iCompass Technologies Blog

iCompass delivers the key for effective presentations

  

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According to Wikipedia, nearly 95% of all people have some degree of anxiety related to public speaking. Since my time at iCompass, delivering presentations about our CivicWeb & AcademicWeb services has been a big part of my responsibilities, whether those presentations were online, in person, to a small group or to a large audience. For me, the guidelines I follow to conduct the presentation rarely changes, but the message and the hooks you use to interact with your audience can change from meeting to meeting.  For example, you would think that having a training session on how to effectively build your agendas using our Meeting Management Solution would be very different than a sales presentation to prospective customers on the benefits of the Meeting Management Solution, but in reality it’s not. Now I have read probably hundreds of techniques on what makes an effective presentation, but ultimately I have found that if you are knowledgeable and passionate about your topic, everything usually goes smoothly. People usually spend hours ahead of time preparing their presentations, but once you take your place in front of your audience, what you do next will ultimately determine whether your presentation is a success and your message is successfully delivered.

Any good presentation is one that will deliver its message in as basic terms as possible and appeal to the emotions of your audience. Regardless of how formal your presentation is, always consider to following format when preparing your presentation, ensuring that the content has a beginning, a body, and a wrap up. The format of your presentation will help you maintain the structure of your message while keeping it interactive and flexible. The key to a good presentation is to ensure that you are interacting with your audience; the easiest way to lose your audience would be to start into a monologue for the duration of your presentation. I have found that whether you are conducting a training session or sales demonstration, I usually structure my presentations in the exact same way, using the guideline mentioned above, and that usually helps me keep on track during the presentation, while maintaining a certain level of audience engagement.

 - Tara Holdbrook, Sales Rep