Presentation professionals recommend to "Start analogue, not digital". And they are right.

Start on a paper. Don't run PowerPoint until you have a clear idea about content of your presentation and specific slides.

Using PowerPoint in the very beginning limits our creativity. People loose priceless time on unimportant details such as choosing layout or fonts, instead of working on the content.

Therefore firstly write down what message you want to pass. Make an outline of the whole presentation and sketch a content of each slide before you turn on a computer.

For creating a content and timing of your presentation, try our Presentation Planner (simple Excel sheet for calculating timing for different presentation parts). The planner will help you to prepare balanced structure. It has included space for 1 = A+B+C rule.

Create your presentation out of three parts. Imagine a tasty hamburger:

1. Strong "crunchy" opening (1-5 minutes). The first impression counts a lot - people will make an opinion about your presentation during the very first 20 seconds. Therefore the opening is very important. Start your presentation with something very interesting, for instance a surprising fact, unusual or controversial statement, extraordinary picture on the first slide. Then tell who you are and what you are going to tell.
2. Interesting "tasty" content. Present clearly the main message of the presentation and support it by several arguments (e.g. why your message is important for the people, why it works). To make your presentation easy to remember, credible and resonating in listeners mind, add stories (personal, made-up, famous one), use examples related to your listeners, show facts and numbers. Mentioning money, prices or costs always gets people's attention. We are also attracted by pictures - so use them to add emotions or to explain how things work.
3. Easy to remember closing (1-5 minutes), that underlines your main message. Add summary of what you have told. Repeat the key message. And finish with telling listeners what's the next step: how they can continue once they are interested, how to contact you, how to learn more.

One slide for one idea.

Write down list of ideas you want to present. Then prepare one separate slide for each idea. Don't put several topics on a slide, unless it is an agenda. This will allow you to focus on single topic at a time. You will gain more space to add pictures or graphics. Thanks to it, your listeners will memorize better the presented points.

As a consequence, you will switch slides more often what will make your speech more dynamic and less monotonous.

A slide should not have more than 6 lines, each with 6 words. Consider using keywords instead of full long sentences. Presentation is not a book for reading. It should support your speech. Do not ask listeners to read your slides but to listen to you.

Text font should not be smaller than 18pt. Think about listeners at the very end of the room, they should be able to read slides without effort, too. Exact numbers in this rule depend on the specific environment.

We recommend several hints to fight stress during presentations:

1. Practice!
   There is no better cure to presentation stress than doing a trial presentation. Already doing one trial speech brings a significant difference. It allows you to check the timing, identify the problematic parts and improves your self-confidence. Record your trial speech, if you can, to see it as from "outside" . It is even better when you have someone independent to listen to you and to give you honest feedback. This person can observe your gestures, voice and rhythm. He can tell you how he understood the message of the speech and can give you practical suggestions how to improve your speech.
2. Start your entrance with a smile and 5 seconds of a silence.
   Smile and silence will make you look confident and calm. It will put you and positive mood. This way you will look much more professional to your audience than if you would start speaking right away.
3. Glass of water, notes card and 20 seconds pause – those are three important lifesavers of a presenter.
   Have a glass or small bottle of bubble-free water ready next to you. Have a small card of paper (A5-A6 size) with structure of your speech. Anytime you will feel lost, you can stop the speech, take slowly a sip of water, have a look at the card and recall the next point you wanted to present. Don't worry if you stop talking even for a few seconds. Pause that lastS up to 20 seconds is perceived by listeners as part of the speech, it does not break the flow of a presentation.
4. Positive attitude.
   Do realize that majority of your listeners want you to succeed. They do not want you to make a mistake. Whatsmore, 90% of mistakes done during a speech are not noticed at all by listeners. So you should not worry about making mistake.
5. Push your fingertips strongly against each other - this is a simple and unnoticeable exercise. It helps you to relax in the moment when nervousness attacks you.

Bear in mind, that public speaking almost always produces a stress. Try to get used to it, get familiar with this feeling. Total elimination of stress is not possible. But you can control it by practise and those small exercises presented above.

We encourage you to try out our Speech evaluation service. We will listen carefully to your speech and propose a number of practical advices how to improve your performance. Thanks to that you will be able to significantly lower fear of public speaking .

Avoid abstraction. Be specific. Our brains are good in understanding and remembering concrete examples. Digesting an abstract idea requires much more time energy. To make your speech specific try those:

1. # stands for Numbers – we imagine easily a specific amount or a comparison to well-known objects from our life. For instance, This new ship is so huge so you can fit there four football playfields. Get an inspiration from documentary programs on National Geographic or Discovery TV channels. They are excellent in making such comparisons and explaining numbers.
2. $ stands for Money – How much does it costs? Our attention wakes up, when someone talks about money. We will remember your point much longer if you associate a specific price to it. Especially if you can compare the price to cost of everyday things. For example: Our product costs the same money, as a smoker spends during a month for the cigarettes.
3. !? stand for stories – We are best in remembering if something is put in context of actions. Something should be happening, something starts, grows or fails. So present your message as a story. Example: Don't list the features of your product. Tell a little story instead: An imaginary user of your product is Mr. Abraham Smith. Every morning he turns on his computer, launches your software and does this and that using A feature of the application. Then he does a search using B feature, etc. Then he goes to fast lunch and when he is back he promptly writes a report thanks to X and Y tools of your product.

Not more than 20 minutes in one piece. It is hard to keep attention for longer. Therefore do some kind of break after 20 minutes. For example, make a coffee break or ask people for their opinion (it can be simple "raise your hands" or open discussion). If you have no spare time, at least change your presentation style: tell an anecdote, joke or switch from PowerPoint slides to flipchart for a while.

Our advice is to prepare before the presentation 10 questions people are likely to ask you.

When answering questions use the following three step method:

1. Thank
   Show that you appreciate and value the question and the person asking. Afterall, it means the person is seriously interested in speech topic.
2. Repeat the question
   This will ensure you understood the given question properly. Repeating the question will be useful also for other people, that might not hear the question. In addition to that, you will gain a precious time to prepare the answer.
3. Answer
   It can happen that you will not be able to provide direct answer, for instance because you need to check some data, there is no time to explain or the question is too sensitive and too personal to address it in public. In such a case, tell that you will deal with the question after the presentation. You can add that you will be glad to answer directly to the person asking. Then note down the question and ask the person to give you a contact after the presentation, so you can send him/her the answer.