There’s a widespread view that you only need to persuade your audience when you’re making sales presentations.

But the fact is that almost all presentations contain an element of persuasion – usually quite a large element.

In the business world, if you’re giving a presentation you’re generally trying to suggest a course of action, taking a stand on an issue or promoting a view. The only presentations not doing this are those that are providing objective information to inform their audience. But these, at least in commercial circles, are increasingly rare.

Most often, your audience will have the facts at their fingertips anyway. It’s what you want to do with those facts that counts. In other words, it’s about persuading them to follow your suggestions. It’s about influencing them.

Understanding this point immediately puts you out in front. Most presentations cover far too much information (again, much of it already known) and spend far too little time persuading. That’s what you should focus on.

So how do you go about that?  There are many useful ideas, but here are five of the most important.

1. Know your audience

This is vital; without it, your chances of persuading or influencing them are remote. What things are important to them, what are they focused on, what is making their life miserable – and how could you solve this problem for them?

2. Ask the right question

This rises naturally out of the first point: if you know your audience, you’ll know what drives them. Ideally, your presentation will establish the question up front – and you can spend the rest of the time answering that question in a way that excites, intrigues and grips the audience.

3. Grab the attention

An arresting opening banishes wandering minds and focuses your audience on what you want to say to them. As a reader and writer of fiction, I cherish great openings to novels. One of my favourites is the first line of “Brighton Rock” by Graham Greene: “Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.” Most people would want to continue reading after that line! A similarly powerful start to your presentation will have your audience sitting up – and more open to being persuaded.

4. Establish rapport

Show the audience that you know what concerns them, that you empathise with them, and that you can help. Humour, stories, anecdotes and an injection of your own personality can also build bridges between you and your audience.

5. Don’t waste the ending

So many presentations end with a simple summary, following the ancient formula of “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them.” Far from being a recipe for success, this is a great way to send your audience to sleep. Attention spans are shorter than ever, so don’t summarise at the end – give your audience something practical to do with the information you’ve given them.

Do all these things, and your presentation is not only more likely to bring about the results you want, it will also be more gripping, dynamic and enjoyable for your audience. Not bad for five little points!

By David Vickery

It is very colourful and reminds you of those long, lazy summer days.

Could be used for a presentation about flowers, gardening or horticulture.  The sunflower and its petals are also a good representation for the colour yellow.

The collection includes hearts, stars, diamonds, crosses, arrows, ticks, pyramids and cylinders, to mention a few.

They can be scaled to size and used within your PowerPoint presentation.

Paul Sykes shares his top tips for standing up and speaking in public.

1.  Ask yourself the $64,000 question

What is the purpose of the speech/presentation?  You should do all that you can to get a clear answer – this will then be the baseline for you to work to.

However, if, after all your efforts, you still can’t get the answer you need, you should decline to speak.  This will save your audience the pain of sitting through a pointless presentation and save you from damaging your reputation through failing to meet their expectations.

2.  Put yourself in the place of your audience

Imagine yourself sitting where they will be and think about what you would want to know, how you would want to hear it and what would impress you.  If you want to do really well, figure out what would really impress you.

3.  Determine how long you will be speaking for

Shorter is always better than longer.  It is wise to make sure that you stop talking before your audience stops listening.  It may be tempting to think about what you want to say first and let the time be whatever it ends up being.  This is not a good idea.

Set your time; again, imagine that you are to be in the audience: how long would you expect to have to listen?  With this answer, set yourself the target to take even less time (say 20-25% less).  There are always ways of summarising and editing your ideas to communicate them in less time.

You are now ready to start to prepare your content.

4.  Gather your ideas

Look for something new to say and if you can’t find anything new, then try to find a new point of view on something familiar.  With as many ideas collected as possible, check them against the purpose of your presentation.  Prioritise them using a four-level scale: must-have, should-have, could-have and would-like-to-have.

5.  Estimate your timings

Estimate the time it might take you to speak about each idea and check how much time your talk might take including all the must-haves, then the should-haves and finally the could-haves.  It is usual to have too much material at this stage and so the would-like-to-haves will be the first to be dropped, followed by could-haves and should-haves.  If you are still dropping ideas by the time you get to must-haves you will have to work hard to reclassify your must-haves and/or reassess the time you think each idea might need.

6.  Structure is very important

Get your ideas in an order that flows and makes sense.  This might be chronological, building to a conclusion, supporting a challenging or surprising claim, or some other logical arrangement.  However, whichever you choose, you need a strong opening and an equally strong close.

7.  Concentrate on the opening and the close

The opening is what gets people’s attention and sets them up to listen to you. The close is what you will leave in their minds.

8.  Keep your notes handy

Very few people are comfortable speaking without notes.  Indeed, there is a strong argument for having notes whether you need them or not, as it shows the audience that you are not just making it up and also that you are not missing out anything important.  It doesn’t matter that this is illogical – it works!

On smallish sheets of paper or index cards write bullet-point notes that are easy to read and that show key or trigger words reminding you of the point you need to make.  Write out any direct quotes in full and feel free to read them, otherwise you should only use your notes as prompts.  Make sure that you find a way of keeping your notes in the right order; dropping them and getting them in the wrong order can be very off-putting.

9.  If you decide to use visual aids to enhance the presentation, make sure that is what they do

Never read word for word from projected slides, don’t use full sentences on your slides except in very special circumstances, and don’t feel that everything you say needs a visual aid.  Introduce pictures and diagrams to emphasise key points – it will add interest and make your points more memorable, and don’t be afraid to ask your audience to imagine a visual aid – the theatre/cinema of the mind is very powerful.

