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August 1-15, 1996 |
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Selling Your Ideas with Confident Presentations
By Marjorie Brody, Brody Communications Ltd.
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Index
Purpose and Practice
Confident delivery
Keep It Visual
Pacing and Reinforcement
Convincing Presentations are Easier than You Think
Microsoft Powerpoint Demo
About the Author
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Visual presentations
are an indispensable part of selling your ideas and
services, no matter what size your business. Yet most
people say they'd almost rather die than get up in front of
an audience. One of the biggest fears, experiencing stage
fright, is closely followed by the fear of losing the
audience's attention. In fact, many people in business use
presentation tools to help them, such as overheads and
software products like the
Microsoft® PowerPoint®
presentation graphics program, which are becoming almost as
common as word processing and accounting products in many
offices. Fear no more! There are several good ways to
manage stage fright, plus keep your presentations focused
and effective to sell your message and project a
professional image.
Purpose and Practice
- Think about what your audience wants. They want to know,
"what's in it for me?" (WIIFM). They really aren't as
focused on you, personally, as you fear. If you stay
audience-centered you don't have to be as concerned about
yourself.
- Pick a purpose and stick with it. If you can't
state the purpose of your presentation in one sentence,
your presentation may be too unfocused. Speaker notes, such
as those you can create with the Microsoft PowerPoint Notes
function, can keep you on track.
- Prepare and Practice.
Organize your thoughts and practice how you will deliver
them. Use a clear outline, one that's reflected in your
overheads or slides, to keep on track. If you need help,
look at the Microsoft PowerPoint Outlining features, or
consider using the AutoContent Wizard to provide a
pre-packaged structure for your presentation.
Confident delivery
- Project your image. Keep your voice naturally paced,
conversational and soft, yet "big" enough to embrace a
room-sized audience.
- Productive pauses. Transitional
slides can give you valuable pauses. You get to compose
your thoughts, and the audience considers what you've said
so far. PowerPoint's transition effects let you build
"space" into your presentation, automatically. And the more
you practice, the more confident you'll feel.
Keep It Visual
Once your purpose is clear in your own head and you're
focused on your audience, you're halfway there. To further
assure success, plan how your presentation will look, too.
- Think visually.
Many people think best with pictures.
Use pie charts, flow charts, bar graphs and visual
depictions of data whenever possible, keeping them simple
and uncluttered.
Microsoft PowerPoint
can help you create
your own visuals or give you a choice of ready-made
graphics from its Clip Art Gallery.
You can also import
tables, graphs, or spreadsheet data from other applications
in Microsoft Office, such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft
Excel, simply by dragging the information over and dropping
it into a PowerPoint slide.
- Keep text brief.
Don't drown the audience in dense sentences - save heavy
data as a handout. A good guideline is the "4 x 4" rule: no
more than four bullets per slide, no more than 4 words per
bullet.
The PowerPoint "Hide Slide" feature also allows
you to temporarily hide slides from your audience to use if
needed as support during your presentation.
- Make it readable. Make sure text is large, at least 18
points. Use color for impact, to help organize information,
and consistently identify and link related topics. Use
light backgrounds and color contrasts to boost readability.
PowerPoint comes with a selection of templates and formats
that follow effective design rules.
Pacing and Reinforcement
- Don't overdo. Keep the number of slides manageable so your
audience has time to comprehend each one. Ten slides with
focused, supportive text and visuals can be more effective
than 100 slides flying by your audience.
- Pace Yourself.
Give yourself 3 to 5 minutes minimum to deliver each slide.
You can use the PowerPoint Slide Meter feature to actually
time how long it takes you to talk through each slide. You
can then decide if you're cramming too many slides into
your allotted time and overwhelming your audience.
- Leave Your Message Behind! Even the best presentation can benefit
from audience leave-behinds that reinforce and summarize
your message. PowerPoint's Notes feature automatically
creates handouts based on your slides.
Convincing Presentations are Easier than You Think
Microsoft PowerPoint
makes it easy to
create professional-looking slides that support your image.
AutoLayouts, Pick-a-Look Wizards, a Clip Art Gallery, and
more than 100 artist-created templates ensure a consistent,
professional look throughout your presentation, even if
you're not a graphic artist. A helpful Answer Wizard takes
you through each process, using understandable language and
logical steps.
Use PowerPoint to brainstorm your ideas, build a slide
show, or create speaker notes and handouts too. The
outlining feature lets you see your ideas in an orderly
procession, and Slide Meter lets you rehearse and
fine-tune. The new, free Internet Assistant for Microsoft
PowerPoint even lets you translate your presentations to a
Web format (HTML code) so you can post them to your Web
site.
Using these tips and Microsoft PowerPoint will help you
sell with more confident presentations!
Microsoft PowerPoint Demo
If you would like to see how Microsoft PowerPoint can help
you create professional presentations,
download (1.7m) the
free Powerpoint Viewer and Marjorie Brody's PowerPoint
slide presentation. If you already have Microsoft
PowerPoint and would like to see Brody's slide presentation
click here
(400kb) to get it.
About the Author:
Marjorie Brody, CSP (Certified Speaking Professional) is
president of Brody Communications Ltd., a communication
skills training company located in Elkins Park, PA.
She has been a professional speaker, coach, and writer for
more than twenty five years and is the author of Power
Presentations: How To Connect With Your Audience & Sell
Your Ideas (Wiley), Climbing The Corporate Ladder
(SkillPath), and three books on business etiquette. She has
also released a video Present Like A Pro. To reach her
company or order Brody products call (215)886-1688, fax
(215)886-1699, or BC8868@aol.com.
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