When Presentations Make You Lose Money

Not everyone has that gift for gab. The same way that not everyone should make a presentation every time he or she  has a business, anidea, a product to sell. There are a ton of ways to market various kinds of businesses and presentation is not always it.

Nevertheless, before any of you gives up on presentations, do give it a try first. You’ll never really know where you went wrong until you’ve been there and done that.

On  post I recently read about, Is your presentation losing you business?,   the author describes his experience with a presenter who made critical mistakes while presenting that most likely made him lose his business. The presenter didn’t engage the audience, no practical examples were given… basically the audience was bored for over 45 minutes.

So if you think you are that kind of a presenter, well, don’t give up just yet. You may eventually have to change your marketing tactics in order to sell your business but at least find out first where you went wrong, learn from others or hire someone to teach you how to do presentations right.

Do read the rest of the post in Is your presentation losing you business? . It’s an interesting one.

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How to Command Attention When You Open Your Presentation

Opening a presentation may be easy for many. Yes, it’s easy, if you actually know how to immediately grab the attention of your audience and let that attention open the door to the success of your entire presentation.

George Torok discussed on his blog post how presenters can command attention when opening their presentations. There are certain essential tips he shared that will tremendously help you especially if you’re a novice presenter or speaker. The important thing to remember is for the presenter to be able to establish rapport with his audience by letting them know the direction his presentation is going. This way, the audience won’t be lost and confused and will end up listening and participating intently during your talk.

For more tips on how you can command attention when you open your presentation, head to:

How to Open Your Presentation with Commanding Attention

How to Avoid Stuttering on Your Next Presentation

The answer actually is pretty much simple: Breathe!

Yup, one just has to stay calm, breath like you do when you’re conversing with someone and your presentation ought to be fine. You won’t be needing excess words like uhm, err, ah, uh… words people often use when they stutter and make them sound unsure and unprofessional especially when done at regular intervals.

Janice Tomich explains this better on her blog post. Do check it out!

Slay the Um, Er, and Uh From Your Next Presentation

Visualize Your Public Speaking Success

In 2007, Rhonda Byrnes first spread the word about The Secret. In her successful and DVD, she taught us all how visualization is an essential key in getting what we want out of life. It’s one of the key components the universal law of attraction. You will get what you want but you must first be able to visualize it first.

This is also true for delivering presentations and public speaking. You can be a great presenter or public speaker by using visualization.

Diane DiResta explains it well on her video post:

Fear of Public Speaking Series: Visualize Success

 

How to Use Presentations When Making Decisions

There are eight steps in presentations you can use when you are faced with the problem of making an important decision. Most of the time, as presenters, we tend to be the ones persuading or influencing people to make certain decisions in our favor or for the good of the situation or the people concerned. But what if we are the ones who are supposed to make a decision? How can we know that we are making the right decisions despite being persuaded in the process? Or perhaps we’d like to avoid being persuaded to making the wrong decisions. What steps in presentations can we use in order to make the right decisions?

There are eight steps we can follow:

1. Describe the problem

2. Identify your goal

3. Identify the components

4. Collect the data you need

5. Create a matrix of options

6. Evaluate the effect of a decision on everyone who will be affected

7. Make your decision

8. Evaluate your decision after some time

Ellen describes the details of these steps on her blog post:

Using presentations for decision-making

Gender Bias in Presentations

I came across this interesting blog post about a blog carnival entitled “Top Presentation Strategies for Women”. The author of the blog post,  Lisa Braithwaite, is right. Why is there a need to single out women? Is there really a very big difference between how men and women present? What do you think?

As for me, I think not. Whether you’e a woman or a man, doing a fantastic presentation does not depend on your gender. It depends on how prepared you are and how much information and skill you have attained all throughout these years of speaking in public and / or doing presentations for your respective audiences.

On that particular blog post, basic principles for presenting were enumerated and explained. Let me share some of them here with you. So whether you’re a man or a woman, you can use these tips to improve your skills in presenting:

1. Learn about your audience and venue in advance.

2. Prepare a strong opening and closing.

3. Engage the audience; ask open-ended questions and invite their participation and knowledge.

To learn more, head to: Presentation strategies for women

E-Book on Visual Presentations

Ellen Finkelstein has received a copy of a new e-book about presentations and she reviews it on her blog by giving us several essential sneak peeks. The tile of the e-book is Visual Presentations: Boring Slides to Visual Presentations in 3 Easy Steps and was authored by M.S. Ramgopal, the  same  person who owns Metamorph Training company.

The e-book is said to detail a unique presentation system that presenters will find useful. I haven’t read the e-book (perhaps I will get a free copy too) but I trust Ellen Finkelstein’s judgment when she says that the system is very interesting.  It will teach all of us how to convert dull slides into visually captivating ones and the author does so in a step-step process.

Take a peek into this amazing ebook by heading over to Ellen Finkelstein’s post: Visual Presentations: Boring Slides to Visual Presentations in 3 Easy Steps