10.  Practise your presentation

Practise, preferably in front of a video camera, a mirror, or someone you trust to give you helpful feedback.  If you can, get a professional presentation coach. Not only will they be able to help you with rehearsal but they will also provide expert advice and inspiration at every other stage of the process. By the time it comes to the real event, your performance will be polished and you will be able to relax more and enjoy it.

11.  Remain calm and composed

Take a couple of deep breaths before you start.  Use pauses for effect throughout the presentation and also to compose yourself.  Make a key point, and then pause for a few seconds for the message to sink it.  You can use this as an opportunity to check your notes.  This is also a sign of a more competent speaker and will make you feel more in control.

12.  Above all, be enthusiastic, be passionate

It’s a people thing – if you don’t care about what you have to say then why should your audience?  Put yourself into your presentation.  Explain why you are excited, thrilled, delighted to be able to speak to your audience, say what this means to you, and be prepared to tell personal stories or anecdotes to illustrate your points.  It is also important that you speak up and make frequent eye contact with members of your audience.  You connect with your audience in this way, building trust and creating strong rapport.

Simply thinking about these areas will make a huge difference not only to the quality of your public presentations but also to your enjoyment. Anyone has the potential to become a much better than average presenter, which can enhance your career, social life and overall confidence.

Paul Sykes

Paul Sykes is Principal Coach at The Speaker’s Friend, an organisation that provides coaching and mentoring services to businesses and individuals regarding public speaking. Tel: 0114 303 0231 or visit the website www.thespeakersfriend.com

If you are looking for a supplier within the Presentation industry then we bring you our on-line directory.

Split into the categories of Presentation Design, Presentation Training and Presentation Software, we list some of the key suppliers in the industry along with their contact details and a profile about their company.

Click here to view the Directory

If you would be interested in appearing in our directory, then please feel free to contact us for more details.

This could be used to cut out and  colour in or they would also make a good teaching aid to learn the different facial components.

They would be ideal to use on a forum or social networking site where you are reluctant to upload an image of yourself.

Here is a printable single page calendar for 2012.

Alan Cooke looks at three more useful features of PowerPoint 2010.

Keys are King

Using the mouse is indispensable these days but if you really want to work fast it is better to keep your fingers where they belong, on the keyboard!  In the ‘old days’ I knew all the ‘F-key’ combinations to perform functions, remember those strips you could place over the ‘F-keys’?  Typing and formatting was a lot quicker then and any ‘techie’ worth his salt will tell you ‘keyboard is king’.  Problem is, there are just too many keyboard shortcuts to remember, never mind the desktop full of applications each with their own ‘F-key’ combinations.

Is it ‘Ctrl+Shift’ or ‘Shift+Alt’ or worse Ctrl+Shift+Alt+what-was-it-now?’  Ugh!

Menu with letter labels

Using the mouse to navigate the menu/ribbon is the norm for most folk but I prefer to use the keyboard.   Not only because it is quicker but in terms of ‘repetitive strain injury’ it could well be the better option.  It seems Microsoft Office 2010 has this in mind because the new ribbon layout presents the appropriate key in a vastly improved way, as can be seen in the image above.

Once you have clicked the Alt key the ‘KEY letter/number’ pops up and stays there.  Much better than the old style ‘Alt+Key’ concept.  Of course, not everything is selectable this way but it does speed things up considerably.  Takes a while to break the mouse habit though – sigh!

Sharing is Caring

Presentations are for sharing, no question.  Whether  a business meeting in an office using your laptop and projector or further afield such as email or CD packaging.  I especially like the ‘pdf’ option.  Sure it’s not a true ‘presentation’ but it is very handy and unless the recipient has a ‘pdf’ editor your masterpiece will remain intact.  Of course, one can password protect ‘pdf’ documents if security is an issue.  The Adobe ‘pdf’ file format is the de-facto  file format for electronic transmission and viewers are freely available.

Embedding Music

Music as a background to a presentation can make all the difference.  As long as you are aware of copyright issues and do not infringe on licence rights, etc. adding a suitable soundtrack can add just that little bit extra to the overall mood of your show.  In previous versions of PowerPoint there were limits to the size of the audio file one could embed within the presentation.  This restriction necessitated supplying a separate file with the ‘ppt/pps’ file itself.

Not ideal.

Now with 2010 it is a relatively easy procedure to embed and save audio files.  Once you have set up your show by embedding your audio clip (and this could even include video clips) follow these steps.

Under ‘File’ select ‘Share’.

This will open the following screen to the right.

Choose ‘Package Presentation for CD’

This will open the dialog box enabling you to name the CD, include and arrange the music files, and, very important, embed the fonts you use. 

PowerPoint 2010 allows you to embed fonts

This is important because the end user may not have the fonts you chose for your presentation.  You also have the option to set separate passwords for both presentation and modification.

The package options can be seen here.

Of course you can simply save your show as a regular presentation just remember to save with your fonts embedded.  Oh, and don’t forget to compress your images/audio/video if file size is a concern.

Your Free Bonus Tip

When you select a portion of text watch for the faint appearance of the most common formatting options.

Here it is fully displayed.  Once you have selected the text, watch for the format options to fade in and move your mouse over the formatting menu.  Choose your options and that’s it.  The best bit?  Like the regular formatting bar, the changes are displayed in ‘real time’ so you can see what the result will be before committing.

That’s it. Please feel free to add your comments at the bottom of this article.  Everyone has their own particular favourites.  As I said in my second tip… Sharing is Caring.

These templates are easy to change and you can add your own text, and colour the individual boxes. You could use one at home on the fridge door to keep the family’s busy schedule together.

Please let us know how you use this calendar and if you have any ideas on how we could change or add to it.