For Leaders: How To Make More Effective Presentations

I was having a conversation with one of my CEO clients the other day. She told me about a big presentation she was preparing for. One of their large clients who represented about 20% of their annual revenue had put their work out for tender. All of a sudden, my client — the incumbent — was facing competition for a substantial chunk of their business. Her client had defined a process whereby my client and three other suppliers had to make presentations to senior management in five different offices across Canada.

She asked me if I had any suggestions. As it so happens, I did. Anyone facing an important business presentation might want to consider these ideas:

1. Check Out The Room Where You’ll Be Presenting — Make sure you get into the room ahead of time to get a sense of the space, confirm the audio-visual support is working, and that you have everything you need.
2. Rehearse Your Presentation — One of my very successful CEO clients from the advertising industry never went into a presentation or pitch without at least one complete dry run of the whole presentation, word for word.
3. Include Other Members of Your Team — The senior person should always take the lead, but other team members should be involved. It’s important to send the message that there’s a strong team on your side of the table.
4. Always Stand — Regardless of how casual the session is, stand up when you present.
5. Don’t Read Your Slides — This is obvious but it’s amazing how often it happens.
6. Use Something Other Than PowerPoint — The typical PowerPoint presentation is often pretty boring. If you haven’t tried Prezi or other modern tools, I suggest you check them out.
7. Use Multi-media — If your presentation is longer than 30 minutes, try to build in some other media such as a short video.
8. Dress Above Your Audience — Try to get a sense for your client’s dress norms and dress above how you think your audience will dress.
9. Hand Out Your Materials After the Presentation — You want the audience paying attention to you and not reading ahead in your deck. Let them know at the outset that you’ll be emailing them your presentation immediately after.
10. Set the Discourse — If you’re one of a number of companies presenting, if possible try to be first. By telling the audience what they might want to look for in a supplier, you can shape the criteria that will be used to judge each presentation.