The Importance of Business Presentation in Any Business

If you are working in the corporate world, then you should know that one of the most important aspect of business that needs to be considered is business presentation. Presenting a business or sales proposal in an oral manner is a very common practice, but unfortunately not everyone is an adept when it comes to speaking to a group of people. The success of any presentation relies heavily on how the presentation is delivered. If your business presentation is of high quality and interesting, then chances are high that your potential clients will be interested to consider your proposal. On the other hand, if your presentation is boring and not memorable, then they will most likely be inattentive to the presentation and won’t even have an idea what you are presenting. So knowing how to properly deliver a business presentation is a must for those who are involved in the corporate world.

If you are someone who is good with business presentation, then people will most likely perceive you to be a great leader. Leaders are known for their communication skills and to say that it is a requirement in achieving a high position of power would be an understatement. Being a good communicator means that you can impart your message to the listeners in an effective manner and this becomes an indispensable tool when applied in a business. Aside from attracting potential clients and profit for the company, someone who’s good in presentation is also an excellent representative for any company. By having excellent communication skills, you would be able to gather a positive appeal for the company that you are working for.

As it is mentioned before, not everyone is skilled when it comes to business presentation. In any social situation, talking to a group of people is common among many people. Fortunately, business presentation is a skill that can be learned and as with all other sorts of skills, it can be further developed through constant practice and experience. If you find yourself having trouble with presenting a business idea or proposal, then you might want to consider enrolling yourself to a presentation training course. These training will not only aid you on how to deliver an effective presentation but it can also help improve your public speaking skills in general. But the most important thing that you need to do if you have an upcoming business presentation is to prepare for it. If you are unprepared by the time the presentation comes, then it will surely be evident during the presentation. Being prepared can significantly increase the chance for success of the business presentation and leaves you with very little margin for error.

Fortunately for you, there are many devices and equipments that can aid you in improving the quality of your business presentation. Hardware such as projectors and touch screen displays are just some of most common devices that are used in business presentations. So be sure that you take advantage of these technology during your presentation.

How To Use Powerpoint To Support A Business Presentation

Delivering a business presentation is an event that most people find utterly terrifying. A business presentation, however, is just another business skill, combining specific technical aspects with behavioural practise.

There are three distinct components to making an effective presentation:

- Designing a high-powered presentation

- Using PowerPoint properly to support your presentation

- Delivering the presentation effectively

This article, the second of three, will outline how to use PowerPoint properly to support a business presentation. It will identify two distinct kinds of situations in which PowerPoint might be utilized and when it’s most appropriate to use each.

Presentation Platform

PowerPoint is an excellent platform to use in developing a business presentation. It is visually appealing and is relatively easy to create. In many ways, PowerPoint has become the accepted business presentation platform. But over time, something has gone wrong with the manner in which PowerPoint is used.

Unfortunately, PowerPoint’s proper usage has become confused, because two very different purposes have gotten fused together. What follows will challenge the cultural norms of many organizations and may seem misplaced at first review. The assertion, here, is that the presentation needs to be grounded and focused on You, the presenter, and not on PowerPoint. PowerPoint is but an aid to support your presentation.

Reports In PowerPoint

A report that has been developed in Word readily can be transposed into PowerPoint. The advantage of using PowerPoint is that graphs, charts and other visuals are easily incorporated into the presentation. PowerPoint can provide a crisp and yet detailed representation of the original report in a different format.

In this situation, the PowerPoint Report can serve as an excellent foundation for a voice-over webinar or it can be distributed as a stand-alone document. It also can serve as a comprehensive take-away from a business presentation.

A PowerPoint Report also may be used effectively as a reference document when presenting a business case to a small group. In such circumstances, a hard copy, not slides, should form the back-bone of the business presentation.

The History Of The Universe

Let’s say that someone has been tasked with making a presentation on “The History Of The Universe”. Compiled as a PowerPoint Report, it likely would be quite extensive, with charts, graphs and other representations augmenting and clarifying the text.

Now imagine taking this PowerPoint Report and displaying it in its original form on a screen. This would be an excruciating experience, because the volume and complexity of the information being presented would overwhelm our capacity to process it. This PowerPoint Report is best studied deliberately and methodically.

Reports Don’t Work As Slides

You cannot present “The History of the Universe” on a PowerPoint Slide. Well, maybe you could, but the font would have to be shrunk so small that it would be totally unreadable. And yet, something similar occurs with great frequency in many business presentations.

I recently attended a business presentation where the presenter began by saying “You won’t be able to read this slide”. He then turned to the screen and proceeded to read the slide to the audience for the next five minutes. Does this sound familiar?

