Ask the Expert » presentations skills training

You’ve always wanted to give a stellar presentation, but your fear of public speaking is making that goal difficult to achieve.  Never fear!  Behaving confidently is more important than actually feeling confident.  Keep the following tips in mind to appear more confident during your next presentation:

1. You are the expert.  When you feel nervous, remember that you are knowledgeable and capable in this area; otherwise you wouldn’t be giving a presentation on it!  Remembering that you’re the expert will help you feel and look more confident.
2. Use power words.  Make active word choices that tell your listeners you are decisive and motivating.  Instead of saying your company’s service is good, say it is unparalleled. 
3. Stand straight and tall.  Good posture is a simple way of making yourself look poised and confident.  It also helps open up your ribcage which allows you to take deeper breathes to calm you down.
4. Project your voice.  Speak to the person in the back row.  Slightly increasing your vocal volume will make you sound definite and self-assured.  If no one can hear you, they won’t think you are powerful or dynamic.

These tips will help you appear more confident to any audience.  

Tell me about your presentations. What do you do to appear confident… even if you have butterflies in your stomach.

Make Every Presentation Great,

Sheri Jeavons

Virtual Communications Coach

When you host webinars and web meetings, you want to look prepared and professional.  But nothing can ruin that desired image more than being unfamiliar with the technology you are using.  If you can’t figure out how to get attendees to see your slides or use interaction tools, your presentation will look unprofessional now matter how good your delivery and content are.  To make sure a technology snafu doesn’t ruin your online presentation, use these tips:

1. Practice beforehand.  Do a run-through of your presentation on the webinar technology you will be using.  Make sure you know how to advance your slides, share documents, and use interaction tools like video and chat.  If you don’t know how to use the software, take a tutorial. 
2. Do a sound-check.  Ask someone to get on the call early with you so they can help you make sure that your phone or headset is loud and clear enough. 
3. Have tech support.  Have someone on the call with you who knows the software and can help you if something goes wrong.  If you can’t get anyone like this, make sure you have quick access to a tech support phone number for the software.

Technological mishaps can still happen even if you’re prepared and knowledgeable about the software.  What have you experienced? Tell me about your technical trouble and how you handled it.

Make Every Presentation Great,

Sheri Jeavons
Virtual Communications Coach

Your goal is to conduct virtual communications that keep your attendees interested and informed.  But when people attend webinars and web meetings, they have shorter attention spans and feel less accountable.  So how do you keep your audience engaged instead of off checking their e-mail?

1. Provide guidelines for focused participation.  At the start of your session, tell your listeners to shut their office doors and close their e-mail.  Even if they don’t actually do this, at least you’ve established your expectations. 
2. Check in periodically.  Don’t just talk non-stop.  Every two or three slides, reach out to see if there are questions or comments.  Get people to type in the chat box.  Don’t ignore your attendees, or they will ignore you. 
3. Use people’s names.  This personalizes your message.  If someone hears their name, they will be more likely to pay attention and process what you are telling them. 

 These quick and easy tips will help your listeners stay enthralled! 

Make Every Presentation Great,

Sheri Jeavons

Virtual Communications Coach

You always want to sound eloquent and professional when you communicate.  But umms and uhhs keep on sneaking into your speech!  Nothing can kill your perceived confidence and credibility like non-words.  Non-words such as ah, like, you know, so, and umm make you sound unprepared and unprofessional.  To eliminate the use of non-words, take the following steps.

1. Pause and breathe.  Whenever you tend to use a non-word, pause and breathe instead.  This will calm you down and give you time to consider what you will say next instead of the non-word.
2. Make eye contact.  After you’ve paused, look at someone and direct your next statement to them.  Focusing your attention on one person will help your speech be focused too. 
3. Practice with a friend or colleague.  If you are still having trouble eliminating non-words, try having a friend or colleague clap each time you say a non-word.  This will make you aware of how often you use non-words, and will help you realize when you need to take more pauses.

To make sure non-words will no longer undermine your credibility, you need to pause, breathe, and make eye-contact.  These steps will help you eliminate those non-words!

Make Every Presentation Great,

Sheri Jeavons
Virtual Communications Coach

When you have to give an important talk, you are relieved to learn you’ll be speaking from a lectern.  Not so fast!  Lecterns are good for holding your notes, but you need to make sure that you don’t get trapped behind the podium.  Here are some important things to remember about speaking from behind a lectern:

1. Get out from behind the lectern whenever you can!  Wear a remote lavaliere microphone if possible so you can walk around the stage.  If you just stay behind the lectern, you will trap your energy and enthusiasm.
2. Use slides instead of a written speech.  This way, you will be forced to look up and move away from the lectern more often.  If you have to use notes or a speech, mark places indicating to look up and push the papers up to the top edge of the lectern so it will be easier to make eye contact with the audience.
3. Don’t grip the lectern.  If you take a step back from the lectern and don’t grip it, you will be able to gesture naturally and release your energy.  This will make you look and sound more dynamic.

