TRAINING SKILLS UNIT 7

1. G

   Skills. Making effective presentations

   The key to effective presentations lies in careful preparation. You need to know about your audience and their expectations; you need to identify your own objectives (do you intend to inform or persuade your audience?); you need to sequence your information in a logical way and you need to know the best ways to create and keep the audience's interest. You should also have your audio-visual aids ready and in the right sequence and should check that the equipment is in working order.

   uidelines on making effective Presentations

Presenting your company

Some rules for making a successful presentation

To make a good presentation you need to

• plan it to the last detail

• make all the necessary preparations beforehand

• rehearse the whole of the presentation, not just bits of it

• let the audience see your better qualities from the start (first impressions count)

• be able to create a positive emotional atmosphere

• structure the session correctly

• focus audience attention on the main points

• leave details for handouts

• strengthen the presentation with visual aids and use them well

• make your speech loud enough, never drop your voice at the end of a sentence or paragraph (mumbling always irritates the audience)

• head up and maintain eye contact with the audience throughout the session

• use body language to emphasize your talk

• avoid using ambiguous words (e.g. some, general, aver­age, moderate etc.) which may mean different things to different people

• keep to the point when answering questions from the audience, make your answers as brief as possible

• pay special attention to the opening and closing courte­sies as the most memorable bits

• be friendly and flexible, try and react to the situation

• make your talk reasonably short

• keep the time limit.

• Most presentations are divided into 3 main parts (+ handouts and questions):

The introduction is a very important, perhaps the most important part of your presentation. This is the first impression that your audience have of you. You should concentrate on getting your introduction right. You should use the introduction to

• welcome your audience

• introduce your subject

• outline the structure of your presentation

• give instructions about questions.

The table below shows examples of language for each of these functions. You may need to modify the language as appropriate.

Function	Possible language
Welcoming your audience	Good morning, ladies and gentlemen Good morning, gentlemen Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman Good afternoon, everybody
Introducing your subject	I am going to talk today about ... The purpose of my presentation is to introduce our new range of ...
Outlining your structure	To start with I'll describe the progress made this year. Then I'll mention some of the problems we've encountered and how we overcame them. After that I'll consider the possibilities for further growth next year. Finally, I'll summarize my presentation (before concluding with some recommendations).
Giving instructions about questions	Do feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions. I'll try to answer all of your questions after the presentation. I plan to keep some time for questions after the presentation.