Presentations – Business English Skills 360 https://www.mybeonline.com The ESL Podcast that Looks at the Other Side of Business English Thu, 21 May 2020 14:25:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.mybeonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/cropped-business-english-skills-360-amp-banner-1-32x32.png Presentations – Business English Skills 360 https://www.mybeonline.com 32 32 Business English Skills 360 podcast lessons provide essential tips and language for communicating in English. Free transcripts and PDF downloads are available on the website: https://www.BusinessEnglishPod.com www.BusinessEnglishPod.com clean episodic www.BusinessEnglishPod.com BusinessEnglishPod@mac.com BusinessEnglishPod@mac.com (www.BusinessEnglishPod.com) Copyright Business English Pod Ltd. 2006-2020 Business English Skills 360 - The podcast that looks at the other side of Business English. Presentations – Business English Skills 360 https://www.mybeonline.com/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/Business-English-Skills-360-iTunes-1500.png https://www.mybeonline.com/category/english-presentations/ TV-G Skills 360 – Presentations: Connecting to your Audience (2) https://www.mybeonline.com/skills-360-presentations-connecting-to-your-audience-2/ https://www.mybeonline.com/skills-360-presentations-connecting-to-your-audience-2/#respond Sat, 23 Jul 2016 23:10:27 +0000 https://www.businessenglishpod.com/?p=9219 Learn Business English for connecting to your audience during your presentation.

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Transcript

Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 for today's lesson on how to connect with your audience while you’re actually delivering your presentation in English.

It’s easy to leave your connection with the audience to chance. I mean, you might think that giving a presentation should be about conveying a message rather than “connecting” with your audience. But I assure you, whatever your message is, you’ll get it across with much greater success if you have a good connection with your audience. And that connection isn't a chance occurrence. You have to work on it.

Last time I gave you some tips on what you can do before you start your presentation. Today I want to talk about what you can do during your presentation. And a great place to begin is at the beginning. One thing you should definitely do in your opening is to tell your listeners why your presentation matters. That might sound like this: “The information I’ll give you today will help you come to a decision about such and such.” Or it might be: “Today I’d like to share some ideas that could completely change the way you talk to your customers.”

In your opening, it’s also a good idea to provoke their curiosity with something interesting, and relevant. That could sound like this: “10 years ago I was working at a conference just like this… as a cleaner.” Or maybe: “we had some pretty big goals for the third quarter… so, did we actually meet them?” In these two ways, you are connecting by making your presentation relevant and interesting.

I know you’ve probably heard that it’s a good idea to grab the audience’s attention with a joke, or a shocking idea, or an eye-catching visual that makes them sit up and take notice. To be perfectly honest, this bit of advice has led to a lot of really lame openings. I mean, you can’t just tack on a surprise to the start of a boring presentation and think that you’ve done the tough work of audience engagement. If you’re funny, and you’ve got a relevant joke, then tell it. Otherwise, don’t. Because it’s not authentic. I can’t emphasize the importance of authenticity enough. Be yourself, and people will be more likely to connect with you.

But remember, it’s not all about you, it’s about your audience. If you learned something about them before your presentation, drop that information in somewhere during your presentation. Give examples from their own lives, or work. Another really simple but effective way to connect is using people’s names. If you’re presenting to a group of people you don’t know, it’s a good idea to find out a few names beforehand. So, by using people’s names and information that matters to them, you make the presentation about them.

I’ve been talking a bit about what you should say or mention in your presentation. But no relationship is a one-way street. And it’s much much easier to keep people engaged if you invite them to do a bit of talking themselves. Even just a bit helps. How do you do that? Well, you ask questions. Asking questions is one way to make people feel like participants, not just listeners. Hearing from the audience also gives you ongoing feedback on how they’re feeling and what’s important to them. And you can use that feedback to adapt on the fly.
]]> www.BusinessEnglishPod.com 6:49 Skills 360 – Presentations: Connecting to your Audience (1) https://www.mybeonline.com/skills-360-presentations-connecting-to-audience-1/ https://www.mybeonline.com/skills-360-presentations-connecting-to-audience-1/#respond Sat, 16 Jul 2016 21:10:39 +0000 https://www.businessenglishpod.com/?p=9201 Learn Business English for connecting your presentation to your audience.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast. I’m your host, Tim Simmons, and today I want to talk about how to connect with your audience during a presentation.

