Scared of Presenting?

I love presenting. That feeling you get when you take center stage, adrenaline pumping and your audience eagerly waiting to soak up all the information you have to offer. But not everyone shares my love of presenting. Others hate it – a staggering 74% to be precise! Some people dread standing in front of a room full of people who they think are placed there to purposely find flaws in everything they say.

So what’s the secret? Why are some people so good at presenting and other’s not so much?

There are three reasons I have come to conclude over the years and that is; some people are artists & some are scientists and some people just don’t prepare!

Presenting is both an art and a science and with any art or science, you can be either good or bad. You can be the most natural presenter and engage your audience from beginning to end but by not applying the right presenting skills, your audience may not remember any information you gave them! They were too fascinated by your excellent performance. Similarly, you can learn how to become a star presenter by applying a scientific methodology to your presentation by using the right amount of statistics and imagery. However, without any personality, your information will get lost in translation. My last observation are those people who could fit into either bucket but simply don’t prepare!

In this blog, I aim to give people my top tips for presenting that includes both scientific best practices as well as incorporating ways to keep your audience engaged and get your personality across. But without the essential preparation, you may as well stop reading here!!

Step 1: Prepare your content

The first thing people do when they learn they have to present is open a powerpoint. This is your first mistake, and believe me I know! I used to get so excited to begin brainstorming, that I would open a blank powerpoint and start jotting down anything I could think of. Powerpoint is not the place to start when you are trying to decide on a theme and gathering information to support your thinking. I suggest you use other tools such as mindmaps. They are a great way to brainstorm and some tools even allow you to collaborate across a team if you are presenting with others. Mindmeister is great for this and they offer a free version of the tool! They also enable you to export your ideas to powerpoint!

When preparing your information, ensure you incorporate a good variety of statistics, customer testimonials/quotes and facts etc. At this stage, prepare questions you can ask the audience, and also prepare answers to any questions you may be asked! The mind map is a powerful tool to help you to visualize this.

Step 2: Tell a story

Remember when we were kids and our favorite part of bedtime was the story you used to get before going to sleep? Fast forward a few decades and my favorite part of a night out or social gathering is still a good story. When it comes to the office, the best stories are had over a water cooler or over lunch. People love stories. So why do we shy away from them in a presentation scenario?

My advice would be to start with a good story, a personal one; something that your audience can relate to and make reference to this throughout your presentation. It helps the audience put your information into reality and by telling them something personal (true or not), makes your audience like you. And let’s face it; it makes that hour go by a hell of a lot quicker!

Tip: If you can add a bit of humor into your story, even better! (So long as you don’t offend anyone).

There are some good books out there on storytelling in a business environment such as Paul Lanigan's 'Soft Tales & Hard Assets'. Personally, you can get overwhelmed by the amount of information and processes around something that is one of the most natural things to do, so my advice would be to just be yourself.

Step 3: Don’t fall into the content trap!

I don’t know about you but as soon as I see a slide with copious amounts of text on it, I immediately zone out! Why do people feel the need to shove so much information into one slide when a picture or graph can do just as good a job as any!

Here’s why. They don’t want to prepare!

The best presenters are those that speak to their slide rather than reading the information off it. To me, it shows they know their content and when you know your content, the confidence naturally oozes out of you, capturing your audience and making them hungry for more! So now, here’s the science bit;

Try importing your information from your mindmap and use smart art which is available in powerpoint to transform your words into beautiful graphs/charts. Wordcloud is another tool I absolutely love. It's great when you want to highlight & prioritize key words which may be buried in a text. It jumbles your text into a beautiful cloud of words; drawing the listener to the most important words or topics. Multimedia images/videos are another great way to spice up a presentation! Dim the lights and let the audience sit through a powerful customer testimonial video of an important C-level speaking about all the benefits they got from your solution. Its far more effective than typing up a paragraph and trying to convey to your audience how your solution has truly helped their business.

One last pet hate I feel I have to mention is the famous 100 customer logo slide. Its clutter, and who likes clutter?! Why do people think this is impressive? Personally, I would rather hear from two customers on their experience working with your business rather than 100 logos that mean nothing to me.

Step 4: Know your audience

I was on a call recently with a large multinational software company who were pitching to us. We spent the majority of the call telling them our problems (which is good for them) but then they went into a generic presentation teaching us about the benefits of a common engineering methodology and not once applied this back to us. That multinational company lost the business.

Knowing your audience and what they care about is paramount to delivering a successful presentation. If I know I am pitching to a CFO, I’m going to pepper my slides with interesting statistics and relevant numbers along with some eye catching graphs and charts. Similarly, if I’m presenting to the CTO, I am going to ensure my presentation is filled with architectural diagrams and deep technical information. That goes without saying. But now there is a move towards digital transformation and with that new roles are being created such as CDO (Chief digital officer) or head of IOT (Internet of Things). This blurs the lines on what information you should present. My advice would be to be prepared! Include both commercial and technical slides (that are of course tailored and include all the other elements mentioned in step 4) but rather than rambling on with your presentation, stop and ask if the information you are presenting is relevant? Ask if they would like to focus more on the commercial or technical aspects? If you prepare for both scenarios, you will be able to pivot and adapt your presentation on the spot. Without that crucial preparation, you will be in the same boat as that multinational company that lost our business. Speak the language of your audience, and you can’t go wrong!

Step 5: Confidence

Confidence will come with preparation. If you know your stuff inside out, the confidence will naturally come. If you are not prepared, you will never be 100% confident. You might be great at ‘winging it’ but if a member of the audience throws you a curve-ball and asks that question you were dreading, you will have lost all credibility! Now that’s not to say that you will know every answer to every question that is asked- it’s likely you won’t! But you will be confident in your ability to say, “Let me take that and revert back to you after the presentation”. Or “Good question. I don’t have the answer for you today but I will follow up with you after with the answer”.

There is, also, a science to confidence believe it or not. Your posture and how you carry yourself gives the impression you know what you’re doing. If you are hiding behind notes (and by the way, never ever do that) or if you are fidgeting, people sense that and it devalues all the hard work you did on your presentation. My advice would be to stand tall, slightly to one side so people can see your slides and fasten your hands loosely together by your stomach. If you tend to fidget, hold something in your hand such as a pointer or a pen. It will help keep you focused.

During your presentation, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Keep the presentation interactive, encourage questions- if it turns into a debate and you are tight on time, ask the audience if they can keep their questions to the end and pick up the conversation again.

Eye contact is another key method we use to show we are confident. If you are uncomfortable with eye contact, pick different points on the wall right beside people. Or look at the forehead rather than eye. What you want to do is keep the audience engaged. If you feel like someone is taking out their phone or checking their laptop, bring your attention to them using eye contact and this will help bring them back into focus.

This concludes my top 5 tips on how to overcome your fear of presenting. I hope you enjoyed it and took something that will help you become a better presenter. For more information on this blog or any of my other blogs, please feel free to email me or chat online.