Great Presentations Are Like Great Theater

 Great theater is one of the great pleasures in life. It is more than an event, but should be a memorable experience that moves the audience to identify with the story and characters. Great theater has 3 basic components as seen and heard from the audience. 1. You need a good script. It should be a story that draws the audience in – and keeps them interested until the final moments. 2. You need good actors who can bring the roles to life. They not only know their lines, but they are natural in their characters who merge completely with their roles. This makes them so believable that the audience can no longer see the actor behind the role. And finally, the eye needs to “see” the story supported by a good set, good props and appropriate costumes that reflect the roles played by the actors. All three components need to work in harmony so that the performance is convincing at every level.

Likewise, a great presentation needs to be well structured and written. Every presentation is a kind of story, and therefore, should be written, similar to a  script for the theater, using the thousands-year old story structure. At the beginning it should introduce the problem or issue that will be addressed in the core of the talk. Just like every play (or novel and film), the audience needs to know what the problem is. This raises tension – and creates an emotional need from the audience to know how the problem will be solved.  It should then proceed to go through the stepsof how the speaker came to a solution, with occasional drawbacks to keep the tension up. It’s a basic formula, but one that few business presentations follow. What tends to happen instead, in many business presentations, is that the presenter completely skips the problem description and background context for how situation came to be as it is. As a result, the audience has no idea what is trying to be solved. They then tune out due to confusion or lack of interest, and begin to look at their smartphones. The script (or story you’re going to tell) is really the key important factor in preparing your presentation.

The second factor in a presentation is learning to deliver it well. That means using your voice (flow, intonation, pitch, tempo and pauses), gestures, body language, and eye contact in a waythat makes you authentic and interesting - but not exaggeratedly so.

And finally, you need to have attractive and visual friendly PowerPoint slides – which would be like the props on a stage. They should be pictures or graphs; something the eye can process quickly. They should never be covered in text. These are not truly visuals, but are considered pseudo-visuals, because the force the viewer to read which is extremely difficult to do when having to listen to a presentation at the same time.

At the International Presentation Academy, we offer a Persuasive Public Speaking Skills Seminar (in Munich, Germany or online) that will guide you through a step-by-step process in developing your structure and written content. We will also use that same hands-on, step by stepapproach to improve your delivery skills (working with you on speaking flow, intonation, tempo, pauses, body language and eye contact). And we will show you, and have you work on, how to make your PowerPoint slides exceptionally viewer friendly –escaping the trap of using text-based visuals and reading them.

 

This Presentation skills Training for Sales Professionals, also appropriate for those looking for an effective sales presentations training workshop (online or in Munich, Germany) includes the following content:

 

• Using the right structure for business and sales professionals, inspirational public speakers, presentations- training and storytelling presentations, as well as technical and scientific presentations
• Raising tension and capturing attention at the very beginning
• Articulating your purpose clearly around the needs of the audience
• Using the story structure to keep your listeners completely interested
• Making your presentation relevant and interesting
• Using different persuasive structures for supporting your ideas
• Developing simple and memorable key points
• Developing viewer-friendly visual support (i.e. PowerPoint)
• Speaking freely, authentically, using intonation, pauses and body language with impact
• Adapting your presentation across cultures (optional)

Our Effective Presentations Training Workshop (online or onsite in Munich, Germany) is similar to the theater in another way too. The method we use to have our participants practice, practice, practice – until they get it perfect. This is not a flipchart seminar with lots of cards on lots of pinboards. Because at the International Presentation Academy, we see presentations as a fundamentally a skill. And the only way to learn a skill is practice it...often, with lots of feedback from the trainer (stage director). If you’re interested in attending our Powerful Presentations seminar, then please feel free to contact us at: info@ip-academy.de