You’re probably going to have to do a presentation at some stage during your career. It could be a presentation to a client, to others in your industry, or to your networking group. Most, if not all, networking groups have 10-20 minutes set aside for member presentations. This is usually something that is done so you can educate the members in the group about your business or industry, which makes them more likely to use and/or recommend your products or services.
But let’s be honest, the thought of public speaking will have many of us quaking in our boots. In fact, studies have shown that 75% of people fear public speaking more than death!
But as business people, facing your fears is something we have to face every single day. We have to be able to talk about our careers and businesses – we talk to our clients, customers, and colleagues about it all the time! And we’ve all accidentally talked someones ear off about work after a few drinks at the Christmas BBQ.
If you can talk to one person about your business, you can talk to a group about it. Here are our tips on how to do it well:
1. Picking your Presentation Topic
One of the biggest things is what to talk about. All businesses are different, so it’s not like everyone can talk about the same thing. And given how involved with your business you are, it can be really hard to take a step back and decide what to talk about that would be beneficial for your audience.
Before you pick any random subject to talk about, it’s important to know your audience. Not only does this help you to feel more comfortable, but it also helps you to create a presentation that resonates with them. You need to have an understanding of how much they know about you, your industry, and your business. Otherwise it’s a bit like Goldilocks – without knowing your audience you run the risk of your presentation being too simple and boring your audience or too in-depth and overwhelming them. When you know your audience you can cater the subject so that it’s juuuuust right.
Once you know your audience, ask yourself what would they like to know or what do they need to know?
If they’re industry professionals, they’ll already have a higher understanding than the general public who might need a step by step introduction to the topic.
Take this opportunity to take a step back from your business and look at it from the outside, as a potential customer. What information would they possibly like to know about you, your business, the products or services, and the industry in general. Think about what you do that affects them, their businesses, and the wider community.
If you’d like some ideas for your next presentation, have a look at our suggestions here!
2. Structure and Slides
Now that you’ve got a topic, you have to create the content and the presentation. Now, you know more than we do about your topic, so we’ll leave that to you. But we have to mention the presentation structure, timing, and presentation slides (if you plan to use them).
The ideal structure of a presentation is the same as any good story. You’ve got your introduction where you introduce yourself, your business, maybe your services, and a brief overview of what you are going to be talking about.
Given that at The Networkers®, we give you 10-15 minutes for your presentation, try to aim to do your introduction in a minute or two. Then you get into the nitty gritty, where you really delve into the topic at hand. Try to give this the most amount of time as it’s the whole point of your presentation. But don’t forget to leave a few minutes at the end to wrap up with a summary. Quickly go over the points that you brought up and ask if anyone has any questions.
Once you’ve got your content all structured, you might look at creating a slide deck to keep you on track. We really recommend this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, a presentation can help you to portray complicated information in easy to understand ways. Pictures, graphs, tables all help you tell your story quicker and easier than just words. Secondly, they’re great if you forget your point which can happen easily if you’re nervous. And lastly, an most importantly, it can act as a security blanket. A presentation can take some of the pressure off by diverting the audiences attention away from you while still keeping them engaged.
When you make your slides, there’s a few things to remember:
Set expectations from the beginning. Go over what you’ll be covering in your presentation and whether you expect anything from your audience. Do you have a worksheet for them, do you want them to ask questions, or do you need volunteers? When the audience knows that’s expected of them, they can relax because they know what’s expected of them. It can also ensure that they’re paying attention.
Don’t overwhelm your slides. Your audience should ideally be able to read and understand the information in your slides in 3 seconds or less. If you have complex ideas, try to split it into multiple slides to make it easier to understand. This means that you can’t just write an essay and chuck it on some slides to read from! Remember the KISS acronym? Keep It Super Simple. Ideally a picture or infographic plus 3 points per slide is the perfect amount!
This also makes your slides more accessible to people that might struggle otherwise. Think those that are hard of sight, have learning difficulties like dyslexia, or people who’s first language isn’t English.
3. Communication
There are three different ways to communicate – visual, verbal, and non-verbal. And you can take advantage of all of these during your presentation!
