May 28, 2022June 2, 2022 vinay

9 Steps To Ace Your Office Presentations

Spoken English

Acing office presentations is a sure shot way to get into good books of your senior management at work. Sales is at the heart of every business growth. When you are presenting, you are selling. It can be an idea, a product or your capabilities. Here are 9 easy steps you can take to ace your office presentations:

1. Research the audience
2. Elephant in the room
3. Preparing slides
4. Building credibility
5. Prepare for audiences’ reaction
6. Tech Check
7. Common phrases
8. Practice
9. Your Brand

Motto of your presentation is simple – at the end of your presentation your audience is informed, fulfilled and inspired to take action. Let’s take a detailed look at each step.

1. Research the audience

This is the first and the foremost thing that you need to do before any presentation. Though it is the most important step, most people ignore it and wonder why their presentation was not received well by the audience. You need to understand what drives your audience – success, recognition, profit etc. You need to also be aware of different communication Styles

Forest Vs Trees (Big Picture vs Detail Oriented)

If you are speaking to the big picture people, which is usually the senior leadership team, you appeal to them by speaking about larger impact and aligning your presentation to the mission & vision of the organisation. In case the scope of your topic does not permit you to do so you can align it to the organisation or team’s goal for the year. If you are not able to do that, then you should question the relevance of your topic and purpose of your presentation.

If you are speaking to detail-oriented audience, which is usually the technical or the domain experts you should delve into details. You may want to spend some time in relating to the big picture but most of your time should go into details.

It is a common folly of subject matter experts (esp. technical folk) to go deep into technology in their presentations to senior leadership. It is quite natural for them to think of it as an opportunity to showcase their abilities. The leadership is looking from a totally different vantage point. If you are not clear, it is better to ask this question right at the beginning – “For you to get the best out of this presentation what is the one question you want me to answer?” That will give you what your audience is looking for.

Formal vs Informal

Companies have internal levels of formality. Your audience will relate well with you if match their level of formality. When you are not sure, be more formal.

Interruptions vs non-interruptions

Usual format of presentation is introduction, main part of your presentation and conclusion. It’s good to know if your audience likes to ask questions in between or in the end.

Facts vs Emotion

You need to decide whether you want to appeal to your audience with facts or emotions.

Direct communication cultures

US Americans, Australians, Germans & Anglo Canadians belong to direct communication cultures. They don’t like beating around the bush. For such audience

• Get to the point
• Provide facts
• If you don’t know, admit it

Indirect Communication cultures

Southern Europeans, South Americans, Middle East & Asia belong to indirect communication cultures. They like stories. If you are a great story teller, you will appeal to these audience a lot.

• Start with a story
• Tie it to the main point of the presentation

Not knowing the communication styles may lead to conflicts. A direct communication style may be perceived as rudeness by indirect communication cultures. On the other hand, indirect communication can be perceived as deception by direct communication style audience.

Non-Native English Speakers

If you are speaking to non-native English speakers, you need to

1. Simplify your language (avoid acronyms, idioms, colloquialism)
2. Pace yourself a bit more
3. Enunciate clearly

Your best bet is to ask questions to audience and understand their style.

What to do if you are an external speaker?

Ask for the audience profile much in advance.  Connect with some of them on LinkedIn and understand their expectation. It may feel that you are going overboard but there are so few people who take extra effort to understand the other side that your audience will be impressed with you even before you start the presentation. This should take care of your audience research. Let us now look at the elephant in the room!

2. Elephant in the room — Show me the money!

To make sure you hook your audience to your talk, you need to answer the underlying question right at the beginning. Irrespective of the topic of presentation, the first question you have to answer to your audience is “What’s in it for me?”. If you don’t do this, you will not have captivating audience even if you are the best in the industry.

If you have done step 1 well, this step becomes straight forward. Audience attends your presentation for one of these 3 reasons.

• They need information
• Curious
• It is mandatory

No matter what is their motivation, you have to communicate ‘So what?’ or ‘what’s in it for them?’ immediately

• What drives the audience?
• What’s in it for the company?
• Why should your audience listen?

If you answer these questions honestly, it forms a great framework to prepare your slide pack.

3. Preparing Slides

One Central Idea

Gary W Keller’s book – ‘The One Thing’ explains the importance of one thing – one goal, one aim, one concept, one idea etc. Having one central idea for your presentation helps audience focus on what you are presenting. If you are speaking about too many things, you will leave the audience confused. That is the last thing you want at the end of your presentation. You can site any number of examples you want; you can have any sub topics you want but there should only be one central idea.

Template

You can choose a template that is pleasing to the eye. Most of the organisations will have standard templates. You can use it to make your job simple

Minimum Text

It is always preferred to have minimum text in your slides. Having bullet points will allow the audience to listen to what you are saying and refer to bullets to focus on your ideas. If you have too much text, audience will either get bored, overwhelmed or become busy in reading the content in your slide. In any of these cases they will stop listening to you. If you want the slide deck to be a document that can be used for reference post your presentation you can have a detailed version of the slide pack. In my opinion, the deck used for presentation should not be verbose.

