Good client presentation can easily turn someone or a panel in your favor and a bad presentation can have a very negative impact on the audience. Here are a few tips that you should keep in mind while making a presentation.
• It is very important for the presenter to stand on the left hand side of the screen. When the audience reads the slides, they will read from left to right and then will come back to the left – that is to you.
• The slides should not be the only aspect of your entire presentation. Slides only assist you in making your point. Make sure that only the gist and certain important points are mentioned in the slides which you should elaborate upon in the presentation. Also, never read directly from the slides. The first thing an audience does is to read the content on the slide. Reading it again to them will not help you at all.
• Your presentation slides are there to help the audience flow from one point to another. So they should not be filled with too much text. Rather, they should have concise bullet points.
• A lot of people tend to rush through their presentations. The most adverse effect of this process is that the audience is unable to retain anything from your slides. It has been revealed through studies that the audience retention is increased by about 30% if the slide is kept on the screen for about 15-20 seconds before you talk about it.
• Pacing your presentation is very important. Make sure that you do not spend more than 90 seconds on a slide. On an average, you should not take more than two minutes per slide. For a half an hour presentation you should use about 15-20 slides, about 30 slides for an hour long presentation and about 60 slides for a 2 hour long presentation.
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