Delivering your Presentation

Delivering your Presentation

Last minute details before you begin speaking
Get into the room before your audience arrives to check the setup and get the feel of the room. This helps to make it your room. Walk around the room and sit in a few different chairs to take in the feel of your room and how your audience will see you. Check your equipment and put on your busiest slide to check for readability. Drink one or two glasses of warm water to both lubricate your vocal cords and hydrate yourself. Public speaking dehydrates you.

Emergency preparation
Check the exit doors and paths from the building. If an emergency occurs the audience will look to you, the speaker, for leadership and maybe their lives. Be prepared to tell people how to leave the room and building. If it becomes necessary - do it in a calm, commanding and confident voice. Public speaking carries the responsibility of leadership. Everything you do while speaking will be better if you prepare the skills to deliver.


Your confederate
Always have at least one confederate. This is a simple yet important secret to presentation success. Your confederate should sit near the back of the room so they can survey the room, help late arrivers and do things without disturbing the audience. They will take care of the lights, handouts, ushering people to their seats and even asking a planted question. It is their job to head off problems before they erupt. They should know how to work the lights and who to call when problems arise.


Eye Contact
Talk directly to people. The best presentation is delivered as a conversation to every person in your audience one person at a time. If you want to be believed – talk to every individual – looking him or her in the eye. Don’t make the big mistake committed by many novice public speakers - staring at the spot on the back wall. This one technique is a powerful element of successful presentation skills.


Emphasizing key points
If you want people to remember something – repeat it at least three times during your speech. The first time they might hear it. The second time they might mull it over. The third time it might stick. “I have a dream”. Do you know how many times Martin Luthur King repeated that phrase in his famous speech?


George Torok
Speech Coach for Executives