Presenting with
Credibility via 20-Minute Planning
by Suzanne
Bates (Women's Business Boston)
There may be nothing so depressing as looking at
your calendar and discovering you have to give a presentation. The pressure is on to make
it good, but time is running out.
What do you do? Too often the answer is the wrong one: Put it off
until the last minute.
Take the example of a busy marketing executive who
fell into a monthly rut. Hating to even think about putting together a big presentation,
she'd procrastinate until the night before the meeting and then, reading lifelessly
without time to practice, she'd appear unprepared and uninterested.
No matter what stage you've reached in your
career, presentations are essential to your credibility. Most people, consciously or not,
make a connection between speaking skill and professional competence.
It's actually simple to take the anxiety out of
preparing and delivering most presentations--and all it takes is 20 minutes. The hardest part about getting started is knowing
where to start. The very worst thing you can do as a speaker is to
talk about what is important to you.
The first rule of any presentation
is: Know your audience. People are there to hear you talk about them. So, begin by asking:
What does the audience want to know? This sounds like a no-brainer. But
you'd be surprised how many speakers forget the responsibility that goes with being
center-stage.
Thinking of the audience,
first write down the questions you think they'd ask.
Organizing a
presentation is the hardest part, and knowing where to begin is half the battle.
Let's say you are giving a talk on your company's
new media plan. In two to three minutes, if you put yourself in your
audience's shoes, you should be able to write down 10 to 12 questions they're likely to
bring up. The list would look something like this:
What are
we doing and how does it affect me? Why are we doing it? What's it going to cost? How did
we decide on this plan? Why do we think it will work? What decisions do I have to make?
What alternatives are there? When is it going to happen? How will we measure success? Who
gets credit for this idea?
After you've asked the
questions, spend the next several minutes answering them. Talk out each bullet point. If
necessary, jot down notes next to each point. To be certain you're getting it right, record your
talk on an audiocassette. Listen, revise, and then go back and practice one more time.
Don't look now but you've just written your
speech, and you know it will be a good one because it tells the audience what they want to
know. You'll have the added benefit of avoiding surprise follow-up
questions, since your presentation should have answered most of them in the first place.
Most important, you'll sound brilliant.
There is nothing more compelling and memorable
than a speaker who gives a speech to an audience while appearing to have a
conversation--and enjoying herself while she's there. The marketing executive mentioned earlier revised
her strategy, and the difference in her performance was so dramatic she couldn't wait to
give her report the next month.
By staying focused on your audience, the 20-minute
plan doesn't just save time--it eliminates pain.
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