Three Keys to Making Dynamite Presentations

Every day all across the country people make business presentations and many of them are less than wonderful. Some are downright awful. To put your presentations on a positive track, you need to follow four basic keys.

1--Think of your speech or presentation from your audience's perspective. Whether you're talking to your boss, a business colleage, an audience or a reporter, you're prospects of success are always greater if you think of your remarks from their perspective. Ask yourself: What do they know about your subject? What do they need to know? And, how can I tell them in a way that they'll understand?

Supplementing the KISS Principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid), it is often helpful -- especially when the subject is technical -- to find an analogy to help make the point. If regulations put your company at a competitive disadvantage, you might put Lance Armstrong on the starting line for the Tour de France. The other bicycle riders have a clear road in front of them. Lance is in a separate lane festooned with potholes and other obsticles. Fair? Of course not.

If you're an engineer needing to make the point that, due to attenutation rates your company needs to establish a network of antennas to ensure quality cellular telephone service, you'll make your point better if you compare the antenna system to sprinkling the lawn. You want to set your sprinklers in a pattern that gets the grass uniformly wet, without either gaps or saturation. Finding the best analogy to explain your point may not be easy, but if you want your listeners or readers to really understand, it will certainly be worth the effort.

2-Look Them In The Eye. Eye contact plays an important role in connecting you with your audience. People are much more likely to pay attention when you make regular eye contact with them. If you're looking just over their heads, you won't see the nods of agreement that signal approval or the smiles of appreciation for a joke well told.

3-Tame Your Butterflies. Every person I have ever talked to on the subject -- from the first-timer to the experienced professional -- feels some nervousness whenever they "go public." Here's my 4-step process for taming your butterflies .

Step One: Stretch 'Em Out Since we store up most of our tension in the shoulders and in the spinal column, begin by standing up straight with your feet spread comfortably apart. Now, pretend you are holding an imaginary golf club across your shoulders behind your neck. Rotate your shoulders as far as you can one way and then back the other, letting your head follow along. By doing this three or four times, you will experience an immediate reduction in tension.

Step Two: Blow It Out Take in a lung full of air, hold it a few seconds, and breathe out forcefully, completely draining your lungs of all air. Repeat the inhale/exhale cycle several times and feel the release of tension.

Step Three: Preview Success Now that you are perfectly relaxed, breathe deeply and visualize success. Imagine someone who's opinion you respect coming up to you after your speech or interview and saying, I think you did a great job.

The Three Step Process, which takes less than two minutes to complete, can make a world of difference in your success at Taming Your Butterflies. So there you have it. If you think of your speech or presentation from the audience perspective, look them in the eye, and Tame your butterflies and you'll be well on your way to giving dynamite presentations.