|
Архитектура Аудит Военная наука Иностранные языки Медицина Металлургия Метрология Образование Политология Производство Психология Стандартизация Технологии |
|
|
Архитектура Аудит Военная наука Иностранные языки Медицина Металлургия Метрология Образование Политология Производство Психология Стандартизация Технологии |
LECTURE VI: HOW TO MAKE A SUCCESSFUL PRESENTATION
TOPICAL WORDS
PLAN: What is a presentation? What do you want to achieve? – Informative and Persuasive presentations Structuring a presentation What makes a good presentation? Basic rules of successful presentation Presentational techniques 7. Manage your ending
...your business career will often depend on your ability to persuade audiences of your point of view or of the need for your company’s product or services....becoming an effective speaker should be one of your priorities.
What is a presentation?
A couple of years ago, Fortune magazine ran an article about the hidden fears and phobias of top managers in the USA. They discovered that the number one fear - above fear of snakes, heights, loneliness, sickness or death - was giving presentations! The reason? People are frightened that they will make fools of themselves in front of others, and that their personal and professional credibility will suffer. When you have to make a presentation in a second language the pressure is even greater.. What is a presentation? Presentation - a talk or report by a company executive that introduces a new product or service to an audience of specialists in the field or to potential investors. The definition given above points to the speaker-audience interaction that takes place: the representative of a business organization talks about a certain product or service; the audience perceives and, if need be, responds by asking questions, requesting information or making comments. A business presentation is typically carried out using audio/visual presentation material, such as projectors and statistical documents created with presentation software, or more rudimentary materials such as flip charts and whiteboards. The two most common types of business presentations are sales presentations and intra-organization presentations. Sales presentations are conducted by suppliers in front of a potential client or customer, with the express purpose of pitching their product or service. Intra-organization presentations are conducted by one or more members of an organization to their coworkers, and are often for the purpose of introducing new policies or operations [16, 30].
2. What do you want to achieve? Informative and Persuasive presentations
Most of the presentations you’re asked to give in a business setting aim to achieve one of two purposes: 1) to inform 2) to persuade Informative presentations. When putting together a presentation, it is essential to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Do you want to inform an audience about essential facts? If that is how the presenter sees the task before him, then what he has to prepare himself for is an informative presentation. Include talks, seminars, proposals, workshops, conferences, and meetings where the presenter or presenters share their expertise and information is exchanged. Persuasive presentations Presenting information is an essential skill in the world of business. Sometimes, however, the presenter’s task is not confined to sharing information. More often than not, business people address fellow professionals because they need to persuade them. In an informative presentation, the audience learns about a new subject or learns something new about a familiar subject. In a persuasive presentation, the speaker attempts to change the audience’s attitudes or behaviors. For example, if you are asked to stand up in the company meeting and summarize the status of a project you are working on, your goal is to inform. Your objective is to present the facts relating to the completeness of the project. However, if you are asked " how things are going" on a project you are currently working on, your goal is to persuade. Your objective is to present your opinion of the project— and tacitly, to convince others that your opinion is correct. Let’s say you’re the CEO of a company and every month you must give a status report to the Board of Directors. The facts you choose to present to the Board will shape their impression of the success or failure of your operation. For example, if you highlight activities that have gone well over the past month like decreases in operational costs, savings in payroll, and increased sales, the Board is likely view your status in a positive light. However, if you touch on issues such as attrition, pending lawsuits, and business process inefficiency, the Board is more likely to question the success of the company. As you plan your presentation, you must decide what your goals are. If your goal is to convince the Board that the company is doing well, then you might choose to present only 1 fact how to give great presentation achievements. However, if you want the Board’s help in overcoming obstacles, you will need to inform the Board about all the facts. Whether your purpose is to inform or to persuade, your presentation will include many of the same elements. It’s important that you know your own purpose before you give a presentation, however, or you risk giving away details you did not intend to expose or leaving a weak impression on your listeners. If you begin a presentation with the intent to inform, but decide halfway through that you need to persuade your listeners instead, then you’ve wasted half of the opportunity you had to convince your audience. Assess your goals before the presentation - your presentation will be stronger as a result.
