What Makes a Great Presentation?
“What makes a great presentation?”
First of all you have to ask yourself, who is qualified to decide whether a presentation is “great” or not. Is it the experts like me? Or is it the audience for that particular presentation?
Ultimately every presentation is a unique communication between the presenter and his or her audience. I have seen presentations that were slick, professional and well crafted yet failed to deliver the presenters desired results. Why? Because the content was not relevant to the people in the room on that particular occasion. This type of result often happens when the presenter gets lazy. Instead of researching their audience and then tailoring the content, stories and examples to fit, they fall into the old habit of rolling out a “one size fit’s all” presentation that doesn’t engage the audience. I know it takes a little longer to adapt the content, but believe me, if you invest a little extra time thinking about each audience, it will pay back big time..
Tip: Personalise each presentation – Make sure your presentation content is specific to each audience
Invariably, when I ask people to recall “great” presentations they have watched and to think about what it was that made them special, I get a pretty short list
- Felt personal – I felt like the presenter was talking to me
- Was relevant – I understood what the presenter was speaking about and why it was relevant to me
- Had a simple / logical structure – I could follow the flow of the presentation and I understood the point of the presentation
- Pitched at the right level – I felt that the concepts and language were appropriate to my existing knowledge
- Used memorable stories – I could understand the ideas better because they were illustrated with engaging stories
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