Visual communication boils down to the content of your slides, which we’ve already gone over. Here we’re going to explore the verbal and non-verbal sides of communication.
We’ve all heard of the 55/38/7 formula which breaks down the components of face-to-face conversations. It states that communication is 55% non-verbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words or content. Whether or not this statistic is true in everyday life, we can take away that communication is more than just the words you say.
Let’s start with the non-verbal communication. This is everything body language, from pacing, to gesturing, to maintaining eye contact. When people are nervous, they tend to have more closed of body language – they’ll cross their arms, fiddle, or keep their hands in their pockets. It’s important to find a coping mechanism that is more open. Nerves can also cause an increase in natural hand gesturing and/or pacing. While a little pacing is fine and gestures can help of empathise a point, too much of either can be distracting. How to deal with this will be very individualised, but try practicing in front of a mirror and experimenting until you find a balance that works for you.
Eye contact can be a hard one when presenting to a group. It helps you to connect with the audience, makes them feel included, and makes a presentation more engaging. The other benefit of eye contact is that you can see how receptive your audience is and how much they’re understanding. If people are looking confused you can adjust your speed or ask if they need more clarification. If they’re looking bored you know to change something, whether that’s your speaking style or moving onto the next point is up to you.
Now, making eye contact when presenting to a group can be difficult depending on how large your group is. If you have a massive group, you can focus on people at the back, which can make it less intimidating. But if you have a small group you can make eye contact with one person for a moment or two, and then move on to another person. This shouldn’t be too hard in your networking group, given that you know everyone there!
The next level of communication is vocal. This is not about what you say, but how you say it. How loudly or quietly, how much expression you use, and how quickly or slowly you speak are all important to note and practice for your presentation.
Volume can be a tricky thing to manage. It’s important to speak loudly enough so that everyone can hear you. Which is hard enough in a quiet room, but add in café noise and other customers, and it can be a struggle. The easiest way to overcome this is to ask people if you’re speaking loud enough and adjust to what they say.
How much expression you have when speaking can be easily addressed with practice. When people are nervous to speak, they often end up relying on notes or their slides. If we’ve sorted out the slide in the above paragraphs, next we need to get rid of the notes. Having notes is like a safety blanket to make sure you stay on track. But, in realty they’re more like a crutch that you end up relying on, which can result in a monotonous tone. Boooring!!
So practice your presentation and use your slides as bullet points to keep you on track!
Your speaking tempo is the next thing you need to wrangle. When people get nervous, they tend to speak faster, which can result in people not understanding you or not being able to fully grasp the topic. On the other hand, if you speak too slowly, people can become bored and switch off to your talk. Neither of these are what you want.
The ideal presentation or speeches have a varied pace to engage your audience. This can be done by inserting pauses during important points, allowing them to sink in (which also allows you to breathe and gather your thoughts), by changing your volume and speaking louder, or by being hyper aware of your enunciation and over-articulating your speech.
If only 7% of face-to-face communication is done by words, does it even matter? In a normal conversation maybe not so much, but you’re doing a presentation. Your content is pretty important and your audience wants to hear from you. Unfortunately because this is an in person presentation, it’s not something that they can rewind to make sure they catch the important stuff you say or re-read the paragraph to find the main points that you’re sharing in the same way they would a video or book. With only 10-15 minutes to share your point, you need to make sure they walk out of that networking group remembering what you’ve said.
The easiest way to do this is through repetition. That’s why all those mainstream songs are such ear worms; the chorus is full of repetition. Whether you repeat your main points in the exact same words or not is up to you. Sometimes the repetition can really nail the point how, other times it just gets on peoples nerves. You can also vary what you’re saying. Sometimes people don’t understand what you’re saying if you put it one way, but if you explain it slightly differently they’ll get it.
Whichever way you decide to do it, it’s essential to repeat the key points that you want them to take away from your presentation so that they stick in your audiences mind and they remember them. If you only go over everything once, your audience will leave your presentation and forget what you’ve said by the time they walk out the door.
