When you prepare a presentation to gain investors, attract new clients, or present an essay at school, your presentation needs to be memorable and persuasive. You’ll have only a few minutes to capture your audience’s attention and then keep it for the duration of the presentation. You need to sell yourself, your skills, and the benefits you offer with your product or services in a convincing and easy-to-understand way. Here are six ways to create a presentation that will keep people’s attention.
1. Use Visuals
Using visuals will keep your audience engaged with the presentation. Your visuals may include charts, graphs, photographs, icons, short videos, or animations. The type of visuals you choose to use will depend on the content and your audience. You may want to present visual stories so that your business idea flows naturally from the information that you are providing. Each of your PowerPoint slides should include a visual of some kind since most people remember vivid imagery.
2. Focus on emotions.
Your presentation should tell an interesting story. While you don’t want to go on a tangent or get distracted, your presentation should be grounded in the art of storytelling. You want to connect on a personal level while demonstrating the core values that are driving your business.
When you get into sales or marketing, one of the first things you’ll learn is that people do not buy products or services— they buy the emotions and benefits that those products or services offer them. For example, tired moms don’t pay for someone to come clean their house; they pay for the peace of mind that things will be clean and they can focus more on their children.
3. Keep it simple.
Your business plan is likely a very long and detailed document that you spent months putting together. While it is important to have copies of your business plan ready, your presentation should not consist of you reading your business plan. Know your key messages ahead of time and focus on those. Answer questions as needed and be a good listener when being asked questions or being provided with feedback.
4. Speak to your target audience.
Whether your audience is potential investors or potential clients, you need to keep them in mind when creating and giving your presentation. Targeting your presentation to your specific audience will make it more personal and more impactful. You wouldn’t offer the same information to investors as you would potential clients. Each person plays a crucial role in your future business, and while both are important, they are still unique and need to be treated as such.
5. Be prepared with numbers.
Whether you’ve included market analysis or case study information, it’s crucial that you are prepared with numbers to back up anything that you say during the presentation. If you are talking to potential investors and asking for numbers regarding your business sales, services, customer acquisition, or costs; you need to be ready to give those numbers. Not being prepared will make you look unprofessional, and that will deter investors and clients from having confidence in your ability to deliver on your promises.
6. Don’t be afraid to get professional help.
Even if you’ve taken classes on Powerpoint and feel comfortable making a presentation, don’t be afraid to hire a presentation company to help you with the final product. A presentation can make or break your professional dreams so it’s worth the money to hire a professional to help you with the thing they know everything about. In this case, hiring a presentation company that does nothing but create mind-blowing presentations for businesses might be the competitive edge you need to get the results you are looking for.
