Looking out into a sea of faces while standing on a stage can be one of the most intimidating experiences of your career. It doesn't matter if it's a group of 12 people in a board room or an auditorium filled with thousands of people -- giving the perfect presentation is no easy feat. It's also pretty critical to your success in delivering the message you want to deliver.
Last week, 2,800 marketers converged on Boston for INBOUND 2012 (It sold out, so you better get your tickets for next year's event now!), and world-class speakers gathered to share their expertise on inbound marketing. During the conference and its preparation, some guidelines for giving great presentations emerged, and we wanted to share those lessons with all our awesome blog readers. Follow these 10 commandments, and you'll be well prepared to wow the audience during your next presentation.
The 10 Commandments for Giving the Perfect Presentation
1) Understand Your Audience's Sacrifice
Think about it: if you're speaking to 100 people for an hour, you're consuming 100 hours of time. This is time your audience could be spending at the office, with their families, catching up with friends, or working on other projects. So before you utter your first word on stage, understand what your audience has given up for you, and make sure you've invested an equal amount of time in preparation to make their time worthwhile and well spent.
2) Be Infotaining
Teaching isn't enough. Yes, your audience wants to learn, but in order to soak up all the knowledge you're giving them, they need to be interested and paying attention. This is why it's important to incorporate some humor and a compelling story into your presentation. In other words, you need to inform your audience in an entertaining way: be infotaining. Furthermore, be personable. Tell personal stories, mention your pets, and mention your kids; find a way to make a personal connection with the audience to keep them engaged.
3) Work the Room
Don't stand in one spot on the stage for the whole presentation. On the other hand, don't walk around so much that it's distracting. Instead, before you begin your talk, pick 4-6 people who are spread out randomly throughout the audience. Then do your best to speak to each of these people during your presentation. This will help you naturally walk around the stage and address all portions of the audience, making everyone in the room feel like they're a part of your presentation.
4) Be More Energetic Than Ever
Speaking to large audiences requires you to be a more energetic version of yourself. Project your voice, sound excited, and make sure your passion for the topic comes through. The more energy you have, the more engaged the audience will be, and if you're excited, your audience will get excited. But if you're lame and boring, there's a good chance your audience will also be bored.
5) Give the Audience Time to React
When you're on a stage, a second or two of silence can seem like forever. But in reality, it's exactly what your audience needs. If you make a joke, give them a couple seconds to laugh. If you're showing an interesting statistic, give it a second to sink in. If you're trying to get across a complex or particularly important idea or concept, say it, pause, and then say it again. Giving your audience a few seconds to react or absorb the information you're giving them is one of the simplest things you can do to make your presentation instantly better.
6) Plan Audience Interaction
For smaller audiences, planned interaction is critical. It's a great way to get the audience engaged and demonstrate that you understand what they want to hear. Prepare questions to ask your audience, and time when you will pose the questions. However, be warned: the bigger the audience, the harder it is to ask them questions and expect a response. Plan ahead for all of your interaction based on the size of your audience.
7) Let the Audience Love You
In EVERY case, the audience desperately wants you to succeed on stage. In fact, they're actually afraid FOR you. If you've ever attended a session during which the speaker totally tanked, you know that it's intensely uncomfortable to watch someone choke on stage. So the more it looks like you're confident and having fun up there -- no matter what is going on in terms of tech glitches, getting stuck on your words, forgetting something, or whatever else it may be -- the happier and more satisfied your audience will be with your presentation. Remember: your audience has no idea what you plan to say, so if you mess up, they probably won't know you messed up. Be confident, and let them love you.
8) Make Sure Your Presentation Has "Ups and Downs"
Presentation design and training export Nancy Duarte writes a lot about this topic in her book, Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences, and it's a really great read. The basic premise is that, as a presenter, you can't constantly keep building your audience up and up during your presentation, and the best presentations have a key element: hope. In order to create hope, you need to provide your audience with "ups and downs." Specifically, you need to flip flop back and forth between the current problem you're addressing and the new solution you're offering to solve it.
