Is delivering presentations to a large audience a spine-chilling task that you often struggle with? Bid goodbye to being left in the lurch by putting our top three presentation delivery techniques into practice. Rest assured, these tips will win you a big round of applause from the crowd. Let’s get started!

Plan your content

As stated by Winston Churchill who twice served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, ‘He who fails to plan is planning to fail’. As unlikely as it may seem, every presentation that appears unrehearsed yet ends with a standing ovation actually demands arduous planning from the presenter. To get started in planning your content, you must first determine what your goal is. Choose a topic and analyse your audience before you proceed with outlining the main ideas that you intend to deliver. Bear in mind that gaining background information about your audience such as their age range and academic qualifications should always come before creating your outline. This is because knowing your audience helps you in curating ‘just-right’ content that appeals to your audience’s interest and suits their level of understanding. Apparently, there is no way to deliver an outstanding presentation unless you have something comprehensible and enlightening that is worth talking about.

Keep your language simple

While delivering a presentation may seem a laborious task, you do not have to be in agony in the process of preparation. This is because holding simplicity in place is one of the golden principles of an effective presentation. Use simple language and include more active sentences in your delivery whenever possible. For example, say ‘I ate the apple’ instead of uttering ‘The apple was eaten by me’. Also, as professional speakers have noticed that sentences with a lot of nouns are more difficult to comprehend compared to sentences with a lot of verbs, we thus recommend including more verbs than nouns in your utterances. To illustrate, consider rewording ‘The delivery of parcels happens on Sundays’ to ‘The seller delivers parcels on Sundays’. See for yourself how verbs create imagery and bring dynamism to your presentation more effectively than nouns do! Not forgetting, try eliminating jargon, abbreviation or slang because they might neither impress nor create a ripple effect among your audience, particularly when your audience lack prior understanding of these terms. Simply put, to gain a sustained standing ovation, keep your messages precise and concise at all times. Fancy words are not always better – they are rendered worthless if not understood.

Use appropriate body language or gestures

To add icing on the cake, use appropriate body language or non-verbal gestures throughout your presentation. Not only does good body language helps you establish excellent rapport with your audience, it also elevates your credibility as a speaker. Before you begin presenting, ensure that you have kept your body open as this eliminates nervousness. Stand straight with your shoulders relaxed and not drooped, and let your arms hang naturally at your sides. Be mindful not to cross your arms as this signals defensiveness and your audience might feel unwelcome. Once you feel comfortable, start speaking and develop a bond with your audience by establishing eye contact. If you are painfully shy to look into the eyes of your audience, we suggest looking at their foreheads instead. Meanwhile, feel free to make purposeful gestures as they enhance audience retention and strengthen your verbal messages. Not forgetting, put a smile on your face whenever possible as your audience can tell if you are passionate about sharing your ideas just by observing your facial expressions. As the saying goes, ‘actions speak louder than words’. In short, to deliver a killer presentation that ends on a high note, make good use of your body as a tool of powerful non-verbal communication.

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