Now I would like to talk about how to deliver a business presentation.
Please check how to prepare a business presentation.
If we did a good preparation for a presentation, we’ve almost done. I think we can control how to prepare the presentation but we can’t control it after the actual meeting starts. So be relax since we can’t do many things.
Here are some tips for delivering a presentation.
Speak loud enough
Do interactive
Be flexible
Manage time
Let’s look at it one by one.
Speak loud enough
If your voice is too small, attendees can’t understand what you speak. If your voice is small, attendees may feel you are not so confident.
I think voice volume is a basic but very important factor than we expected. Especially when we do a presentation in a big room, we have to be careful about the attendee sitting in the back.
our voice might be smaller than we expected.
When I was young, I was advised by a colleague that I should speak louder. And I have given similar advice to my colleagues who did not aware his voice is too small. It may be difficult for us to recognize that our voice might be small.
Especially voice volume is important for a conference call. Because we can’t use body language so the voice is the only way to communicate with attendees.
Do interactive
I think the business presentation should be interactive. There are some types of presentations so if there are 100 attendees in a big hall, it should be one way.
But if I assume a typical business meeting is less than 10 attendees, it should be interactive. Because we have something to provide, get, and discuss as explained in Step2: Make a plan.
From my experience, I was really nervous about presentations. The feeling came from the desire to give the best presentation. Before the meeting, I used to prepare what I should say, and during the meeting, I focused on what I was talking about.
Listening to customers is more important than delivering a presentation.
One day I realized the more important thing is listening to the customer’s voice and I changed my presentation preparation. And I have prepared slides to listen to the customer’s voice, not slides to explain. That was the turning point of my presentation style.
Let customers talk more than I.
Then I was less nervous than before. Because I understood I don’t need to do the best presentation. In the meeting, not only me but also the customer spoke. Sometimes the customer talked more than I did. It’s better than I talked more than customers. Why do I need to be nervous? When I was less nervous, my customers were able to relax and talk more so we could get more useful information than before. And I felt I got one of the important meeting skills which result in a lot of good meetings.
Be flexible
I explain about making a plan in step2. However, in a real meeting, there is a case we can not proceed as we planned.
For example, we plan to have a “Get -> Provide -> Discussion” order but a customer may ask about our product at the beginning of the meeting. How would you respond?
Address customer interested first
We can say “We will explain our product later.” Or we can jump to the latter slides to answer the question first and then go back to “Get the customer information” slides. I prefer to address customer interest first. What I would like to say is to be flexible, don’t stick with our plan. I know we could always change our plan.
Manage time
Time management is important to achieve goals in the meeting. Meeting time is precious and decreasing every moment. When I run out of time, I skip some low-priority slides and try to secure the time for high-priority slides. After we finish the high-priority items and still have some time, we can go back to the remaining low-priority slides.
Thank you for reading this post.
Please check how to prepare a business presentation to know the detail of each step.
