What Exactly is Presentation Training? Do I really need it?
winning over your audience with a compelling presentation
Effectively presenting your ideas and persuading your audience is critical to any successful project — and a successful career.
Too many presentations become a narration of cluttered slides from a speaker hiding behind a darkened podium. An effective presentation takes advantage of visual and spoken content that work together to reinforce the message, put that speaker at the center of focus and persuade the audience to take action.
Effective presentations to an international audience are one of the most important, and most daunting, communications challenges. There are also large differences from how presentations are done in Japan. These include:
- Logical structure: In an era of short attention spans, a presentation needs to get to the point immediately. People will not sit through hearing about the thought process that led to the conclusion.
- Visual elements: Slides need to be clean and should augment what is being said. They are not the “library” of back up materials. Detailed information should be made available via handouts, most likely in a Word text format, not PowerPoint.
- Dynamic delivery: You must show enthusiasm and confidence in what you are saying. If you do not appear convinced, how can you persuade others?
- Questions: This is the most critical part of a presentation since it is a “testbed” for the quality of your ideas to see if they can match up to scrutiny from others.
Executives are also very busy people. Therefore, the training is designed to move quickly from basic points to working on real-case examples, preferably for presentations that are being developed for real use. The training work goes beyond language issues to make sure they are compelling and logically consistent to win support from their target audiences.
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