You’ve probably heard all sorts of advice about delivering a good presentation in English. But at the end of the day, every single presentation strategy is designed for one thing: connecting with the audience. In fact, if you don’t connect with your audience, you might as well pack up your PowerPoint and head home. You need to build a bridge to send your message across. No bridge, no message. And don’t think you need to be an easy-going extrovert to connect with an audience. This is something that you can learn to do well.

Today I want to focus on what you do before you actually take the stage. Yes, before you even lay eyes on your audience, you can start thinking about how to connect. You’ll need to do some thinking about your audience, and plan accordingly. Don’t put your information at the center of the presentation, put your audience at the center.

Think for a second about a presentation that you felt wasn’t up to snuff. What was wrong with it? Maybe the presenter told you things you already knew, or told you things you never really wanted to know in the first place. Or maybe he was just plain boring. Whatever the case, chances are that presenter didn’t put you, the audience member, at the center of his presentation. He put himself, or the information.

So, to avoid this blunder, find out who your audience will be. What’s their background? Are they similar to you? Do they work in the same job, company, or industry? What’s their level of knowledge? These are all questions you should keep in mind as you plan. Because what you say, and how you say it, is vastly different depending on the audience. Would you give the same presentation, for example, about your company’s history to a flock of eager college grads and to a small group of senior executives from a foreign company? Hopefully not.

Once you’ve got a handle on who you’ll be talking to, you can consider what they want, or need, to know. Put yourself in their shoes and ask “what would I expect out of this presentation?” Then design your presentation to satisfy those expectations. You might think this seems self-evident, but it’s not. In copywriting, there’s something called the Red Pen Rule. This rule says that once you’ve got what you think is tight and compelling text, take out your red pen and nix 30% of the words. Most presenters would be wise to follow this advice with the information they include. There’s usually 30% of a presentation that shouldn’t make the final cut. It’s that 30% of irrelevant stuff that can kill your connection with the audience.

Now, here’s another important consideration about content: don’t just give them the “what.” Give them the “why” and the “so what.” Presenters who focus on the “what” drone on about strategy X or sales figures for Y or new research on Z. But why do X, Y, and Z matter? And so what if they’re true? In other words, what are the implications of all this information? I’m talking here about giving context to what you’re saying....]]> www.BusinessEnglishPod.com 7:58 Skills 360 – Tips for Successful English Presentations 2 https://www.mybeonline.com/360-tips-for-successful-presentations-2/ https://www.mybeonline.com/360-tips-for-successful-presentations-2/#comments Sun, 16 Jan 2011 06:25:27 +0000 http://www.mybeonline.com/?p=308 Learn how to make an effective presentation in English.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome back to Business Skills 360. I’m Tim Simmons, and I’m glad you could join me today for the second part in our series on effective English presentations. Last week, we talked about keeping it short, simple, engaging, and real. Much of that happens in the preparation. Today, we’re going to talk about what happens when you stand up in front of that audience and have to start speaking. Take a deep breath...

Your first goal should be to make a connection with each and every listener. That connection is the pathway along which your message travels. If you have a good connection, there’s a good chance your message will sink in.

To make this connection, you have to do two things: you need to control the audience’s attention and you need to engage their minds. Remember that: control and engage. And to do these two things, you have three tools: your voice, your props such as PowerPoint – and your body or movement.

Let’s start with your voice. It needs to be confident and clear. Show everyone that you know your stuff. Speak slowly and steadily. And remember that silence can be your friend. You need to pause sometimes to give people a chance to think. If you fill every space with your voice, you might start to get on people’s nerves, and the words won’t carry any power. Try very hard not to use “ums” and “ahs” when you’re thinking. Think silently, choose your words carefully, and deliver them confidently. Otherwise, people will tune you out.

When you speak, you should invite people into your presentation by asking for input. That means using questions. Ask easy ones so that people don’t have to think too much. Some of your questions can be open, to the entire audience. Some of them can be directed at specific people. Don’t move on until you get an answer. As soon as people start contributing by answering questions, their engagement goes up. They feel like they are participants, not just listeners.

The next tools are your props and visual aids. That could mean PowerPoint slides. But it could also mean a whiteboard, a flipchart, a wall chart, or anything else that people look at that is not you but is part of your presentation. The most important thing is that you use these aids. Don’t just let people look at the slides. The slides should help you illustrate your points. Don’t put up a graph and not explain it. It should be worked into your presentation.

