You've got a big sales pitch coming up or you need to present that new business strategy to your executives. Whatever the reason, the success of your PowerPoint presentation lies in knowing and executing the goal you want to attain right from the beginning.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when preparing and presenting PowerPoint presentations is lack of clarity on the purpose of their presentation!
What message are you communicating? What do you want your audience to know? What do you want the outcome of your presentation to be? These are all questions you should be asking yourself before you even start to prepare your PowerPoint presentation.
The goal of your PowerPoint presentation can vary from inspiring, to instructing or persuading your audience, as well as assisting a group of people to agree upon a decision.
Your goal will vary dependant on the type of presentation you are giving, below are some examples of goals according to presentation type:
1. Sales presentations
Whether your PowerPoint presentation is directed towards a customer or an internal sales team, your presentation goal is paramount:
- Help clients understand your proposal
- Increase your referral rate
- Increase conversion rates
- Decrease sales cycle length
2. Strategy presentation
When it comes to communicating a complex strategy to an audience, you need to ensure that you do so in a way that engages and inspires them. The goals of your PowerPoint presentation could be:
- To ensure that everyone is on the same page
- To persuade your audience into agreeing with your strategy
- To ensure a smooth kick-off of your strategy implementation
3. Project implementation and updates
You may be preparing your PowerPoint presentation to ensure that your entire team is on the same page with a project.
Goals of a project presentation could be as follows:
- Get your team on board quickly
- Ensure that everyone is aware of the project plan and any deliverables
- Updating team members on project progress and any outstanding deliverables
4. People presentations
People make up 80% of a company's resources, they are therefore the lifeblood of a company. People PowerPoint presentation goals could be to:
- Attract the best talent and potential employees to your company
- Get new employees up to speed quickly
- Ensure that all employees enjoy a shared company vision
No matter the type, determining the goal of your presentation is the single most important thing you can do when creating a PowerPoint presentation. The goal you decide on from the get-go will determine the outcome and success of your pitch.
Key takeaway: Before you even begin to create the slides for your PowerPoint presentation, determine the ultimate goal you want to attain.
The benefits of being a presentation pro are obvious. In the corporate world, when you deliver a killer presentation that people stay awake for, you may as well be a rock star.
So, what exactly does it take to be a presentation pro?
First and foremost, forget yourself and make your audience king.
Sounds simple? Why then do I, week after week find myself sitting in presentations where the speaker brings a new definition to the word selfish? What I mean by this is that speakers have no regard for what the audience wants. if they did, they wouldn't be going on for an hour about how great and different XYZ company is.
The thing about a great presentation that puts the audience top of mind is that the audience will decide all on their own about how great XYZ company. And the power of getting someone to decide that for themselves is, well, priceless.
So, what do I mean by treat the audience as king? When preparing your presentation:
- Make them the focus of the presentation
- Address their needs in your content
- Ask yourself what makes them tick
- Learn more about them and create your content as a story that they can identify with
The last one is really important.
When people identify, a connection is created and when a connection is created, you are their favourite person....for a fleeting moment, at least.