you are making a presentation you need to make sure that you really believe what you are saying. If you don’t, then your audience is going to be able to tell and your presentation is going to fall apart. Creating a presentation can take a great deal of effort and time. During this time, we can lose sight of just exactly why we’re making the presentation. We need to take the time during the creation process to keep asking ourselves the right questions.

As presenters, we want to make sure that we are spending our limited time correctly. This means that each speech that we create we want to be able to deliver successfully. If we take the time to follow these tips, then the next speech that we are asked to present just may be our best one yet!

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: If you don’t believe in what you’ve been asked to present, do you think that you should back out of the presentation?

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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Think for a moment about the last time that you gave a speech. When you first started your speech, was your audience on your side? Did they share your view of the world? Or, more likely, did you have some supporters but most of the people in your audience were adopting a “wait and see” attitude to find out what you were going to say? If this is the case for you, then you need to find out how you can win your next audience over to your side.