3 Steps to a Seamless Presentation
A seamless presentation is a feeling. It's a feeling you invoke in your audience from your presentation. It's the journey you take with your audience. It's the emotions you elicit.
It's also a reflection of you, your professionalism, and your preparedness. Thankfully, creating a seamless presentation isn't hard, it only takes 3 easy steps!
We're going to breakdown how to prepare and present a seamless presentation.
Preparation
Creating a seamless presentation requires you to think about your audience. Think about their goals, desires, objectives, and why they are even talking to you in the first place. The Art of War puts it best:
"Every battle is won or lost before it's ever fought". - Art of War
Audience
A seamless presentation takes the audience into account first. It Use these guideline questions when thinking about your presentation and your audience.
- How much interaction are you going to elicit from your audience?
- Do you have an easy way for people to ask questions without interrupting you?
- How are you going to gauge interest before, during, and after the presentation?
- Do you know "why" your audience is coming to listen / speak to you?
- What is your audience hoping to get out of your presentation?
At Demoflow, we set an agenda for the call, ask questions about "WHY" they're here, and what they're hoping to get out of the presentation.
Content
A seamless presentation tells a compelling story. It flows from one idea to the next while engaging your audience. It looks good, and it feels good. Think about the last presentation that you watched. What kept your attention? What made the presentation feel seamless.
When designing your presentation think about the following:
- What story are you trying to tell?
- What emotion are you trying to elicit? Shock? Fear? Joy?
- How can you be appropriately humorous?
- How can SHOW the audience what you're talking about? Charts? Websites? Stories?
- What can you GIVE to the audience? Education? Expertise? Homework? A personal challenge?
Resources
Follow these basic guidelines when building content for your seamless presentation:
- Charts are accurate and easy to interpret
- Focus on Tell, Show, Tell
- Avoid silly slide design mistakes
Here are a few links to some amazing presentation templates:
- 33 Presentation Templates and Design Tips to Hold Your Audience’s Attention
- Free Google Slides and PowerPoint templates
- 30 Free Google Slides Templates for your next presentation
Practice
Practice is the most important aspect of creating a seamless presentation. You need to get the repetitions in so that when you go up to bat, you're ready for anything
- Go through presentation start to end at least 5 times the day before
- Go through an extra dry-run before the presentation
- Document any mishaps and practice those sections until you've nailed it
This excellent Ted Talk explains on how to practice for anything:
Presentation
The presentation is where you and your content come together in a dance of words, visuals, and storytelling. This is where you get to shine.
Focus on the following items to keep your presentation as seamless as possible:
- Speak slow and calm throughout.
- Speak with lots of enthusiasm!
- Address the audience as frequently as possible. Make sure you're checking in with them.
- Show only CRITICAL content to progressing your story and your audiences understanding. Less is more.
- Focus on Tell, Show, Tell.
- Expect challenges or technical difficulties and handle them gracefully. Everyone understands when things go wrong.
Collaboration
This is about engagement, buy-in, and idea flow. No matter the presentation, you NEED to have some type of audience participation: Questions, Surveys, Games, Polls, Prizes, etc... The more engaging the presentation, the more seamless the presentation will feel. Ideas for your next presentation:
Use Zoom's Whiteboard features
Incorporate Polls into your Meetings:
You can learn how to set this up at the Zoom Support Page
Flexibility
Your audience will almost always throw curve balls at you. You need to be prepared to handle those curve balls gracefully. The better you can address on-the-fly questions, the more seamless your presentation will feel. We use the following at Demoflow to keep our flexibility at a maximum:
- When starting the presentation: Give your audience 2 or 3 options on where they want to start. Don't just dive head first.
- When switching from Slides to URLs: Load your URLs and login into the right platforms ahead of time.
- When showing off case studies: Pre-load case studies and extra, relevant information for quick jumps.
- When asked a question: Pause your screen share and find the right information / slides to address the question.
- When concluding your presentation: Leave your screen on a relatable, action oriented screen like customer testimonials, metric results, call to action statement, etc...
Best Practices
Almost all presentations are happening over video these days, so follow these best practices:
- 6 Winning Tactics for Remote Sales
- Best Practices For Virtual Presentations: 15 Expert Tips That Work For Everyone
- Zapier's 10 tips and Tricks for better Zoom calls
Follow up
Most presentations are NOT done when you're done when you hang up the phone. You are still "presenting" with your follow up emails.
- Of course you should follow up ASAP! It goes a long way in showing your enthusiasm!
- If appropriate, attach your presentation in the email
- Highlight key takeaways from the presentation in the email
Demoflow
Demoflow is a presentation software that helps create and deliver seamless presentations.
Demoflow combines slides, live urls, and more to help you build an awesome presentation. You will give the best presentation you've ever give! And close more deals!
If you're interested in trying it out today, click sign up to get started!
