When getting ready for your speech, become a long term optimist and a short term pessimist. Believe in your heart that your presentation will go wonderfully and that the audience will love it, but prepare yourself for little slips, unexpected technical troubles, and other problems that may arise on the day of your performance.

Plan your presentation keeping in mind every micro detail that could go wrong and find effective solutions to either prevent or resolve it. Leave the house early, to avoid traffic. Check your computer and LCD projector ahead of time. Think of unexpected and challenging questions that you could be asked during your presentation. Avoid eating a heavy meal or drinking coffee before the presentation, as doing so affects your vocal cords and your energy level.

Here are some tips that will allow you to improve your performance even more:

1. Relax before you get up to talk. Remember to stop and take a few deep breaths to slow down your heart rate and reduce muscle tension. Feel your feet on the floor. Gently roll your shoulders back. This opens your chest, drops your shoulders, open your throat, release tension and making you look more confident.

2. Greet your audience with a smile. Even if the topic of your business presentation is a serious one, you can still greet your listeners with a genuine, welcoming smile to win their favour and regain your confidence.

3. Do not rush through your presentation. Give your listeners time to absorb your concepts and key ideas.

4. Make yourself be heard. Speak to the person sitting farthest away from you so that your speech can be easily heard by everyone in the room.

5. Face your audience at all times. In presentations where visuals are used avoid turning your back to the listeners and looking at the slides too much. The audience is the focal point of your speech. Visuals are merely a tool to convey a message. Besides, speaking towards the screen or the wall makes it hard for your listeners to hear you.

6. Talk to people, not at them. Find a few people that you know in the audience and imagine yourself talk directly to them. Shift you gaze through your audience and as you feel more confident, establish eye contact with other listeners as well.

7. Claim attention. The attention span of an average person last about 5-10 minutes. It is the task of the speaker to keep the listeners focused on the presentation by bringing their attention back through fluctuation of the voice, storytelling, questions, and body language.

8. Do not stick your hands in your pockets, hook your thumbs under your belt, or engage in other creative diversions as you speak.


9. Do not introduce a topic with “Just real quick,” “Briefly,” or similar words. The subconscious message that your audience receives is “this isn’t really important or relevant, but I’m going to inflict it on you anyway.”

10. Answer any questions as succinctly and briefly as possible. Not everyone may be interested in this special question.

11. Do not diminish or underestimate your audience. Even if you are a world known expert in your area of expertise, it is still not a good idea to use phrases like “this is probably new to you” or “you probably don’t know what this means”, unless you are sharing ground breaking news that nobody has head of.

12. Wrap up your talk on time. People rarely want to listen to someone, who talks longer than was expected. Therefore, assign to a person that you know the task of giving you time cues, indicating when you have ten minutes left, five minutes, two minutes and when you should stop talking.

13. Never apologize for anything: be it your presentation, your accent or your lack of knowledge in certain areas or your mistakes. You will quickly lose your credibility.

14. Be flexible. Organize your business presentation and know it well enough to have the flexibility to skip certain parts or expand on others depending on the circumstances and on-verbal cues that you receive from your audience.

15. Be your best self. Too often, people giving business presentations believe that to look professionally they need to act or speak in a certain way, a stiff way. There is a huge difference between being professional and being downright boring. People came to listen to YOU, so let your personality shine through. Share something real about yourself, either in words or delivery, which connects you to your listeners.

16. Have fun. If a speaker is relaxed and enjoying every moment of their speech, it will make the speech much more enjoyable for the audience as well.

17. Connect with people after the presentation. At the end of the speech, instead of recoiling backstage and doing a vicious deconstruction of every little mistake made during the presentation, continue to be fully present with your listeners. Talk to people, answer questions, accept invitations, exchange business cards, network and so on.

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Do you want to learn how to communicate effectively? Register for any of our professional certificate courses at Onus Communications Academy, Ibadan and we will help you to build capacity and achieve your dream.

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Nice update