Animation

Animation should be used judiciously. If you feel animation can drive a point better, you should use. The challenge with animation is that it can be viewed only in the presentation mode and updating the deck with animation is at times annoying. Overuse of animation can be a source of distraction to your audience. Now that your slides are ready, let’s move onto how you can build credibility before, during and after your presentation.

4. Build Credibility

You may have done the best research possible; you may be an expert in the topic that you are going to present and you may be a very good communicator. It does not matter much if your audience do not perceive you to be an expert. In other words, without establishing credibility with the audience, your presentation will not be effective.

Let me give you an example. If I make a statement “It matters that you just don’t give up”. You may nod in agreement or you may disagree with my statement.

Have a look at the image below:

Image Courtesy: www.pixadunes.com

If Stephen Hawking says the same thing. You have to agree, isn’t it? On a side note, you can read another inspiring story on not giving up here.

To build credibility there are 3 credibility areas that you need to focus on – perceptions, credible actions and behaviour

Perceptions matter! They are the lens through which your audience will look at you and your presentation. If the audience do not perceive you to be an SME, they don’t open their minds to the ideas you are sharing. You need to make a conscious effort so that your audience perceive you as an expert or someone they would want to hear from.

Social media is a great tool in building this perception. Choose a platform and make sure everything you post on the platform is adding to the perception you want people to have about you.

If you are from outside the organisation, it helps if someone credible within the organisation introduces you to the audience. If you don’t know anyone from within the organisation, try connecting with your audience before the presentation, preferably someone high up in the org structure.

Credible Action is easy to measure – every action of yours is contributing to the credibility in some way or the other. Interaction before and after the presentation, amount of research all speak about your credibility. Research should be ample, recent, relevant and unbiased.

For example, if you as an outside speaker start with something like “From what I read in your company’s annual report…” it shows interest in connecting with the organisation. Avoid “hedgers” like – Kind of, Sort of, I feel, I suppose. Replace them with – ‘I know’, ‘in my research I found’ etc.

Behaviour: Credibility is judged by your behaviour. Renowned psychologist ‘Albert Mehrabain’ in his research found out that 93% of a message is carried by non-verbals. Body language, gestures, facial expressions and tone of the voice.

Firmness of your handshake, openness in your body language, confidence in your stance, eye contact with audience – all communicate your brand.

In my opinion 93% is a bit on the higher side. Words you speak are the most important part of your presentation. The non-verbals without a doubt increase the effectiveness of your words and the absorption of the information being disseminated. Moral of the story – the way you present yourself matters!

5. Prepare For Your Audience’s Reaction

Broadly, there are 3 stages of audience in any gathering.

1. Ready to hear message: These are the people who are in real need of the information you are sharing. They are your lifeline. To appeal to this group, you need to take full ownership of the content, showcase your research, identify next steps and create dialogue during the presentation. You need to make sure this group is always engaged and active in the presentation
2. Resistant: These are usually curious people. They are judging your every move. The sole reason they are attending the presentation is to see if you are really going add any value or if their time spent is worth it. It is important you show empathy and let them know subtly that you are well aware of their worries. Your audience research will be of great help here. For example, you can start off with something like “I know the number one worry in the room is ____.” or “It is very valid concern that ___” and then if required jump into the QnA. Use your bullet points in the slides to answer their questions even before they ask. Encourage early dialogue. Engaging your audience means you are giving importance to them and everyone likes to feel important.
3. Apathetic: These are the people who really do not want to listen to your talk. They are there only because attending the session is mandatory. Neither your topic nor you interest them. They feel that you are wasting their time.  If you feel majority of your audience fall into this category, you need to do something to grab their attention. You need to drop a bomb! (Figuratively :)). Start strong, may be with an outrageous (but true) statistic, something that your audience is not aware of. This will hopefully shake them up and open their minds. Communicate the value of your information (answer their question – so what?).  Engage the audience – have someone in the audience as a protagonist and give examples.

You need to have a go-to response for each of the above categories of audience reactions.

6. Small Things That Matter The Most

It is always the mosquitoes that bite you and not the elephants. The small things that you ignore create big problems. The checklist below will help

• Check the room: Check the size of the room to get an idea of seating arrangements. Another important item is to check is if you need a mic. If it is required, you need to take the help of the IT team to check if the mic is working and the volume is fine before the audience arrives. Also, request the IT team to be around during your presentation just in case if something goes wrong
• Slide pack: Some companies do not allow external laptops. Always have 3 copies of your slide pack – in your memory stick, on cloud and a local copy in the laptop.
• Projector: Check the compatibility of the projector with your laptop. You will lose valuable time in getting these glitches sorted and this can be a big distraction to your thought process.
• Water: Carry your own water to meeting room. When you are under pressure it is natural for your throat to go dry. Always have a bottle of water handy and make sure sip small amounts during the presentation.

