Delivering great presentations.

I just spent a few days at a conference in Miami, called “Thought Leadership Forum for Digital Marketing”, organized by one of the top global media agencies in the world (where I also had the opportunity to deliver a training seminar on on-line marketing as part of their post-conference agenda, but that is another story for another time).

A forum created to bring media, advertisers, media specialists and marketers together to discuss the trends and potential of digital marketing today.
Many ideas, concepts, theories and success stories were shared by some of the most important industry leaders in Latin America today, who by the way had no easy task at hand, since they had to sow in the minds of the more than 200 people in the audience a clear vision of the strategic role that interactive marketing plays in any brand marketing mix.
But did they really achieve this? I don’t mean to debate whether their proposal was right or not, I myself, as a marketing professional in this industry am an evangelizer of this very important fact.
What I ask is: Did they really clearly communicate the important message they had to communicate?
Not all of them, I think.
I mean, the content was there, but even when the key messages where right there, not all of them were able to bring them out to light.
Why? Because not all of them were prepared enough to do so, not all of them had a clear idea of the messages they wanted to share and clearly not all of them had taken the time to prepare their presentations and rehearse.

So I thought that it would be a good idea to share with you 5 points I think are key to deliver really successful presentations, no matter whether it is to more than a 100 people, a training seminar for just 30, a sales pitch to an audience of 5 or even a lunch conversation with just one person.

1. Before anything else, clearly define the objective of your presentation. Ask yourself: Why are you going to talk about what you want to talk about? What do you want to communicate? What ideas or messages do you want the audience to take away? What reactions do you want to provoke? What actions do you want people to take as a result of your presentation?


2. Know who your audience is. Who are you going to address? What is their background? How familiar are they with your subject? Why do they want to be there listening to you?


3. Have a solid, clear and to the point content. I’ve seen too many professionals, even at this last conference, waste a great opportunity to share great content by trying to make a commercial about their company or products. Believe me, making a credentials presentations to an audience hungry for intellectual content will not help you at all and will only make you loose credibility in front of everybody, whereas on the other hand if you leave the impetuous hunger of just selling, at the office and focus on really sharing your knowledge with the audience, they will not only accept what you have to say but probably will want to learn more about your company and what you can do to help them afterwards.


4. And speaking of content, keep it simple. Remember, people will hardly remember 3 messages from your presentation so think hard about what you want those three messages to be and frame them under a clear “why should I care” context for people to take.


5. Become a great storyteller. People, we don’t always understand numbers, trends, statistics, politics, etc, just out cold. But we listen to, absorb and understand stories. Do you want your audience to still be thinking about your message the next day? Tell them a story they can relate to. Don’t just stand in front of them to read power point slides out loud to them. Know your material and your message. Use impactful visual resources and tell a great story.

Bonus point: rehearse, rehearse and then rehearse some more. The better you know your stuff, the better you will deliver it.

Interested in learning more about great presentation skills? Visit:

http://www.presentationzen.com and watch Steve Jobs at his best.

Oh or contact me about my one day seminar to build great presentation skills.