A good presenter will ensure their audience remains engaged from the first minute to the last. The six most important skills you can work on are:

1. Knowing your audience

2. Having a clear message

3. Using visual aids effectively

4. Keeping your energy up

5. Being prepared

6. Practicing

Knowing your audience

When you have any type of presentation to do, the most important thing to consider is how well you understand your audience. What do they need to hear from your presentation and how can you make it as relevant and valuable as possible for them?

It all starts with researching who you will be presenting to, whether it’s one person, such as a sales discovery call or a huge room full of people at a keynote speech. Each presentation you give should be tailored for each new audience, focusing on their needs, wants and pain points. Your research can include reading industry publications, conducting surveys, and talking to customers directly.

Your message

As above your message should focus primarily on meeting your audience’s needs. What do you have that they desire or how can you help solve their problem? Try to consider how you present what you want to say about

yourself, your products or services to ensure you put the audience at the heart of what you are talking about.

Let’s look at an example to illustrate this.

Imagine you are a business coach offering one-to-one and group business coaching.

Your key message is that you provide a structured proven approach that works across the five main areas of business - sales, marketing, finance, operations and HR to improve business performance.

However, it’s not enough just to say that, you need to dig down into the real issues that clients are facing and be explicit about how your service helps them solve their problems. You need to make your audience feel something, whether that’s relieved that they’ve found the right help or excited for the future.

Your visual aids

If you are doing a keynote speech, you’ll probably need some visual aids to help you tell the story. You may have heard the phrase ‘death by Powerpoint’ which is used when presenters have far too many slides that are densely packed with information making them almost impossible to digest.

Your visual aids, whether slides, flipcharts, photos or handouts need to add to what you are saying but not in a way that distracts the audience. Powerpoint (or other similar) slide decks should align with your brand identity and be pleasing to look at with small amounts of text on each slide along with relevant graphics or photos. If you aren’t skilled at producing slide decks, this is a great task to outsource to a Virtual Assistant who can take your messages and help you present them in a visually attractive way.

Energy levels (you and your audience)

Another important skill of a good presenter is the ability to judge the audience reaction and energy levels and make appropriate adjustments to the delivery to manage the interaction. As a presenter, you’ll need to keep your energy levels high to keep the audience engaged and have some re-energising strategies to help your audience with their focus too. If you are presenting as part of a longer programme of speakers, you may need to give your audience an opportunity to move around between speakers so that they don’t drift away or drop off during your presentation.

Be prepared

Prepare your presentation ahead of time so that you ensure you cover all your key messages in a way that resonates with your audience. If you are trying to write or create your presentation and visual aids the night before you are due to present, you are much less likely to create a quality product that’s audience centric.

Practice

Run through your presentation at least a couple of times on your own, timing it to make sure you can deliver it at an appropriate pace for the intended audience. Record yourself speaking and listen to it - are you speaking too quickly or pausing for too long? Good timing is key to keeping your audience engaged and focused.

If possible, ask someone to listen to your presentation and give you feedback on what works well and what doesn’t work so well.

Do you need help honing your skills as a good presenter?

Are there any aspects of good presenting skills that you find challenging? If you need help putting together a slide deck that aligns with your business messaging and branding or you want someone to practice your pitch on who can give constructive feedback, please give me a call on 07932040454 or email me at

I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn so please send me a request.

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