You can do all the above only if you reach the venue early. If you are an external speaker and are not familiar with the venue, it may take as long as 30 minutes to find the conference room. It is always a good practice to reach well in advance. It is very good for calming your nerves as well!

7. Common Phrases

 Here are some of the commonly used phrases –

1. Greeting & Introduction
   1. Good morning/afternoon/evening. First of all, thank you very much for being here.  My name is ________ from ___________.
2. Beginning your presentation – You should start with answering ‘what’s in it for me?’
   1. In today’s presentation I will show by following new strategy by which we can grow our revenue by 15%
   2. Agenda of my presentation is to take you through our last year performance
3. Explaining the agenda
   1. I’ll begin/start off by… Then I’ll move on to… Then/Next/After that, I’ll be looking at…  Finally/Lastly/Last of all, I’ll deal with…
   2. First/First of all, I’d like to give you an overview of… Secondly/Then/Next, I’ll focus on… Thirdly/And then, we’ll consider… Finally/Lastly/Last of all, I’ll deal with…
4. Starting Phrases
   1. Let me start by
   2. As you are aware
5. Smooth Transitions: Smooth transition from one sub-topic to another makes it easy for your audience to understand the flow. It also shows coherence in your thought.
   1. Moving on..
   2. Let’s now look at
6. Delving into details
   1. Let’s look at the details
   2. Let me elaborate it further
   3. This block diagram shows you what I just explained
7. Emphasis
   1. This is significant because
   2. We need to remember
8. Reiteration
   1. What I mean to say
   2. To reiterate what I just said
   3. In other words
9. References
   1. Based on our detailed research
   2. According to our knowledge
   3. Gartner report/our data shows
10. Suggestions and Recommendations
    1. In my opinion, we should
    2. What we therefore strongly recommend is
11. Concluding the presentation
    1. That brings us to the end of my presentation. I would be happy to take any questions
    2. Let me sum it up
    3. That covers just about everything I wanted to share
    4. Finally, I would like to highlight one key challenge
12. Dealing with questions at the end

Clarification

1. I’m sorry, I did not quite catch that, can you please repeat the question?
2. So, if I have understood you correctly, you would like to know ______
3. I’m sorry, I missed that, can you please say that gain?

After answering the question

1. Does that answer your question?
2. Can we move on?
3. Is that what you were looking for?

Complimenting questions

1. I’m glad you brought it up
2. That’s a very good question

When you don’t know the answer

1. Sorry, I don’t have answer to your question off the top of my head
2. I’m afraid I will have to get back to you on that later
3. Can I please find that out for you after the meeting?
4. As far as I know, ____________. Can I please confirm it to you after the meeting?
5. Sorry, that doesn’t fall in my remit. Tom from pre-sales is the best person to answer the question for you.
6. Sorry, can you please elaborate? I don’t quite see the connection

When you want to respond negatively or sit on the fence

1. Not necessarily
2. It depends
3. To some extent
4. Partly, yes but..

Avoiding digression

1. Can we please take this offline/one-to-one?
2. Would you mind waiting until the presentation is over?
3. Upcoming slides cover what we are discussing, I am conscious of time. Can we please move on?
4. Can you please hold the thought? I will be covering those points in the upcoming slides
5. Perhaps, we could go over this after the meeting

Ending the QnA section

1. If there are no further questions, I’ll finish it here. Thank you very much
2. We have time for one more question
3. Any more questions? _________ I will take silence as ‘no’. Thank you very much.

You can use the list above as a good starting point and build on it. This almost brings to the end of this blog. You have done ample audience research, addressed the main question of the audience, prepared slides, built credibility with your audience, have a go-to response for all possible audience reaction and you remember a list of common phrases. What is the next step?

8. Practice

Practice, Practice and Practice! And after you are done practicing, practice some more. Spend a lot of time practicing. If it takes 10 to 15 dry runs or even more, it is still worth it.

Most natural presenters sound so because of their elaborate preparation. There are no short cuts or inborn talent. I have seen leaders who have exceptional communication skills spend enormous amounts of time practicing their talk making sure:

1. They start well,
2. Introduce themselves and the topic in the right way
3. The transitioning between the topics is smooth,
4. Proper emphasis is laid on the key points and
5. End their presentation with a clear call to action

I remember, for one of key client visits we practiced our presentations for over a month. We went to the office over weekends and practiced in the same board room where we would actually do the presentations. The preparation was annoying with senior leaders correcting us and softening the rough edges in our presentation. I must admit that I was on the receiving end of some stick from my boss. I pulled through it somehow and the practice sessions became easier as the days passed. On the D Day, all our presentations went so well that we felt all the effort, though annoying at that time, was worth it.

If you don’t know how much to practice, you always err on practicing more than the other way.

9. Be Yourself

This is so important but people miss this simple yet profound idea. You don’t need to be someone else or a fake accent or look someone else. Make sure you are dressed appropriately. Have a smile on your face and then speak with enthusiasm and not like you are giving a disease away.

You want your presentation to be an extension of your brand!

If this post has helped you in anyway, please leave a comment below.