When you give a presentation, you don’t have a big window of opportunity in which to impress your audience.  The rule of thumb is: if you don’t engage your audience physically, emotionally, or intellectually within the first 30 seconds of your presentation, you will lose your audience.   They’ll use an internal remote control to turn you off.   So, you really need to be organized.

I use a 12-step formula, and it works every time!  In my last blog, I talked about the first four steps:  (1) Determining your purpose (2) Brainstorming ideas and strategies, (3) Writing down – but not judging—lots of ideas, and (4) Clumping your ideas and material into manageable groups.

The next four steps in my formula are:

(5)    Determine a theme
Circle key words/phrases in idea clumps.   Compare these key words with the purpose you identified in the first step. Create a simple, clear, emphatic, memorable phrase or sentence that encompasses your purpose/audience/main ideas (e.g. “Chart your course while in safe harbors.”).  Weave this theme throughout text, visuals, your introduction and conclusion, and your question and answer period.

(6)    Spice up your organized material
Use analogies, stories, acronyms, music, visuals, audience interaction, and otherwise surprising, unusual, colorful, and unforgettable content elements.

(7)     Create your introduction and conclusion
Write your introduction and conclusion to match, support, and fuse your purpose, points, theme, and memorable moments. Repeat your purpose and theme in the introduction and again in the conclusion. (Notice how late in the process you create your introduction and conclusion.)

(8)    Create transitions among the “parts” of your presentation
Put your transitions in places where your audience needs organizational guidance. Vary your transitions:  use rhetorical questions, summary sentences, etc.  (By the way, this is typically the most neglected step in professional presentations.)

I’ll go through the last four steps in my next blog.  Next time, we’ll talk more about visuals, questions-and-answers, and practicing both your delivery and the question-and-answer portion of your presentation.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 11:39 am and is filed under Presentation Skills. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.