Discover, How to Plan a Presentation for Maximum Effect

Thankfully gone are the days when presentation skills training courses were all about how to put a power point slide show together.

We now realize that although the power point or other visual aids are a vital part of presenting, the success of the presentation is about you and how you get your message across to the audience.

Just think of this, you suddenly receive an email requesting you to give a 15-minute presentation on your role in the company to the Board of management. Where do you start?

To keep things simple you should consider what some presentations skills training courses refer to as the 2 P’s that stand for Plan and prepare.
When we look at planning a presentation, the type of questions we should be considering are as follows:

Who are the audience?
What are their expectations?
What do I need to cover?
What do they already know?
What do I want them to do after the presentation?

I love that last question as that determines how to structure the presentation, for example if after the presentation you are hoping that they will see you as an integral part of the organization you can get this message across. If on the other hand you are just giving them information for an update your presentation can be based with the goal in mind of sharing information.

What do I need to cover? This is an area where so often on presentation skills training courses delegates make mistakes. They believe they need to cover everything, when in truth this is normally overkill and you should be prioritizing what you need to cover by using 3 simple questions:

What must I tell them?
What could I tell them?
What would be nice to know, but only if time permits?

Many people on presentation skills training courses start off by putting the subject of the presentation in a circle on a sheet of paper and then working from that. This can be achieved by either brainstorming or as a mind map. Once the paper is full they then prioritize the most important messages that need to be covered.

The next crucial step is to put the messages they have decided to cover in some form of logical order, which will make sense to the audience. From there you can develop headings and sub headings and start thinking of how you can reinforce your message with the use of visual aids.

When it comes to visual aids always remember the word visual, all too often we see presentations on power point with words, words, and more words.

Thankfully gone are the days when presentation skills training courses were all about power point slides.

About the Author: Frank O'Toole from Premier Training Courses has been teaching people to get their message across through coaching and presentation skills training that works. Premier Training Courses, let's achieve.