Short Guide
toPresentation Skills
Chris Croft, has an Engineering
Degree from Cambridge and an
MBA, worked as a senior manager
in manufacturing for 10 years and
then as a university lecturer for five
years before starting his own training
company in 1995. Since then he has
trained over 80,000 people, and his
free email tips are sent to 11,000
people (www.free-management-tips
.co.uk). He is featured on www.lynda
.comwhere he presents courses on
project management, assertiveness,
time management, and happiness.
Croft_Presentations_163716.indd 1
Chris Croft
Abstract: How to plan and present a great talk. First
planningone central message with a structure, a good
introduction and finish, and the right visual aid. Then how
to build a confident state of mind. Then things to do before
you start and at the start, being interactive, signposting
your progress in the talk, handling microsleeps, how to
remember your talk, possible problems, and keeping to
the finish time.
Key words: confidence, structure, agenda, signposting,
remembering, interactive, flow, visual aids
Planning Your Talk
Most listeners will remember your main message, and
thats it. So you need to think carefully about what your
message is, and really hammer that point home.
One Central Message
Your talk should be designed around this one central
message. If someone was to wake one of your audience
up in the middle of the night a month later and ask
What was that talk about? they should be able to im-
mediately say Australia is more than just beaches or
Life insurance needs to be started before the age of 30
or whatever.
A talk without a central message is pointless.
If youre not sure what your message is then you can
do a couple of things. One is to think about the audience;
what do they want to know about? Maybe that should be
what the talk is about?
Mind Map
The other thing is to make a mind map of the subject,
and then see what the mind map is telling you. What are
the themes emerging, what seems to be the most useful
or interesting message from it?
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 Short Guide toPresentation Skills
You can then perhaps delete the parts of
the mind map that dont contribute to the
message, and, looking at the rest, you can
decide on the order of the talk.
Structure
I would always make a mind map before
preparing a talk, because the underlying
structure of the talk is key. This is because
the only way to get a complicated set of
ideas across from your head to someone
elses head is to hang all the ideas on a
structure: There are three main problems
with the building, and for each of them we
have two suggestions, a cheap option and
an expensive option is SO much better
than You need to do this, and this, and also
this, and maybe this, and then either this
or this ... etc
Once you have the main body of your
talk planned (the branches of your mind
map, probably in the form of three main
sections [two or four is OK], each one with
subsections [again two to four ideally]), you
can then think about what youll have in
the introduction and the conclusion.
Although the introduction is the first
thing youll be saying, it is not the first
thing you prepare. You need to be really
sure about whats in the main body before
you can write the introduction.
The introduction is very important be-
cause first impressions are hard to change.
During the first minute the audience are
deciding whether to listen to you, and
whether to believe you. (Also see Appear-
ance, later.)
What Is in the Introduction?
First you need to give your name and the
subject of the talk.
Next, whats in it for them? Why should
they listen to the talk?
You might want to hook them with some-
thing intriguing, like In this talk Im going
to tell you three things you MUST do if you
go to Australia and two things to definitely
avoid... . That covers the whats in it for the talk after the introduction, so it needs
them and gives an intriguing start.
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Next confirm the length of the talk
( audiences are obsessed with worrying about
whether the speaker is going to go over
time). Dont ask me why, that is just how it
is. So you should mention upfront that it is
a 25-minute talk, or whatever, just so they
know you know.
Next you should mention that you wel-
come questions as you go along (not keep
them till the endthis just results in:
people who dont understand something
getting stuck,
people who have a question have to try to
remember it for the rest of the talk,
are probably worrying about asking it in
front of the group,
you dont know if they understand what
youre telling them, and
you cant adapt if youre getting it wrong).
Yes I know that questions can be disrup-
tive, but youll just have to live with that
Ill explain later how to deal with difficult
questions and difficult questioners.
Next show an agenda for the talk (yes,
a visual aid with a list on it) so everyone
knows whats going to be covered.
Next explain, in a modest way, why
youre the one doing the talk. Many peo-
ple do this right upfront but I think it is
more modest to do it after youve talked
about whats in it for them and whats go-
ing to be covered. Possible ways to intro-
duce yourself are Ive learnt about this
subject the hard way, having made every
mistake you can over the years or I look
after the X departmentsomething that
shows your credibility but isnt arrogant-
sounding. You want the audience to be on
your side.
Finally your introduction ends with a
signpost that the talk is beginning. Some-
thing like OK, so lets get started with
section 1: Three Things to do in Australia.
The Finish
Youll also need to plan how the talk will
finishthis is the most memorable part of
to be right.
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 Short Guide toPresentation Skills
Ideally the finish would have a Stand
up and applaud factor so you would fin-
ish with a line like So there you have it,
the best country in the world or So there
we are, Project Management in 30 minutes.
Thank you everyone.
Finishing with ... any questions? isnt that has no visual aids. At least show them
an ending, and ending with ... er, I think
thats it, or ending suddenly And thats it, around the audience because youve then
are certainly bad.
To avoid the ending feeling sudden you
need to signpost that that the ending is
comingsomething like And for the final
section I want to mention two more points,
firstly ... and secondly, my final point, is
that ...
A good final section might be a recap of
the main points, a top 10 or top 5, or the 3
key things you want them to remember, or
one call to action, for example So remember,
next time you are sitting down to do your ac-
counts, please do call us and see if we can
help. Calls to action are powerful because
they put a clear image in the listeners minds,
so the listeners are now programmed to take
that action when the situation comes up.
Your final summing up section should
NOT include anything new. Sometimes you
forget to cover something and you want to
go back to it, or you think of something new
just at the end, but you must resist cover-
ing these things. You must LET THEM GO.
The audience wont know youve missed
them, and if they do then they can ask in
the questions: You mentioned youd tell
us about X? Iknow it is annoying to miss
something, but much worse to suddenly
bring up a whole new area just when you
are summing upthat will hugely destabi-
lize their trust in you and their belief that
you have covered everything in a system-
atic and trustworthy way.
Then, after the ending, you can ask if
there are any questions that you didnt
cover during the talk.
Which Visual Aid?
The next decision during the preparation
of your talk is whether to use PowerPoint,
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some sort of prewritten board or card, or
writing as you go along on a flipchart or
whiteboard.
I dont think No Visual Aid is an option.
Many audience members will be primarily
visual, and they really struggle with a talk
a few pictures (but never pass visual aids
lost control of their attention).
So the question is whether to go for tech-
nology or not.
This is partly decided by audience size
if there are more than about 50 people
then it has to be PowerPoint, with all its
pros and cons.
With a smaller audience you have a
choice. Writing as you go along, on a flip
chart or white board, is:
more flexible,
more interactive,
safer in terms of avoiding technology
failures,
but
wont look as professional,
cant show photos,
and makes it harder to remember what
youre going to say next.
I run training courses every day and
Ihardly ever use PowerPointI just find
the flip chart more engaging. But thats
my personal view.
PowerPoint Tips
But if you are going to use PowerPoint
(or similar) then here are some thoughts
to consider:
Check the presentation thoroughly be-
fore you give itmaybe they have fiddled
with it, maybe their system has differ-
ent fonts so your ticks have turned into
little square boxes, or a line has wrapped
round and some of it has disappeared
from view below the bottom of a text
box, or maybe the colors are very dark,
and so on.
Keep the presentation simpleavoid lots
of fonts and build effects. And definitely no
sound effects when bulleted lines come in!
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