Structuring a presentation Presentation is an act of public speaking. The text of one’s presentation should be carefully structured. In other words, the points the presenter is going to make should be organized in a way that would keep one’s audience interested and engaged. All presentations begin with an introduction. " Know exactly how to start" is a piece of advice offered by Mark Powell (Presenting in English, p.7). Open with impact. Most international business presentations seem to start in the same way -’Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I’m very happy to be here today and to have been given this opportunity of speaking to you all. I’m afraid that thirty minutes is too short a time to deal with this complex subject but I’ll try to cover as much as I can. ‘We’ve all heard this hundreds of times before. It’s boring, predictable, and has no impact. We all know what’s coming and we’re only half-listening. But many second-language speakers of English follow this safe, conventional approach because they don’t know what to do instead. The start of any presentation is a key success factor. We need to wake our audience up, to focus their attention on us and on our subject, and to motivate them to listen carefully. And this is especially true when presenting to British or American audiences. So how can we improve our impact in the first thirty seconds of our presentation? There are three key ‘Don’t s’ and three key ‘Do’s’. DON’TS 1. Don’t start with greetings and cliché s - ‘Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I’m very happy to be here...’. If you want to greet the audience or thank them for coming, wait until you’ve grabbed their attention and shown clearly the purpose of your talk. 2. Don’t over-use the word ‘ I ‘- ‘I’m very happy to...’, ‘I’m afraid...’, ‘I’ll try to...’. ‘ I ‘ is a distancing word. It separates you from your audience and makes you sound self-centered. 3. Don’t start by apologizing - ‘... thirty minutes is too short a time to deal with..." or by being negative - ‘... I’ll try to cover as much as I can.’What you are doing is telling your audience that it isn’t really worth their while listening to you. THE DO’S 1. Do start with a powerful first sentence. ‘Improving our after-sales service is vital for our future success.’This is a ‘subject heading’ start, similar to a headline on a letter or report. Why do we need to improve our after- sales service? This is a rhetorical question that forces your audience to think about your subject. ‘At the end of the next thirty minutes we should all be aware of the reasons why we need to improve our after-sales service.’ This is an initial benefit promise, which motivates your audience to keep listening. 2. Do include your audience in your presentation by using ‘we’ and ‘you’. Instead of saying: I want to show you how to deal with this problem, say: So, how should we deal with this problem? Instead of saying: The next picture summarizes what I’ve been saying, say: The next picture summarizes what we’ve been discussing. Instead of saying: I think we should do the following..., say: Let’s do the following.... 3. Do be positive and motivating in your approach. ‘Over the next thirty minutes we’ll cover the five main issues.’‘Imagine that we have increased sales by 20% and we’re now number one in our market.’ Learn your first five to ten sentences by heart so that you can concentrate on sounding confident to your audience. Remember, according to many psychologists we only have thirty seconds to make a first impression. Make sure the first impression you make on your international audience is a positive one. ü No cliché s - powerful first sentence ü Avoid ‘I’- include the audience ü No apologies - be positive An American businessman had to speak to a mixed audience - half were from the States and half were Japanese. How could he open with impact when there was such a cultural mix? This is what he said. ‘I’m told that in Japan you should start a presentation with an apology. In America we usually start with a joke. Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for not starting with a joke today.’ Signpost clearly. Your introduction should contain signposting for the audience. When you are speaking to an international audience you have to have a clear, logical structure to your presentation. And you have to help them by signposting the route you are taking. What, then, is the best structure for a presentation? Follow this well-known 3-step structure: ‘First of all, tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, and finally tell them what you told them! ‘In other words, start by giving an overview of what you are going to cover, then go through it point by point, and finally summarize your main ideas. Let’s take each step in turn. Step 1 Tell them what you’re going to tell them.’ Grab the audience’s attention with a good opening. Then motivate them by telling them what they’re going to get out of listening to you. And finally, explain the process and main points you intend to cover. ‘Why should we all be learning and improving our English? At the end of this 45-minute presentation you will understand the importance of using international English, and you will have some simple tools to help you improve your own English language skills.’ Firstly we’ll discuss what international English actually is and why we should use it. Then we’ll look at three areas where most second-language speakers need improvement; and finally we’ll look at some simple tools for self-improvement.’ Step 2 ‘Then tell them.’ Go through the main points of your presentation one by one. Make sure the flow is logical and that you signal clearly when you are moving from one point to another. This is what is meant by ‘signposting.’ Often we have a good, logical structure to our presentation but forget, or are not able, to make this structure transparent to the audience. ‘So now we understand the importance of using international English when we are communicating with people from different cultural backgrounds. Let’s go on now to look at the three main improvement areas for second-language speakers. Firstly we need to identify false friends’ and start the process of getting rid of them.’ Remember that we often swamp our audiences with too much detail. So make sure you only have three to five main points in the main body of your presentation. More is too many! Step 3 ‘Tell them what you told them.’ If you want your audience to remember what you said the next day, make a clear summary of your key messages. If you can, choose the three most important ones. This allows the audience to grasp them easily and it allows you to build your summary up into a proper climax. Using international English allows us to communicate clearly and on an equal basis with both native and second-language speakers. ‘Ridding our language of false friends, confusing grammar and poor pronunciation will make us feel more confident in using the language. And finally, using the tools we discussed, we only need to spend ten minutes a day to become a more proficient international English speaker.’ Think of your next international presentation as a piece of music and yourself as the conductor. First introduce the main theme. Then elaborate on the theme in different ways with different instruments. Finally, bring the piece to a close with a memorable crescendo, ending on a high note! The presenter introduces the subject with the help of the phrase What I’d like to do this morning is to present... and then signposts her presentation: First, I’ll give you some background... Then, after outlining... Lastly, I’ll explain... Introducing the subject and signposting the route is followed by the main body of the presentation. In informative presentations, this central part includes descriptions, analysis, information and facts. Here is a sample presentation plan that focuses on the performance of a particular product (Aqua-Sparkle) in a certain market segment I over a certain period of time: Part 1. Market Overview. Part 2. Brand performance of Aqua-Sparkle. Point 1. Sales performance in three types of outlets. a. National Grocers. b. Independent Grocers. c. Neighborhood Stores. Point 2. Profitability of brand. Part 3. Outlook for the future. In persuasive presentations, the main body of the presentation consists in building arguments and talking through options. A sample blueprint of a persuasive presentation is given below: States the options. Re-states the first option. Moves to the benefits. Moves to the weaknesses. Moves on to the second option. States the main benefit. Moves to the weaknesses. Moves to the preferred option. States a weakness. Balances the weakness with benefits. Without a good conclusion, the presentation is not complete. In an informative presentation, the presenter summarizes the main findings of the study and draws conclusions for the audience. For example: 1.To summarize. Firstly, the overall performance... Secondly, sales of... Thirdly, the outlook for... Fourthly, there is... As you’ve seen... 2.At this stage I’d like to summarize the results of... The conclusion of a persuasive presentation often includes a brief summary of one’s arguments, recommendations or a call for action, for example: ü So, in conclusion, I would like you to give the new office automation scheme your serious consideration... ü So, the option we strongly recommend for more detailed consideration is to subcontract all administrative computing... Evade by not accepting responsibility ü I’m afraid I’m not the right person to answer that. ü Jo Stockton is a much better person to answer that.
Популярное:
|
Последнее изменение этой страницы: 2016-04-11; Просмотров: 1255; Нарушение авторского права страницы