Example:
The "Down": Buying emails lists and SPAMing them doesn't work.
The "Up": Building an opt-in email list will radically transform your email marketing.
9) Plan for Laughs and Applause
Your presentation is nothing short of a performance. As you're prepping and practicing for your talk, plan to do one session where you focus solely on when you should anticipate and pause to encourage audience reactions such as applause and laughter.
10) Know Your Surroundings
Whether you'll be presenting in a small boardroom or ginormous auditorium, you should try to know as much as possible about your surroundings ahead of time. How much space will you have to walk around? Will there be a confidence monitor available for you look at your slides without referring to the screen behind you? Where will your audience be sitting? Will you have a remote control to advance your slides? These are all important questions to answer to make you feel confident and amply prepared before you take the stage for real.
These 10 commandments are useless without practice, and winging it will only get you so far. Just like you notice the design difference between an iPad and other tablets, it's easy to notice the polish of a presentation that has been practiced and refined. Practice in front of a mirror, or in a small group. Have a clear goal for each of your individual practice sessions. For example, in one practice session, you might work on your transitions between key points, whereas in another, you might work on the timing of your jokes.
Got it? Now take the stage and shine!
Photo Credit: comedy_nose
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Tommy Spero 2:08 PM on September 07, 2012
Great article Kipp, and timely as well. I am preparing 3 presentations for a small business group of potentially 75-100 this Sunday. Some good takeaways here that I am already going back to my presentation to use.
Thanks!
Allie 2:24 PM on September 07, 2012
These are such great tips for giving a presentation! Sometimes you just need a really great example to hone your presenting skills. Here's a post we did about 5 ways Bruce Springsteen can help you with your presentations; http://sixstoriesup.com/five-for-friday-5-ways-to-perform-like-bruce-springsteen/
Joan Zietlow RN, BMC, HHC 2:27 PM on September 07, 2012
Great reminder article. I am in total agreement with your 10 points. I use them all and they work for me. Only thing I would add is that if you can find some fun props to create additional interest it makes it even more fun.
Pooky Hesmondhalgh @PookyH 2:52 PM on September 07, 2012
What a fantastically useful blog post! I particularly like the concept of being 'infotaining' - that is a word I'm going to adopt and a concept I'm going to live.
What's your opinion on the slides within presentations. I try not to include more than a tweet's worth of words on a slide as I prefer people to listen to me than read the slide behind me - do others agree or should I try something different?
Michael Gowin 3:33 PM on September 07, 2012
Good list, Kipp, and the advice to rehearse can't be overemphasized. This is really a key place where many presentations fall down. Practice is essential to delivering a great presentation!
Justin Dart 5:44 PM on September 07, 2012
I would add two more. Don't write out what you want to say and don't start with slideware. Start with a whiteboard or a piece of paper. Pretend you are an old man sipping lemonade on a porch just talking it up with your friends. If you know your stuff, you won't need any software.
Nigel Openshaw 6:59 PM on September 07, 2012
Yeah, I have to agree with you there. It all comes down to the fact that you have information and they want it. Why would they want to fail?
I would also stay away from slideshows as much as possible. Who ever wants to sit though a family photo collection?
Keller Coleman 9:35 PM on September 07, 2012
You nailed this one! Excellent points on how to speak in front of audiences.
Great information that any new speaker needs to know.
Gaurav Parikh 11:46 PM on September 07, 2012
I'm a veteran speaker and trainer on Capital Markets for the last 20+ years in India and Overseas
A couple of crucial elements
Ensure Time Management and stick to the Topic
Avoid Sexist,Religious or Racist Humour ~ see that the humour is relevant to your talk
You may find hecklers or trouble makers sometime in the audience or among participants ~ never get red faced or provoked by them needling ~ also ignoring them can back fire ~ and being consdescending too can be self defeating ~what I do is use them as props to face the audience and debate their views with the whole audience in a humorous way turning their views upside down gently and bringing them on track ~ I've experienced them turning into fans ! ~ sometimes aggressive participants have a load of questions fired at you and this can disrupt your presentation sequence ~ quiely with confidence and firmly take one or two questions and move on assuring them of a Q & A session later or they can interact with you on email or other modes later
Always dress elegant ~ if your shirt is not tucked in well or you keep fiddling with your tie or belt it distracts the audience ~ unless you're an eccentric Nobel laureate who could not care less and neither will the audience !
