5 Ways to Take Your Presentation to the Next Level

Presentations catalyze and catapult your success

Presentations are complete game changers for your business, career and life, but only when they’re done superbly well.

They can take you from no clients or no audience to overbooked and sold out in one standout session.

At work, being a skilled presenter will get you more interesting projects, promotion opportunities and leaders reaching out directly to you. You will invite more opportunities to grow at a rate faster than any other performance measure.

Why do presentations get so much attention? It’s not an oversaturated market. Despite the number of PowerPoints people must suffer through daily, most people will do everything they can to avoid giving a presentation due to a fear of public speaking.

So those who do them well shine to the nth degree with only a fraction of the energetic investment needed to get there.

Leaders, on the other hand, know that presentations are a critical foundation to your (and your organization’s) advancement.

But they’re not easy to master

Even the most seasoned speakers and leaders face challenges in managing time. Furthermore, an 18 min TED-talk style presentation can take 100 hours to develop. A shorter presentation time often means more work to make it impactful not less, and on top of all your leadership responsibilities, you’ve got a high-performance lifestyle and household to look after.

So when you need to edit for clarity, concision and insight, where do you look for your info and data points? Who helps you pull together the most relevant case studies or illustrative examples to demonstration your points?

Confidence in speaking really comes from two things: 1) Knowing your material 2) Practice in front of an audience. You will never completely eliminate speaking anxiety, but with continual practice and exposure, you get less sensitive to the impacts anxiety may have on your performance.

How do you handle presentation opportunities?

Do you worry about putting your audience to sleep?

Or getting called out on something and causing disagreement.

What about looking bad?

The truth is that most presenters I see are afraid of speaking, so they stay in their heads and work on their talks by working on the slide decks using formatting tools instead of speaking or writing.

They test out new colours instead of new angles.

They polish punctuation instead of curating better stats.

They read instead of speak to practice.

Presentations deserve your best attention

Most people spend 90% of their effort making only a 5% improvement to their presentations, and you have limited time, so you want to focus where it matters.

Over my career I’ve built 100s of presentations, masterclasses, events and pitches.

Presentations all start the same way—we focus on getting the information we want to convey out of our head BUT where we should start instead is with getting into the heads of our audience.

Focus where it matters—your audience

Speakers get counterproductive advice from the speaking coach industry all the time about blocking, memorizing and performing. Those things will elevate your presentation, but none of that stuff matters if what you’re saying doesn’t resonate with your audience. Unlike speaking coaches, I’m a trained writer & designer, not a trained actor. I like a stage for the platform it provides my ideas, not the spotlight it gives to shine.

For me, presentations are 100% about your audience. They are not about you, your insecurities, your ego or your talent. Leave that all on the stairs up to the podium and give your audience content that shifts their world view.

You’ve probably heard about Mel Robbin’s famous 5 second rule TED talk. Well, did you know the actual title of her presentation was “How to stop screwing yourself over”? The 5 second rule was a concept she introduced toward the end of her presentation! Instead, it was the AUDIENCE that ran with it and brought it to life—turning 5 Second Rule into a best-selling book and Mel Robbins into a household name, friend of Oprah and champion of thousands of people getting what they want in life.

Who says your idea can’t be the next 5 second rule?

Below are some of my favorite ways to get audience-centric with your presentations.

1. Get away from the computer

Most presenters work on their presentation by working on the deck. Instead, get away from the computer. No one has their best ideas sitting behind a screen.

Get out into the world and find inspiration in an unlikely space. Take pictures. You might notice that an unusual French pastry’s construction is the perfect metaphor for your new strategy while also finding an interesting story to captivate people’s attention.

2. Create a branded experiential takeaway

I’ve seen presenters spend thousands of dollars on sponsorships only to rely on the “contact me” slide at the end of their deck to capture leads. If you’re not offering a valuable takeaway for your audience already, you’re missing an opportunity.

No time to create one? Include a QR code at the end of your deck to a landing page where in exchange for email, audience members can get a copy of your slides. It takes an extra 10 minutes to set up.

3. Start a story vault

Have you ever noticed how charismatic leaders always have great stories to tell?

The C-suite I’ve worked with have developed effective stories over time because they’re always sharing and refining. But they’re less like writers in gathering them and more like comedians in refining and testing them for audiences.

But the truth is, if you’re not actively reflecting and developing new stories regularly, you’re not improving the breadth of your stories.

One of the best methods I’ve seen to do this is Homework for Life via Matthew Dicks. Your day memory doesn’t have to be longer than Excel row.

4. Keep it to 3 main points

When’s the last time you saw a 40 minute long presentation carved up into 7 section dividers?

Or signed up for an online course only to face the course homepage with 47 modules staring back at you?

Your presentation is not a textbook. This isn’t a table of contents. Your audience is getting information from you via audio and slides—and once you get to chapter 7, you’re not going to remember what was in chapter 1.

Presentations are the Twitter version of business content. You’ve got 30 minutes to convey as much information as 47 modules, and you’re not writing a textbook.

All the neuroscience is clear when they recommend keeping it to 3 main topics. If you have to have more, bucket those ideas into three main topics. You never need to stray away from it. Human working memory is limited to 3 maybe 4 ideas, so if you have 7, people will member the first one, the one that connected the most with their own thoughts/stories, and the last one. Don’t waste your effort on more than 3.

5. Use 100% your own content.

That means photos and words.

Some of the most engaging slides my presenters have shared are just photos of a family vacation or visit to a factory after a natural disaster or someone testing out a new prototype.

No other slide content is more effective than visual proof from your own life. When you have this level of visual evidence, it naturally solidifies your authority not only as a leader but also a visionary.

Think of how you can visually illustrate your content and get some photos.

Don’t be afraid to experiment

There are so many ways to make your next presentation unique, memorable and effective while showing up as your best self on stage.

But it takes a team to make it happen!

My Outspoke Roadmap could be just the thing to take you from good to great presenting. In it, we take a 360 view of your presentation opportunity and identify the best areas for you to focus on so you can get the most return of your time, money and energy.

Want to find out if it’s right for you?