These aids are useful, not just for giving information, but for keeping attention moving. Humans – and not just children – have short attention spans. They can’t concentrate on one thing for long. So you have to work with that, and take their attention somewhere else before it wanders somewhere else. Move people’s attention back and forth between you, your aids, other listeners, a handheld prop, back to you... and so on.

Now, your body, and what you do with it, is also important. I’m talking about body language and movement. Let’s start up top with the face. Firstly, make eye contact. Don’t just quickly scan the faces in the room. Look directly at an individual when you’re making an important point. That person will respond with his or her attention, and the connection will last. That person’s engagement in your presentation will shoot up. Try to do this with every individual in the room at some point. Okay... your face also includes your mouth. And what are you going to do with that? You’re going to smile. Sure, you’ve heard it before, but it’s easy to forget once you get nervous. The smile is universal.]]> www.BusinessEnglishPod.com clean 7:00 Skills 360 – Tips for Successful English Presentations 1 https://www.mybeonline.com/360-tips-for-successful-presentations-1/ https://www.mybeonline.com/360-tips-for-successful-presentations-1/#comments Sun, 09 Jan 2011 19:20:49 +0000 http://www.mybeonline.com/?p=301 In the Business English 360 lesson, we'll learn how to give a success presentation in English.

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]]> https://www.mybeonline.com/360-tips-for-successful-presentations-1/feed/ 6 In the Business English 360 lesson, we'll learn how to give a success presentation in English. PDF Transcript | Quiz

Transcript

Hello, I’m Tim Simmons and you’re listening to Business Skills 360. We’re going to kick off the New Year with an insanely great show on presentations. But first, I want to wish you all an awesome 2011. Hopefully the coming year is unbelievably wonderful for you. I know it will be for me. Now, let’s get to all that awesomeness...

Okay. Forget everything I just said. I’m not Steve Jobs, and I don’t have a shiny “new” gizmo to show you. If I keep using words like “awesome,” you’re going to get sick of me really fast. You might have heard that Steve Jobs gives great presentations. Well, he can wow a crowd of people who already love Apple, but should we really try to copy him? His style and his adjectives don’t really work when English is not your first language. And they fall flat when you are an HR manager presenting a new compensation plan, or an engineer reporting change orders on a big project.

So exactly how can you make an impact? How can you tighten up your presentation so that it connects to your audience?

I’m sure all of you have heard of the mnemonic device KISS – short for “Keep it Short and Simple”. This is excellent advice for all types of business communication, and I completely agree with it. But KISS misses a couple of key points that you also need to consider so I’ve added these and now like to use KISSER- which stands for “Keep it Short, Simple, Engaging and Real.”

Let’s look at the first term: “short.” Many bad presentations have too much repetition or unnecessary information. People want what is important and relevant, and that’s what you should give them. Try this: after you prepare your presentation, go through and cut out 30%. You should be able to do that without damaging your central message. What remains will have much more impact because it’s not surrounded by fluff. This applies to PowerPoint slides, charts, and diagrams as well. As a general rule, try to limit slides to one per minute. And if your boss gives you ten minutes to speak, make sure you can do it in just five.

Next is “simple.” Simple means organized and clear. Start with the purpose of your presentation, which you should be able to summarize in one sentence. Something like: “make people understand that expenses are too high.” From that purpose, organize your ideas into three or four points. If you want, you can frame these points as questions, like this: “What expenses can we reduce? What expenses can we eliminate? And what are the long-term savings?” And tell your audience what the outline is at the start. If your questions are good ones, they’ll want to figure out the answers.

“Simple” also applies to your language and visuals. Don’t try to impress people with technical lingo. It won’t work. And keep PowerPoint slides simple. No confusing charts or graphs. Only the essential information, in simple form. The text on your slides should not be too hard to see, no smaller than a 30-point font. This will force you to keep the text simple. I promise you, people will appreciate that.

Okay, now we come to “engaging.” You need to catch and hold people’s attention. You want them to be interested. And how do we do that? In terms of what you say, there are a lot of great techniques that we’ll cover in our upcoming podcast series on impact presentations. They include repetition, rhetorical questions, metaphors, and visualizing facts and figures. One thing that is not engaging is information overload. Don’t overwhelm your audience. Use pictures and other visual aids to illustrate your points. If you’re doing a PowerPoint, don’t put two “informational” slides right after each other. Mix it up.]]> www.BusinessEnglishPod.com clean 7:18