Respect Literacy

It is reasonable to assume that your audience has good literacy skills. Being respectful of this, it actually is an insult to read the PowerPoint Slides to them, providing that the font size is large enough to be read by the entire audience. Let the audience do its own reading.

PowerPoint Slides

When making a business presentation to an audience, used correctly, PowerPoint Slides are an excellent accessory for highlighting key points. PowerPoint Slides should be used sparingly and should be spaced throughout the presentation. The slides need to be created in a font size large enough to be read by the entire audience in the room.

Your goal is to ensure that the audience’s attention remains riveted on you, the presenter, and is not distracted by a display of continuously changing slides. This is fundamentally different from projecting a PowerPoint Report on a screen.

Each PowerPoint Slide should have no more than three bullets. A bullet is not a paragraph or even a sentence. It is a few words or symbols, maybe a phrase, which captures a critical idea from your presentation that merits special attention. The bullets might be extracted from the PowerPoint Report, in whole or in some modified form.

The Salient Details

A PowerPoint Report becomes the definitive document, as it is comprehensive and detailed. The corresponding business presentation is derived from the PowerPoint Report. Cognizant of time limitations, only salient details can be presented, not the entire PowerPoint Report.

Attempting to do anything more, unfortunately, is guaranteed to lose the attention of your audience. Your challenge is to frame and deliver the business presentation so that your audience will want to subsequently study the PowerPoint Report in more detail.

Slides And Reports

PowerPoint is a powerful and utilitarian tool for creating slides and reports. Reports developed in PowerPoint can be comprehensive, while at the same time providing visuals which substantiate and illuminate the text.

PowerPoint Slides, on the other hand, should be used to highlight and reinforce key elements of a business presentation, adding to the impact of the presenter.

Recognizing these critical differences will help you to develop high-impact business presentations that engage your audience and gain their commitment.

Conclusion

By combining these ideas about how to use PowerPoint properly with suggestions from the companion articles on how to design a high-powered presentation and how to deliver a presentation effectively, you will become much more confident and competent in delivering high-powered and effective business presentations.

Diamond Management Institute develops high-performance organiz

What Is the Best Internet Business Product?

Anyone thinking of starting an online business will immediately start to wonder what is the best internet business product. The answer to this isn’t as simple as just giving you the name of a specific product. Instead, there are certain things you can look for in any product that will tell you whether it’s likely to be profitable or not.

Obviously, you want to know that whatever product you choose to promote has a hungry market out there somewhere. You also want to know that there is enough profit in it for you to make your marketing and promotional efforts worthwhile.

The best part about operating any business online is that you have a choice whether to promote physical products that need to be shipped out to customers or digital products that can be downloaded instantly. You also have the choice of whether to promote big-ticket items that earn you a lot of money per sale or cheaper items that earn a little per sale but tend to sell a lot more.

Here is a brief look at the advantages of each type of Internet business product:

Digital Products

Digital products like eBooks or software programs are the ideal Internet business product. You design and create the product just once before uploading it to your web host. From there, your customers are able to pay for the item and then download it directly to their computer instantly.

These types of products are extremely profitable, as customers are only downloading digital files. You don’t need to worry about shipping or postage costs and there is no handling to be done at your end.

Physical Products

Physical products can still be extremely profitable for any online business. Customers place their order and pay for the item on your website. When you receive the order you package up the product and ship it out to them. You’ll make money as long as your prices cover the cost of the item as well as the packaging and shipping costs plus leave some profit for you.

Big-Ticket Items

Selling an expensive item means far more profit per sale for your business. You might only need to sell one item per week to make enough profit to keep you going. More expensive items can sometimes be challenging to sell, but this shouldn’t deter you if you’re really passionate about what you’re promoting.

Cheap Items

Selling really cheap items can be an excellent way to increase any business revenue. People often purchase low cost things on impulse, so it can be really easy to sell lots of things quickly. As the price is so low your profits might only be small. This means you need to make a lot of sales regularly to turn that bit of profit into a decent income.

Combining Your Options

Some Internet business products can be used in combination with others. For example, you might offer a really cheap eBook for a couple of bucks that contains information your customers love. You can then use that cheap product to upsell other more expensive products you have available. If customers loved your first product they’re likely to trust you enough to pay for your more expensive items as well.

This increases your business revenue and makes it far easier to choose the best possible Internet business product to suit your needs.

This information is from Tom Hua Co-founder of the World Internet Summit – the worlds biggest internet business event

How To Design A Business Presentation

Delivering a business presentation is an event that most people find utterly terrifying. A business presentation, however, is just another business skill, combining specific technical aspects with behavioural practise.