Using a lectern can be tough. If you get caught behind it, it can decrease your enthusiasm and energy.  Use the above tips to help you lose the lectern and stay engaging!

Make Every Presentation Great,
Sheri Jeavons
Virtual Communications Coach

Video can be a great way to connect with your virtual audiences during webinars.  By periodically and briefly using a webcam during online presentations, you can capture your audience’s attention and add a personal touch that helps them identify your voice with your picture.  Use the following tips to help your use of video be appropriate and captivating rather than just plain distracting:

1. Make limited use video.  Don’t leave it on for your entire presentation.  This creates a diverse visual experience without distracting your attendees. 

2. Look directly into the webcam when speaking.  This replaces face-to-face eye contact.  If you look down at your computer instead of into the webcam, you will look nervous, distracted, and dull. 

3. Tell the attendees what you are doing.  Tell them when you are turning the camera on and off, so they don’t get confused and so they can alert you if they are having technical difficulties. 

These simple steps will help you use video sparingly but effectively to create excitement for your virtual audience. 

Make Every Presentation Great,
Sheri Jeavons

Your goal while presenting is to be engaging, personable, and informative.  One of the easiest ways to increase your enthusiasm and connect with your audience while presenting is to tell a story.  But there are some guidelines you should follow to make sure your story doesn’t take you off topic.

1. Relevant.  If your story doesn’t relate to your topic or help highlight a point you are trying to make, don’t tell it!
2. Own.  Tell your own story, not someone else’s.  If you can re-live your own experiences, your personality, energy, and enthusiasm will shine through more than if you tell a story that didn’t happen to you.
3. Short.  Keep the story under two minutes.  If the story is much longer, it will distract from instead of enhance your presentation.
4. Enthusiasm.  The best stories are lively and fun, creating natural enthusiasm. 

Telling stories helps personalize the information you are presenting.  Use the above guidelines to tell an engaging story that will help your audience identify with your information.  

Make Every Presentation Great,
Sheri Jeavons

Whenever you give a presentation, you need to keep your audience’s attention so they leave informed and excited, not confused and bored.  Try implementing the following suggestions to keep your audience captivated throughout:

1. Personal Story/Anecdote:  Tell a brief (under two minutes) and relevant personal story to increase your own enthusiasm and connect with your audience.  Make sure to tie it in to the point you are trying to make.
2. Startling Statement or Statistic: Say something that might surprise the audience or cite an unexpected but relevant statistic.  This will both inform and excite them.
3. Use humor: If you share something funny that is related to what you are presenting, you can keep your audience engaged.  Don’t use offensive humor.
4. Quotation or Familiar Saying: Use a universal saying or quote a recognizable figure to help your audience identify with your information.
5. Question: ask an open-ended question.  Even if you don’t have anyone answer, your audience will at least be thinking. 

Using these tools throughout your speech helps keep your audience interested, excited, and on-track. 

Make Every Presentation Great,
Sheri Jeavons

When you deliver an online presentation, you want your slides to be captivating.  To achieve this, don’t simply take your existing slides from live presentations and put them into your webinar—it won’t work!  On a webinar, your audience is more easily distracted, has a shorter attention span, and can’t see you giving the information.  So to keep your slides interesting for the virtual format, make the following adjustments:

1. Use more slides.  Take the information that may have been on one slide for a live presentation, and spread it out over two or four slides for your webinar.  That way, you will be changing slides more frequently, capturing your audience’s attention.

2. Put less on each slide.  Make sure you only have 1-2 key points per slide.  This will help your audience focus and recognize the important information more easily. 

3. Use bullet points and a minimum font size of 24.  This will help your slides look clean, simple, and easy to read, and it will highlight your key points.

4. 4×6 Rule.  On each slide, try to use only four bullet points with six words per bullet point, or six bullet points with four words per bullet point.  This way, your slides won’t look busy or confusing. 

These guidelines will help your slides become attractive and concise, so that you can keep your audience’s attention. 

Make Every Presentation Great,

Sheri Jeavons

When you conduct webinars and web meetings, you want to engage your listeners by periodically reaching out to them and answering their questions.  If you are conducting a small session (with five or fewer participants) you can handle questions by keeping the phone lines open and having a conversation with your attendees.  But if you are hosting a session with more than five attendees, you need to establish some ground rules for submitting and answering questions to make sure things don’t get out of hand:

1. Let participants know they are muted and should type any questions in the chat panel
2. Have someone on the call with you whose designated role is to answer chat panel questions
3. Check your chat panel every couple of slides to make sure no questions have gone un-answered
4. Prepare a few questions in advance or have a “plant” in the audience to ask questions if the attendees are slow or reluctant to submit questions

Following these steps will help you handle questions promptly and professionally while engaging your virtual listeners. 

Make Every Presentation Great,
Sheri Jeavons