June 2010 Newsletter

People frequently ask how to prepare presentations quickly. Here are 5 timesaving tips that you can use immediately.

5 Timesaving Tips To Prepare Your Next Presentation

In a perfect world, you’d always have plenty of advance notice before you needed to give a presentation, but, alas, the world is not perfect. Whether you need to prepare a long presentation to customers or clients or prepare a two-minute project update for your next staff meeting, here are 5 timesaving tips to help you prepare your next presentation when time is short.

1. Ask Your Audience. Why grapple with the content and structure of your presentation when you can simply ask the audience what they want to hear? If appropriate, do advance interviews with key people before your presentation or have some standard questions ready that you ask before you agree to speak.

2. Don’t Prepare More Content Than You Need. Never assume that you’ll be able to use your entire allotted time for your presentation. You almost always have less time than you thought. Depending on how long you’ve been asked to speak, shave off a few minutes and then plan your content for the time that is left. For example, for an hour-long presentation, plan 45 minutes of content. For a ten-minute presentation, plan 5-7 minutes of content, etc.

3. Map Out Your Time. Even a two-minute presentation will have a clear opening, body and conclusion. Once you know how long you have to speak, figure out how long each section needs to be and plan accordingly.

4. Quote Yourself. Borrow information liberally from previous presentations that you’ve given when the audience or listener responded well. Once you know what you need to say, ask yourself if you’ve ever said something similar to a different group and say the same thing again. (It’s much easier to do this when you record all your talks.)

5. Limit Visual Aids. It’s easy to spend lots of time preparing PowerPoint slides and handouts instead of planning what you want to say. Remember that if the visual aid could explain everything, you wouldn’t need to speak. Visual aids should only emphasize the highlights of what you say (only a few points per slide, please) and not be a word-by-word transcription. This takes less time for you to prepare and makes it easier for you to improvise when you speak.

Preparation is a key part of a good presentation and these five tips will help you prepare your next presentation in less time, with less effort yield better results. After all, if you spend less time preparing what you are going to say, you’ll have more time to perfect how you say it.

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 © 2010 Chakisse Newton. All Rights Reserved.