Our storytelling tips run down helps you sharpen your narrative. Our PowerPoint tips guide helps you design slides that sell your ideas. And now, our presentation tips wrap up will tie it all together. Read all three, take notes, and start the new year ready to give better presentations!
Please enjoy our Best of 2021 presentation tips guide!
The Curse of Knowledge
The first rule of presentations is to focus your audience. If you’ve read any guides to writing presentations, you’ve almost certainly been told to put your audience first, to speak to them, or to put them at the center of your presentation.
But what these guides never seem to explain is how you actually do that.
With a little help from an excellent podcast, we changed that. In our article The Curse of Knowledge: Or, how to “know your audience”, we walked through 3 clear, actionable tips to help you get on the same page (er, slide…) as your audience, and most importantly, to overcome the curse of knowledge!
How to Create a Great Sales Presentation
Next, we went into even greater detail on how to focus on your audience with 4 tips for better sales presentations.
We frequently hear from people who make or use sales presentations that their audience is simply “decision makers” or “the people in the room.” While it’s a good first step to at least identify them at a high-level, this technique really becomes effective when you start getting specific.
So before you start your next sales presentation, read through 4 of our favorite tips for making sure you connect with your audience.
How to make a good presentation into a great presentation
Finally, we summed up 3 of our absolute favorite, most effective and must use tips for upgrading your good presentations into great ones.
It starts with, no surprise, focusing on your audience. In this case, we cover how to speak to your REAL audience, the one that is in the room or on the other side of the call, and not the one you are imagining as your write the deck.
We also recommend one of our top 3 presentation tips (top 1, perhaps): put your content first. This means knowing when to use rules, when to ignore them, and some best practices for staying focused on your content.
Presentations are a skill you can master
Improving your presentation abilities starts with learning the skills to build effective presentations. That means using narrative techniques to tell your story, crafting slides that showcase your content and enhance engagement, and staying focused on your audience. It might seem like a lot, but with our blogs as your guide, you’ll be presenting like a pro in no time!