There are three distinct components to making an effective presentation:

- Designing a high-powered presentation

- Using PowerPoint properly to support your presentation

- Delivering the presentation effectively

This article, the first of three, will outline how to design a high-powered business presentation. It will identify a number of strategic considerations, in addition to highlighting some organizing and sequencing suggestions.

The Starting Point

When preparing a business presentation, what elements need to be considered?

The first questions that you need to address are:

- what is the Purpose of this business presentation

- what Action do you want people to take as a result of the presentation

Although these questions seems relatively straight-forward, most often they either are overlooked or it is assumed that “we all know the answers”.

In fact, accurately articulating the answers to these questions at the outset of designing your presentation is vital to constructing a business presentation that will be effective, as well as delivering meaningful results.

It’s Only For Information

Generally, people answer the first question with “It’s Only For Information”. In a business context, however, everyone is far too busy to attend a presentation just for information. A business presentation needs to provide value to the audience.

In the business environment, every presentation needs to be understood as an opportunity to:

- Educate

- Create alignment

- Develop commitment

- Secure resources

From this, we can conclude that the Purpose of the presentation is to persuade the audience to engage in supporting your initiative, with the desired Action being the allocating of human, financial and other resources to achieve its end.

Obviously, this is a fundamentally different and more intricate objective than the view that “It’s Only For Information”.

Internal Competition For Resources

Every organization experiences significant ongoing constraint on its available resources. Legitimate demands for more resources far exceed the organization’s ability to satisfy all those requests.

The organization ideally will allocate its finite resources in a manner which maximizes strategic priorities. Other business units or particular initiatives, therefore, effectively are your competition for these resources.

Given this backdrop, delivering a presentation is a focused opportunity to stand apart from the internal competition and promote your imperatives, while demonstrating how this will contribute to the organization’s success.

Strategic Positioning

The strength of a business presentation depends on the degree to which it is strategically positioned.

- Does it concisely link to the business priorities?

- Does it deliver on improved customer service, reduced costs, etc.?

- Does it collaboratively support other business units or initiatives?

- Does it reduce organizational pain and increase employee engagement?

- Does it address emerging dynamics and opportunities?

Remember, you’re looking for support and resources in a highly competitive environment. Your goal is to build the audience’s understanding about your activities, so that they enthusiastically will endorse your resource requirements.

The Audience

The audience is comprised of a variety of people with different roles and varying power. You need to be very thoughtful about:

- Who are the decision makers?

- Who are the influencers?

- Who are your potential allies?

- Who are those that might perceive you as competition or a threat?

The presentation needs to be crafted to appeal and connect sequentially with each of these groups. Their current level of understanding, as well as their educational and business needs, most often will be quite distinct. This unevenness requires your careful consideration.

Be Selective And Precise

Think of presentations you’ve attended. Has your attention ever strayed and, if so, at what point in the presentation? The sad truth is that we’ve all endured presentations which were too long and crammed with an overload of information.

Your goal is to connect with the audience, keep their attention, nurture their enthusiasm, and secure their commitment. Avoid sabotaging yourself – keep the presentation short, concise and focused.

You are the expert regarding your business. You are intimate with a vast array of information, substantially more than the audience wants to know or can absorb. Your presentation should deliver education, not just reams of information.

You will need to be selective and precise, by filtering and organizing only those important highlights which will be most meaningful to the audience.

What They Need To Know

It has been shown that your presentation time is limited and precious, therefore, be judicious. Determine what your audience already knows. You might choose to remind them of this, but you don’t need to dedicate valuable time to details.

What are the gaps in their understanding and which is the most effective way of educating them to close those gaps? Articulate the most critical elements first.

Position your presentation to demonstrate a compelling argument that delivers on a blend of positive outcomes from strategic priorities to financial success to alignment with other operations. Highlight the benefits of supporting your initiative and the consequences of declining such support.

Sequencing

Your presentation should begin with a short description of what you are about to present. This eliminates the situation where your audience is side-tracked during the presentation, trying to figure out your intent. Then deliver your presentation. Conclude the presentation with a short summary of what you just presented.

Good News First

You want to get the audience on-side as quickly as possible. Start with good news. For example: “Our recent project was delivered on time and under cost. There were, however, a number of major obstacles that we needed to overcome. I would like to share those insights with you, as well as the lessons learned.”

This is a more effective approach than beginning with a litany of problems that were encountered and only sharing the good news at the end of the presentation. As soon as the audience hears the good news, they will be relieved and encouraged, and likely will be more attentive throughout the entire presentation.

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