Make sure you practice and experiment with your non-verbal cues, tonal qualities, and your content before your presentation. If you’re not up to practicing in front of someone, try the mirror or film yourself so you can see what can be improved upon. This way you can absolutely nail it!
4. Overcoming Fear, Nerves, and Anxiety
A lot of people are terrified of public speaking. We’re not going to delve into what that might be – that’s a conversation for a mental health professional. We’re looking for solutions here. There are several ways to combat your public speaking anxiety.
One way to reduce your level of anxiety is to ensure that you’re prepared. Have a powerpoint presentation ready, some notes if you need them, and make sure that you put any handouts or other materials in your bag or car so you can’t forget it. Trust us on that last point, we’ve learnt from experience.
Part of being prepared means practicing. Go through your presentation a couple of times in the privacy of your own home or office. This will ensure that you’ve got all of the correct information, it flows well, and that you’re happy with it. If you want to go the extra mile, you can practice in front of a mirror or film yourself. This means you can see how you’re presenting yourself and you can make any changes necessary that might only be noticeable to other people.
Practice until you’re happy with it, or at least mostly happy with it. If you get too focussed on being 100% happy with it, you’re going to end up spending a lot of time on making it perfect. And let’s be honest, you have better things to be doing with your day, like making money. Being focussed on perfection also puts a lot of pressure on you when your presentation day comes. On top of all the usual nerves, you’ll also be anxious to get it perfect. Please don’t do that to yourself!
“Done is better than perfect” is definitely the case here.
We recommend changing your perception of your presentation. A lot of people don’t like public speaking because they fear failure. Which is completely understandable, and something we all fear. But this isn’t a pass or fail experience.
You know and talk to the people in your networking group every single week, and this week is no different. You’ve connected on a personal level, creating genuine relationships with everyone there. The members in your group are all rooting for you. They’ve all been where you are and felt the same anxiety. Trust that they’re not judging you and that they want you to do well. So, change your outlook from something you can fail at to just having a yarn with a group of people with the purpose of showcasing your business, educating with your knowledge, and sharing your passion.
Remember to breathe both before and during your presentation. When your nerves start to act up, pause, and take a moment to focus on a deep breath or two. By moving your focus to a physical sensation, you can take your mind off the presentation and your emotions and refocus on the content of your presentation. If you arrive to the group early, you can sit in your car for a few minutes and do some breathing exercises, or even a meditation, to help calm your nerves and get you ready.
If you’re still anxious after all of this, a surprising hack to take the edge out of your anxiety is to be honest. At the beginning of your presentation, tell everyone how you’re feeling. Somehow admitting this can help to put you at ease which can make the presentation start off easily.
And don’t forget – even the most seasoned public feels nervous when they get up on stage.
5. Be your authentic self
Public speaking anxiety can cause you to loose your spark when talking to a group.
Anxiety can show during your presentation in several ways. Some people overcompensate and become louder and more over the top and some people try to get around their anxiety by imitating well known public speakers. But most people retreat further into their shell by becoming quieter and relying on their slides or notes. These reactions are completely normal but they don’t help to shine a positive light on your business.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Staying authentic to you and your business makes connecting to your audience so much easier. It helps you to express your message in a way that people understand, and boosts their perception of you.
One of the easiest and most natural ways to do this is to rely on the things that make you you. Your personality is how people connect with you and are why they like you, use your business, and recommend you to others. So lean on that!
You can showcase your personality by sharing stories or anecdotes can show your authenticity. It can help you to connect with your audience, share your passion about the topic, and explains your expertise. It doesn’t even have to be a personal story. It could be a case study that explains your services, showcases your skills, and shows what its like to work with your personally.
If you’re humorous, make your presentation funny. Include memes, funny work stories, or even just a good dad joke. Share a compelling case study of how you have helped a client to showcase your empathy. Breakdown your services or show some behind the scenes work to show your knowledge and your passion. These are the things that you can use to connect with and educate your audience.
It’s ok to be afraid of public speaking. But it’s highly likely you will have to do some form of presentation throughout your career. We hope that these 5 tips will help you out when that time comes!