Nine Communication Skills Tips You’ll Need To Know Before You Make Your Next Presentation

By Author: Josh Jennifer
Total Articles: 2
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Presentation Tip One: Take two minutes. Two minutes before you make your PowerPoint presentation, concentrate on breathing deeply. Stop thinking about how your PowerPoint presentation will go. It’s now time to lower your fear of public speaking. Whether you are sitting in the room or waiting outside, breathe deeply and fully oxygenate your body. By doing this, you will not eliminate your fear of public speaking, but you will diminish your fear of public speaking. Normally, the first ninety seconds of a PowerPoint presentation are the more terrifying. Once you’re past that first 90 seconds, your anxiety level drastically diminishes. If you fully oxygenate your body before delivering your PowerPoint presentation, the first ninety seconds will be far more manageable.

Presentation Tip Two: Be yourself. You must demonstrate and project a presence that is uniquely yours. Don’t try to copy the style of a Presenter that you admire. Deliver your PowerPoint presentation in a natural and authentic manner.

Presentation Tip Three: Be clear and concise. You must create clear and concise PowerPoint content which ...
... is impactful to your audience. Ask yourself, “What is important to my audience?”

Presentation Tip Four: Less is more. Make sure that your PowerPoint slides are not overly busy. If you have multiple visuals (graphs, charts, pictures, bullet points, etc.) on a single slide, you may want to keep just one graphic per slide or break up that slide into multiple PowerPoint slides. If you cannot delete content on a PowerPoint slide or break-up that PowerPoint slide, use animation to point your audience to areas of the slide that you want your audience to focus on.

Presentation Tip Five: Know your timeframe. Create a PowerPoint presentation that can be delivered in your allotted timeframe. Normally, one PowerPoint slide takes two minutes to deliver. If you have twenty PowerPoint slides and only ten minutes to present, you probably have too many PowerPoint slides. Practice delivering your presentation while timing yourself. If you have run over your allotted time, you’ll need to reexamine your PowerPoint presentation and edit further.

Presentation Tip Six: Have a back-up plan! If your time is slashed to ten minutes right before your presentation, you need to have a back-up PowerPoint presentation that can be delivered in the time allotted. Pick the five most important PowerPoint slides, save them as a separate file and deliver those five PowerPoint slides. What if you’re only given three minutes? Create one PowerPoint slide that has the top five critical points that you were going to cover in your original presentation. List those top five critical points in bullet format.

Presentation Tip Seven: Be prepared for questions. It is essential that you are prepared for questions from your audience. Anticipate the questions that you will receive. Above all, do not force yourself to answer a question that you do not know the answer to. If you do not know the answer to a question, respond in the following manner, “I’m sorry but I do not know the answer to that question. However, I will get an answer to you in the next 48 hours.”

Presentation Tip Eight: Be prepared for audience distractions. It is very common for audience members to check their email message and read hand-outs while you’re making your presentation. Ignore these distractions and remain focused on your presentation.

Presentation Tip Nine: Be prepared for off-topic discussion. While making your presentation, do not let off-topic discussions derail you. Stay calm and on message.

Josh Jenner is a writer of illuminataglobal.com, provides excellent training Presentation Skills Communication Skills ,Presentation skill courses and Executive Coaching Training for improving your communication, presentation and public speaking skills.