Creating a Presentation That Will Impact Your Audience

You are asked to speak in front of your local organization or present an online seminar, but you have no idea what to say. Or even worse, you have so many thoughts that you want to share that it will take days to deliver the message. The last thing you want to do is to give a presentation that no one wants to hear. This is your opportunity to impact others with a meaningful message, make important connections and grow your business. But where do you start? What do you say to your audience?

Crafting and delivering a professional presentation doesn’t happen by magic. It takes planning and organization. A professional speech is a well thought out, organized and practiced series of thoughts that you present in order to obtain a certain result. When preparing your presentation there are three things you want to ask yourself to create a presentation that flows, that delivers a powerful message, and that gets results.

These 3 things are:

• What is my message?
• What impact do I want to make on my audience?
• What do I want my audience to do at the end of the presentation?

Once you’ve asked yourself these three important questions, then it’s time to begin to brainstorm, outline and then script your speech. Here are a few tips to help make the speech writing process easier and to make your speech more impactful:

1. Identify one key message or phrase you want your audience to remember about your presentation.

2. Brainstorm everything you can about this key message. Give yourself 10 minutes. You might even discover that you can create several speeches as a result of your brainstorming efforts.

3. Look for three main points to support your message. This helps to contain your message into something that is deliverable without overloading your audience.

4. Support your points. To create more impact, use some of your own personal stories, examples, and things that have happened with your clients. People love stories and it helps them to remember what you are teaching.

5. Tell your audience why it’s important to them and what you want them to do next. There needs to be a reason to do something, otherwise why should they change their ways?

These five tips are to help you create the body of your speech. But like any good story, you need a beginning and an end.

For the opening, start with an attention getter. An attention getter helps to set the scene for what you are about to present. When you know your three main points, you can incorporate them into your opening. A good opening will help to set the mood for the talk. It also helps people to focus on you and the presentation rather than everything else that they ‘should’ be doing. Different ways to start your speech can be with a question, an amazing fact or statistic, a quote or a story.

The closing is where you present your call to action. After you have given all this wonderful information, what is it that you want people to remember and do? What were the main points that you want them to focus on? What commitments do you want them to make? What actions do you want them to take? Like the opening, the closing can be done by asking your audience a question, finishing with a quote or telling in compelling story.

Public speaking is a powerful way to grow your business. Creating a professional speech or online seminar takes time, preparation and forethought. Understanding the key message you want to deliver, what impact you want to make, and what actions you want your audience to take will leave the audience feeling like your presentation was impactful and transformational.