In-House seminar on: Best Presentations Techniques

Duration: 30 Minutes.

Date: 17.09.2012 Monday Venue: Conference Room, BAC, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

What are we aiming to achieve from this exercise? A fresh approach toward delivering presentations. Ability to assess different presentation scenarios accordingly. Confidence and success in our next presentation.

Trainer Name: Sheik Shami Ullah Chowdhury

Trainee Name: Trainee ID:

Presentation: Presentation is the practice of showing and explaining the content of a topic to an audience or learner. In the business world, there are: Sales presentations, Informational and motivational presentations, First encounters presentation, Status reports presentation, Image-building Presentation, and Presentation intended for training sessions like today.

Hardest types of Presentations: Those that Persuade (ex. Influence or convince a potential buyer to close a big sale) Those that Motivate (ex. Encourage or inspire employee toward better performance)

Basic Challenges: Preparing the presentation:

What is your purpose? Decide upon appropriate approach. Who's your audience? Define your audience. Determine how much they already know. How should you structure your presentation? Make sure you have customized the structure. How will you manage those butterflies? Don't try to get rid of the butterflies, just get them flying in formation.

Good preparation is the key to confidence, which is the key to you being relaxed. Prepare, which means plan it, and practice it.

Delivering the presentation:

Grab your listeners' attention: Make it Personal. Draw a hypothetical scenario. .....then hold it: Throw out a peculiar fact. Put them on the edge of their seats. Ask Questions and give other challenges: rephrase the question. Be Empathetic. LISTEN to the question: Active listening. Give feedback: Solicit questions with questions. Limit questions to topic.

Make sure you are in control, and confident. Your audience will see this and respond accordingly, which in turn will help build your confidence, and dare we imagine, you might even start to enjoy yourself too.

Strengthening the presentation with powerful tools and techniques:

Handle the fear: Know your topic. Prepare your material. Imagine questions that people might ask. Don't look that nervous. Build trust: Know your audience and setting. Focus on your audience - not on yourself. Appeal to audience learning styles: Avoid strict Rules. Think before you speak. Auditory (use evocative words). Kinesthetic (use compelling pictures). Visual (make them move - take a vote if necessary).

Good presenting is about entertaining as well as conveying information. People retain more if they are enjoying themselves and feeling relaxed. Aside from presentations techniques, confidence, experience - and preparation - are big factors.

Closing the Big Sale: Create trust. Solve their problems. Do not jump to conclusions. Establish credibility. Elicit audience buy-in through questions. Approach solution from customer point of view. Ask for the sale - polite request for action on the audience's part.

Persuading the Board: Minimize the radical nature of the proposal. Competition. Marketing. Future. Secure the sale.

Build a Presentation that Motivates: Realize that there is a problem. Provide a thorough and honest analysis of the situation. Present your solution. Spell out the benefits of the choice that you want them to take. Get them started on the required actions.

How to Structure a Persuasive Speech: Describe a situation. Give the audience a problem. Offer a solution and suggest an action. Present a decision to be made. Deliver bad news. Impart information.

Remember: Passion is worth more than knowledge. Using a variety of media and movement will maintain maximum interest. Your audience wants you to succeed. They're on your side. The audience will forgive you far more than you will forgive yourself. They're glad it's you up there and not them.

Some diversion that one can use to bring presentation to life, and keep audience attentive and enjoying themselves:

Pictures, cartoons and video-clips, Sound-clips Inviting a volunteer to take the stage with you (for a carefully planned reason) Asking the audience to engage with each other (for example introductions to person in next chair) Prizes, awards and recognising people/achievements Fascinating facts on subject Body language, and the changing tone and pitch of voice.

Ice Breakers & Extra Info: Presenting or speaking to an audience regularly tops the list in surveys of people's top fears more than heights, flying or dying. A common physical reaction to having to speak in public is a release of adrenaline into our system, which is sometimes likened to drinking several cups of coffee. Even experienced speakers feel their heart thumping very excitedly indeed. Good preparation and rehearsal will reduce your nerves by 75%, increase the likelihood of avoiding errors to 95%. (Source: Fred Pryor Organization)

Important: You have 4 - 7 seconds in which to make a positive impact and good opening impression, so make sure you have a good, strong, solid introduction, and rehearse it to death. Don't start with a joke unless you are supremely confident - jokes are high risk things at the best of times, let alone at the start of a presentation. Apologizing will make people feel uncomfortable. If you have to apologize for something don't make a meal of it and try to make light of it (unless it's really serious of course). Start on time even if some of the audience is late. Waiting too long undermines your confidence, and the audience's respect for you. The average attention span of an average listener is apparently (according to various sources I've seen over the years) between five and ten minutes for any single unbroken subject. Break up the content so that no single item takes longer than a few minutes, and between each item try to inject something amusing, amazing, remarkable or spicy - a picture, a quote, a bit of audience interaction - anything to break it up and keep people attentive.

Use no more than two different fonts and no more than two size/bold/italic variants or the whole thing becomes confused. If in doubt simply pick a good readable serif font and use it big and bold for headings, and 14 - 16 point size for the body text. Absolutely avoid upper case (capital letters) in body text, because people need to be able to read word-shapes as well as the letters, and of course upper case makes every word a rectangle, so it takes ages to read. Upper case is just about okay for headings if you really have to.

For our following exercise, Please imagine yourself either as a sales executive who must create a business presentation which could lead to a big sale; Or as an environmental specialist who needs to create a presentation on awareness in order to motivate the local population to start recycling. Now, identify your audience and suggest what kind of media and movements are necessary to grab their attention? (Feel free to ask your trainer for help, if assistance is required)

 For the following statements, please indicate whether you agree or disagree: 1=Strongly Agree 2=Agree 3=Disagree 4=Strongly Disagree

The objectives of the training were clearly defined: The content was organized and easy to follow: The materials distributed were helpful: Participation and interaction were encouraged: This lesson was too time-consuming: This lesson offered valuable information that I'll be able to use in my practical life: The trainer was knowledgeable about the training topics: The trainer was well prepared: The training objectives were met:

What did you like most about the training?

What aspects of the training could be improved?

Are there any additional comments that you would like to share?