How do you prepare for an important presentation?

Many people spend a lot of time on the content and cosmetic aspects of the presentation. And yet, this is not the most important aspect of the presentation.
A well known phenomena is, that details require most of your precious time, and at the same time this doesn’t per se yield a better result of the presentation.
Flying text, music, a video: it all costs an endless sea of time. And does the success of the presentation depend on it?
We call this the law of diminishing returns: the more time you spend on improving things that are already quite good, in proportion, the less it yields.

It is important to be externally oriented, not internally oriented.
When preparing a presentation, it is best to subdivide it into three areas: strategical, tactical and operational. Make sure that you spend sufficient time on all of these aspects!

The strategic preparation

During the strategic presentation, you answer the question why?
You try to understand why you are going to deliver this presentation, or why they have asked you to deliver it. Think about the ultimate goal of the audience and yourself.

1. Who are the people that you will be presenting for?
2. Why are they sitting there?
3. What message do they want to hear and what is the message that you will bring?

The tactical preparation

During the tactical presentation you try to answer the question What?
Think about what you are going to do to reach your goal. Questions that need an answer are

• the location (yours or theirs)?
• Present or demonstrate?
• The best date and time,
• duration,
• who will create and who will present (one or multiple people)
• etc.

The operational preparation

During the operational preparation you answer the question How?

1. What time will you be there to prepare yourself
2. Are you going to use your own equipment or theirs?
3. What will be the room lay-out?
4. What about invitations, name tags, questions during or after the presentation, the structure of your presentation, the cosmetic aspects, which topics in what order, etc.

In our online and classroom-style training programme we have a module ‘Present and demonstrate excellently’ and here you will learn the ins and outs of giving excellent presentations and demonstrations.

Check out the planned sessions in the events calendar.