In business, knowing how to present is key. There comes a time when business leaders, owners, and team members are required to make presentations, such as at annual industry summits, as part of corporate or company-wide events, and within internal teams. Business presentations serve as a professional guide to convey important information, share key ideas, and gain insight and feedback from others. Business presentations are useful for teams, businesses, and companies to reference later on and act as a means to compile and keep track of helpful information, all in one place.
When giving a business presentation, knowing how to present is also key. You want to make sure your audience remains engaged, understands what you’re sharing, and that you’re able to present your ideas and convey what’s on-screen, clearly and effectively. Having the right presentation techniques in place can help you excel when doing business presentations, as they can make all the difference in how you present information and how you come across to others.
Using presentation skills and techniques in your presentation can also tie into overall business skills, particularly during points where negotiation may be required. Making a presentation that makes a difference can have a lasting, positive impact on how colleagues, managers, and business partners view your professional capabilities and on their receptiveness to continuing to do business with you.
Like with learning any new skill, it takes practice. But with consistent effort, you can improve your overall presentation skills over time. It can also help you identify the difference in presenting without these helpful skills compared to when you implement them as part of your presentations. With time, practice, and effort, you can build and develop them so that presenting becomes a breeze and you gain positive feedback and insight from your audience or team.
Explore the top 7 presentation techniques below to make a positive difference in your next presentation.
Technique 1: Practice Before the Big Day
When it comes to doing presentations, practice and preparation is key. Practicing your presentation before it’s time to present is important so you can better understand how you convey ideas, share what’s on-screen, and identify potential areas for improvement. Practicing your presentation before giving it live also gives you a chance to understand and remember the order in which your slides appear on-screen, so you can be ready and prepared when discussing each slide.
If you’re making a business presentation to your team, you can practice with a trusted colleague on your team by having them listen to your presentation as if you’re doing it live. During this time, you can give your presentation, going through each slide and idea, and have them take notes or provide feedback on anything they notice.
This guidance is helpful before giving your presentation in front of a group, so you can better understand how an audience may perceive your presentation, your presentation skills, and how you present yourself, and make these improvements before the big day. With this feedback, you’ll be able to refine what’s required and strategize ways to implement these improvements with your colleague, such as ensuring that certain presentation slides have a time limit you need to meet and that you remain under or at that specified time limit.
Technique 2: Focus On and Remain Engaged With Your Audience
Giving presentations can be nerve-wracking, and it’s easy to lose sight of what you’re saying or become overwhelmed when speaking to an audience. Remaining focused and engaged with your audience is a useful presentation technique, especially when nervousness arises. Using strategies, such as maintaining natural eye contact and using social cues naturally, such as an acknowledging hand gesture when conveying a specific point or idea.
Focusing on your audience will help you enhance your overall presentation skills so you can come across as professional and engaged, and your audience will listen to you. You can also showcase continued engagement by asking your audience questions related to your presentation, fostering and facilitating continued engagement between you and your audience, and amongst themselves.
Technique 3: Maintain Confident Body Language
Maintaining confident body language can make all the difference in how your audience perceives you and your presentation, and how you feel internally while presenting. Techniques for practicing good body language while presenting include maintaining good posture, using consistent and natural facial expressions, and overall portraying yourself as confident and assured through your mannerisms, such as maintaining consistent eye contact with your audience and using natural hand gestures to acknowledge your audience. You can practice this presentation technique during a practice presentation with a colleague or team member, so they can evaluate how you come across as an audience member and as if you’re actually presenting.
Technique 4: Communicate Your Ideas Clearly and Effectively
Communication is key when it comes to presenting and engaging in conversations with others. Being able to communicate your ideas effectively allows your audience to understand what you’re sharing and how your presentation is perceived. Effective communication allows you to convey your points and ideas clearly and naturally so that those who are on the receiving end can grasp what you’re presenting. When giving a presentation, it can be useful to have various summarized topic points listed on screen so you can use them as a helpful guide to speak to each point. Using this technique alongside effective communication can also enhance the overall receptivity of your presentation and how it’s understood by audiences.
Technique 5: Break Down Complex Topics
When giving a presentation, especially one that involves data and requires complex, technical explanations, it’s important to simplify as much as possible so your presentation remains timely and understandable to your audience. Breaking down and clarifying complex topics allows you to still share your ideas and presentation points in a way that makes it simpler for your audience to understand. Before giving a presentation, you can practice this by reviewing and simplifying complex talking points into several summarized ways while still remaining accurate.
You can then also share these simplified presentation summaries with a colleague or team member so that they can provide any feedback or guidance on what you’ve written. Then, you can also make these changes to align with your presentation points on-screen so they still accurately connect to what you’re saying, accurately convey the information, and be understandable, simplified, and noncomplex for your audience.
Technique 6: Maintain Good Eye Contact
As mentioned above, using skills such as remaining engaged and focused on your audience and communicating your ideas effectively are key. Part of these techniques, as covered earlier, is maintaining proper eye contact with your audience while speaking. By making eye contact naturally while presenting, you’ll show your audience that you’re engaged with them and with what you’re presenting, so they can feel a sense of trust and connection. You can practice maintaining natural eye contact by conducting a practice presentation with a colleague or multiple colleagues or by practicing in the mirror, keeping in mind to maintain natural eye contact and hand gestures.
Technique 7: Use Visual Storytelling
When presenting data and technical information, it’s also helpful to use visual assets to support your talking points. That way, it makes your presentation easier to read and understand on-screen from an audience member’s perspective, without feeling overwhelmed by excessive text or paragraphs that are hard to keep track of and take notes on. When developing your presentation, you can create and incorporate line graphs, pie charts, or bar graphs to reference during your talking points and as visual guides for your audience. These visual assets can also enhance the overall visual appeal of your presentation, since you can customize their text and colors based on the program you use to create them, which in turn can positively impact how your presentation looks and comes across to others.
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