Always remember to graciously thank a few who have organised the talk
Hope these pointers help
Gaurav Parikh 11:46 PM on September 07, 2012
I'm a veteran speaker and trainer on Capital Markets for the last 20+ years in India and Overseas
A couple of crucial elements
Ensure Time Management and stick to the Topic
Avoid Sexist,Religious or Racist Humour ~ see that the humour is relevant to your talk
You may find hecklers or trouble makers sometime in the audience or among participants ~ never get red faced or provoked by them needling ~ also ignoring them can back fire ~ and being consdescending too can be self defeating ~what I do is use them as props to face the audience and debate their views with the whole audience in a humorous way turning their views upside down gently and bringing them on track ~ I've experienced them turning into fans ! ~ sometimes aggressive participants have a load of questions fired at you and this can disrupt your presentation sequence ~ quiely with confidence and firmly take one or two questions and move on assuring them of a Q & A session later or they can interact with you on email or other modes later
Always dress elegant ~ if your shirt is not tucked in well or you keep fiddling with your tie or belt it distracts the audience ~ unless you're an eccentric Nobel laureate who could not care less and neither will the audience !
Always remember to graciously thank a few who have organised the talk
Hope these pointers help
Andrea Edwards 12:26 AM on September 08, 2012
This is an excellent post offering great guidance. The one thing I would definitely add - being based in Singapore and working across Asia - the speaker must understand the local dynamics and cultural sensitivities of the market where they are speaking. A lot of international speakers do the rounds in Asia, cracking jokes that show no understanding of the culture. Sometimes jokes bomb because the audience doesn't get it, other times it's because it is offensive. It's very uncomfortable when this happens. Also include examples of the market you are in. If you are constantly referring to examples from your own country, the audience gets bored, and by not making it relevant to them, they are not bought into what you are talking about. To prepare for a speaking engagement in a country/market you do not know, ask colleagues who have spoken there (but ask people who are really aware of cultural sensitivities), but the best advice you’ll get is from people living in the country. Call or Skype them in advance, but better yet, arrive early and practise in front of them. They will tell you what works and what doesn’t - but it will need to be with a peer. Someone junior to you may not tell you what they think.
Focusing on Asia, the people here are more humble – so flashy, abrasive language doesn’t always go down very well. That applies to the tone of any content you create for this market. Oh and don’t expect everyone to be jumping out of their seats with questions and feedback – many times you’ll ask for questions and get silence, although that aspect is definitely changing. Just a little insight on a really dynamic part of the world!
Deborah Richmond 11:08 PM on September 08, 2012
Love the suggestions under "Work the Room". I never thought of picking 4 people to point my presentation to, all in different parts of the room. It's sort of what I do already, but this is very specific. Thanks!
Mandy Cochrane 2:34 AM on September 09, 2012
This is very timely - I'm preparing for my first presentation in just under two weeks time and quite frankly I'm already having sleepless nights waking in a cold sweat at the prospect! Some great points here which have already calmed me down and got me thinking much more positively, thanks!
Elizabeth Greenfield 8:40 PM on September 09, 2012
In your first paragrapg, you say, "It's also pretty critical to your success in delivering the message you want to deliver." I have a problem with this sentence (aside from using the same word twice in one sentence): to what does "it" refer?
Nancy D. 12:30 PM on September 10, 2012
Let the audience be the hero! --"Audience insights and resonance can only occur when a presenter takes a stance of humility."-- Thanks for the article, Kipp!
Micke Gyllstedt 1:38 PM on September 11, 2012
As a minister I found interesting in how i might could use this in my preachings