8 Ways to Improve Your Presentation Skills

1. Join Toastmasters. Toastmasters is a organization where you will get a chance to work on your impromptu speaking skills, leadership skills, evaluation skills as well as opportunities to practice specific skills in prepare presentations (at your own pace). Clubs typically meet weekly and you can find clubs that meet in the morning, evening, lunchtime to meet your schedule. I highly recommend this! Find a club and attend to learn much more.

Stephen D. Boyd, Ph.D., CSP, is a professor of speech communication at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, Kentucky. He works with organizations that want to speak and listen more effectively to increase personal and professional performance. He can be reached at 800-727-6520 or visit http://www.sboyd.com for free articles and resources to improve your communication skills.

Super Preparation

Keys to Getting a Great Start to Every Presentation

Novice and expert presenters alike have had the experience of feeling a little (or may be a lot) nervous before giving a talk. In working with hundreds of people to help them improve their presentation skills, one consistent theme has emerged: once people get started, assuming things go relatively well, they begin to relax, become more natural, less self conscious, and therefore more effective.

Have you ever been slideswiped? You walk into a meeting and once everyone has arrived, the lights are often dimmed and the show begins. The presenter clicks the mouse again and again, showing you slide after slide until you can take no more. Exasperated, you shut your eyes and doze off. You have just been slideswiped!

The quality of your sales presentation will often determine whether a prospect buys from you or one of your competitors. However, experience has taught me that most presentations lack pizzazz and are seldom compelling enough to motivate the other person to make a buying decision. Here are seven strategies that will help you create a presentation that will differentiate you from your competition.

At a number of business seminars and presentations, I passed out an index card and asked each person in the audience to write anonymously a single answer to each of three questions. The three questions are:

1. To me money means _________.

2. My current annual income is _______________.

3. In order to insure happiness and contentment financially, with no more money problems and worries, my annual income would need to be __________.

Conventional wisdom is that the more choices customers have, the more likely they will buy. That may be true when customers have very specific wants or needs, and they know what those wants or needs are. However, often having lots of choices just confuses customers and they don't buy anything.

People take it for granted that leaders have achieved some skill in public speaking. Yet anxiety persists because leaders face very challenging situations and have a great risk of embarrassment. Here are some tips for tempering those anxieties.

INTRODUCING A SPEAKER

People love stories. We love to hear about other people, and stories help us to learn, remember and put to use new concepts. Aesop knew this. His fables help us to learn life lessons through tales about others, without having to learn them the hard way.

In modern times, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen also understand the power of stories to teach, motivate, and inspire. Their "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books continue to sell in the millions of copies because they tap into our primal need to connect with others through storytelling.