Business Presentations

Presentations and Your Career

If you work for an organization you must have considered how to progress your career. Does it simply depend on being good at your job? Well, yes - that's is obviously important, but it's not the only criteria. Look at the people who've already been promoted and you'll probably agree that there must be other factors involved. Were they all just good at their jobs?

The Key

In most organisations one of the key factors is visibility. You must be visible to get ahead. You must be seen by senior management if you want to be regarded as a serious candidate. Presentations are the perfect opportunity to make yourself visible. If you have avoided making presentations in the past you should consider changing that decision. You may be nervous about standing up in front of an audience but it could be the best opportunity you have to advance. Is that worthwhile or not?

Perfect Presentations

Of course there's no point in giving a presentation if the result is going to be a disaster. Every presentation must be as near perfect as possible and that means you must take a professional approach. You must prepare for it. It must be more impressive than the other presentations that customers and senior managers have been subjected to. That means you must spend enough time and effort to get it right.

Your Opportunity

Business presentations are an excellent opportunity to demonstrate how good you really are. If you put in the work you'll not only impress the managers in your own organisation but eventually you'll develop a reputation in the outside world as well. Whenever you speak in public assume that some very important people are listening to you. Sooner or later that's going to be true and the effort you put in will be repaid many time over.

Effective Presentations - Make them work for you

The secret to creating effective presentations is actually very simple. We'll come to that secret in a few minutes but let's start by pretending you want to give a presentation to a customer. You want to sell them your new Mark VI product. How would you go about it? The Standard Approach What most people do is to start with the product. It's bigger and faster than the Mark V so they will want to mention that fact. It's also got a shiny new case and several rows of extra buttons so they throw that in. By the time they're finished there are thirty PowerPointT slides each covered with different machine features. Throw in a few more slides about the company background and the entire presentation takes almost an hour.

What about the Audience?

Now consider the presentation from the audience's point of view. Let's say there are two potential customers - one is the manufacturing manager and the other is the financial controller. The manufacturing manager isn't interested in the relative size or speed of the machine, or in the rows of buttons. He hasn't even got a Mark V so he is only interested in one thing - whether the machine can solve his specific engineering problem. The financial controller is even less interested in the machine. She only wants to know how much it costs, what are the financing options and what is the ROI. From their point of view the presentation has been a waste of time - and that means it has failed to meet its objective.

The Secret

And this bring us to the secret - You must prepare each and every presentation for your audience - not for yourself or even for your company. You must take time to learn why each member of the audience has decided to attend your presentation and you must address their exact needs. PowerPoint short cuts Presentations - The short cuts Did you know that one of the most common phrases that businesspeople search for on the web is "free PowerPointT templates"? Of course that's perfectly understandable. There's nothing worse than being faced with a blank page when you want to get a job done quickly.

Using Templates

The only problem with templates is they all tend to look the same. Just try this experiment. Add text to one of the templates and project it onto the screen. Now call someone into the room and ask them what package is being used. Chances are, they'll know immediately that it's PowerPointT. They might even know what templates you're using! When you give a presentation you must stand out for the right reasons and that means doing something new.

The Old Days

When PowerPointT was first launched only a few computer-literate managers were able to use it ( the rest still used overhead projectors) and their audiences were amazed. Since then more and more people have jumped on the band wagon and now it's used in practically every presentation. It has become too familiar - a victim of its own success.

You Must Stand Out

How can you make your presentations stand out when so many people are using the same tools - many in inappropriate ways? You'll really have to work to make your presentation look and feel different from all the others. We'll be looking at tips and techniques in this website that will help you get the best of PowerPointT. But we will also ask another question - should you consider using an entirely different package? We're biased of course, but we think you might like to look at a new breed of software - you could be pleasantly surprised.