“How do you improve your business presentation skills?”

We are often asked for a few tips on how to improve business presentation skills. To complement our various free presentation and pitching guides and courses we run, here is some practical advice to help you polish your presentation skills.

If you want really good presentation skills, you may need to re-think how you prepare

If you, like most people, switch to PowerPoint as soon as you hear the word ‘presentation’, then we have something to show you.

We suggest you completely re-engineer how you approach your presentations.

First, forget PowerPoint. The best presentations start with a lot of thinking and a blank sheet of paper. So, before you write anything, you need to:

1. Work out exactly who your audience is
For example, it it really everyone in the room, or just those 5 people who matter?
2. Be clear on what you want to achieve with your presentation
For example, are you really going to sell the idea at this stage, or do you just want a second meeting?
3. Plan a Hook
How will you grab attention early on
4. Identify Your Main Message
The one think that will get remembered from your talk.

Help me become a better presenter

The time you spend transforming your presentation at this stage will save you hours later on. And you will improve your presenting skills.

In fact, if you do a good job in planning, you may never use PowerPoint at all, and no longer waste time editing your slide deck. This approach to preparing a presentation is used in our training. In this way our clients create and deliver highly impressive and high impact presentations fast and efficiently.

How can you improve your business presentation skills? How much would a 10% improvement across your company be worth?

You can learn a lot by reviewing how other people present their business presentations.

We analyse great speakers to help our clients be more effective when pitching or presenting. That’s why clients such as Statoil, Deutsche Bank and Miele use Benjamin Ball Associates for their business presentation skills training.

Three Persuasive Videos – Better Business Presentations

Despite huge differences in the following three videos, you will see that all three speakers:

Make a connection with the audience in the first 15 seconds

Explain complex ideas clearly and simply

Look and sound confident

They do this using different techniques. For example, as you watch, note how they:

Tell personal stories

Use short sentences

Incorporate many pauses

Talk directly to the audience

Ask questions

Use rhetorical techniques such as contrasts and triplets

Each talk has a different purpose. But each works well for similar reasons. You too can learn how to use these persuasive techniques for better business presentations.

Sheryl Sandberg – Why we have too few women leaders

Personal talk

Sheryl Sandberg is the COO of Facebook. She gives a highly personal and compelling talk explaining why few women get to the top. She has practical advice about how to change this.

Lt Tim Collins – Eve of battle talk

Inspirational speech

How do you get your men fired up to risk their lives and still remain disciplined under pressure? This re-enactment by Kenneth Branagh of a reported off-the-cuff speech is a perfect example.

CFO of Walmart – annual shareholders meeting

Shareholder Meeting

Not every firm has an annual shareholders meeting as big as this. Chief Financial Officer Charles Holley of Walmart shows how you can speak to analysts, shareholders and employees and keep them all engaged.

How can we help?

How to improve business presentation skills – Tips from the experts

1. “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” Peter F Drucker

What this means is that sometimes you should not be preparing a presentation. For example, should you write a memo, just have a chat, or outline your thinking without PowerPoint. Remember, leaders rarely use PowerPoint.

2. “If you can’t write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea.” David Belasco

What this means is that any great presentation has just one big idea behind it. That is the hard bit about preparing a presentation.

3. “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” Charles Mingus

What this means is that your job as a presenter is to make it easy for your audience. The easier your presentation is to understand, the better you are as a presenter.

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4. “For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.” Arthur Schopenhauer

What this means is that spoken language and written language are completely different. To present well you need to learn about powerful spoken language. Read more here. Similarly, don’t confuse written document and visual aids. They are as different as a book and a film.

5. “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” Thomas Jefferson

What this means is that presentations are made in the edit and the practice. One of the greatest mistakes you can make is to put too much into your presentation. Instead say less, and say it better.

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6. “Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge. Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all.” Winston Churchill

See the link above on Power Language. The language of leadership is clear and simple.

7. “The shorter and the plainer the better.” Beatrix Potter

You can achieve much more with a short presentation than a long one. A great planning tool is to summarise your talk in just one minute. If it works well in one minute it will work well as a longer presentation. Keep hammering away at your one minute version of your presentation until it is tight and compelling.

Help me become a better presenter

8. “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” Mark Twain

The Pause. The presentation master’s true friend. You should pause every 5-12 words. You’ll sound more authoritative. Learn how to pause in your presentations.

9. “Don’t be nervous. Do just as I do. Whenever I get up to speak, I always make a point of taking a good look around the audience. Then I say to myself, ‘What a lot of silly fools.’ And then I always feel better.” Winston Churchill

Nerves are natural. The trick is to hide any tells. We have a great toolbox of tricks to transform nervous presenters into compelling communicators.

10. “The more I practise the luckier I get.” Gary Player

Great presenters practise, a lot. The more you practise, the better you will become.