21 incredible ways to improve your business presentations!

Your presentations can have a major impact on your business. They have, after all, become an inevitable part of the industry! If you really want it to profit your business, your presentation has to be good enough to leave a mark.?

There are times when you give your presentation your everything but somehow it falls flat. What is it that you’re doing wrong? What are the mistakes that you are making unknowingly? What is it that you can do to improve your presentation??

Your presentations can have a major impact on your deals and your business. It is very important that you be updated with the tips and tricks to make effective business presentations.?

Here are 21 ways that you can improve your presentations and show the true potential of your business/product/service to the world!?

• Structure your presentation?

A presentation with a defined structure will allow you to have a flow of ideas while keeping the deck concise. If you start to deviate from the main topic, you can always return to the structure to get back on track. A solid framework will also help you communicate more successfully with your audience and coherently convey your entire point.

If you ever get a chance; take a look at “How Google Works - by Eric Schmidt”. This presentation is structured in such a great way that it doesn't even need a live presenter! The presentation itself is detailed and self explanatory.

• Use icebreakers

Icebreakers can help you get over the stress and anxiety of giving a presentation. You can learn about your audience, strike up a conversation, play games, and much more. Successful ice breakers can help you in connecting with the audience ahead of your presentation, allowing for a more smooth presentation.

• Use a master layout to design your presentation

Use slide master to easily create and edit your presentation. It will also help you keep the design consistent. Make sure you add your company’s logo and contact details on every slide. Do not rely on pre-made templates as they can be common and can restrict your creativity. Instead, creating your template from scratch helps you design a presentation according to your brand guidelines.

Some great businesses have been using slide masters to ensure they are consistent in terms of design and branding. TikTok? ( formerly known as musical.ly) created their pitch deck using a master slide layout. And they earned a whopping $150.4M in funding.

• Make an impactful introduction

The beginning is the best time to make an impact and capture the attention of the audience. Start your presentation with some thought-provoking questions, interesting statistics, or even just a few simple props. This is the moment to pique the audience's interest and keep them engaged until the end.

In one of his presentations titled? “Life after death by PowerPoint” ,Don McMillan starts with a story and uses humor to keep the audience engaged. He also uses visuals to instantly draw the audience's attention. It is a great example of how you can start a presentation.

• Share the goal of your presentation with your audience.

Set a few specific targets for your presentation such as ‘educating your audience’ or ‘introducing your product’. This will keep your audience's attention. The targets also serve as reminders when you discuss the main points in your presentation. Consider the targets as something that will pique their attention and urge them to stay with you throughout the presentation.?

• Keep your presentation short and concise

Keep your slides simple and to the point. Only put brief, relevant information in the slides. Unnecessary information is only doing to bore the audience and distract them. Keep the points crisp with interesting stats and facts.?

Short and concise pitch decks can take you a long way. Check out Mixpanel’s pitch deck! It is short, concise and does not beat around the bush. They have used short points to convey only the most relevant information.?

• Cut down on the bullet points?

Avoid text-bloated bullet points in your business presentation. The audience is either going to listen to you or read the points. They can’t do both. So keep the bullet points as few as possible. Let the text assist your speech and not the other way around.?Lesser the bullet points, the better.

In this pitch deck, Wealthsimple has used minimal bullet points. Instead, they have used lots of graphics and charts to make the data easier to understand for the audience.?

• Tell a story?

The audience is constantly drawn by stories. You can begin by telling a story and then relate it to your presentation's theme, or you can share a personal anecdote with the audience to share a relevant lesson with them. Personal experiences help the audience to gain a better understanding of you. It makes you vulnerable, allowing you and the audience to form a bond.?

Share stories about setbacks or blunders that the audience can relate to. The more your audience can relate to you, the more likely they will remain interested. Not just personal stories but when you weave a narrative into your presentation, the presentation instantly becomes more interesting.?

• Establish your credibility?

Establishing your credibility is very important when it comes to business presentations. Whether it's to your board, investors or prospects, it is important in order to be taken seriously. Show your social proof, show the companies that you have worked with and maybe some of the reviews to increase your trustworthiness.?

In their pitch deck; Crema Co inserted well-known companies that they have worked with right in the beginning of the deck. This increased their credibility and trustworthiness among the audience.

• Use lots of relevant visuals?

Engaging infographics and statistical visualization are excellent ways to present important facts and figures to an audience without losing them. So, reduce the text to a minimum and add as many relevant images as possible.

Flowcharts and graphs can also be used to illustrate your points. Use graphics to support your message and make sure they're relevant to the main concept. Visuals can make a powerful presentation even more impactful.?

• Keep the design and graphics simple

Yes, graphics are very important but excess of everything is bad, right? Use the graphics moderately. Limit yourself to two graphics per slide. Also, make sure that your graphics are easy to understand. You are using visuals to make your deck easier to understand for your audience.?

Unnecessary layouts and elements can also make the slides distracting for the audience. Keep the design simple. Use simple background images, fonts or layouts. Your content and your speech should be the main focus of the presentation and not these secondary elements.?

• Know your presentation inside out

One of the major mistakes that presenters often make is just reading or memorizing the presentation and not fully understanding it. In order to deliver a flawless and effective business presentation, you must know your content and your presentation.?

If it's a sales presentation, you must know everything about the product or service you’re offering, even if it's not given in the ppt. Doing this will help you adapt to the different scenarios that might occur during the final presentation.?

• Use voice modulation to keep the audience hooked

This might seem like a point that you don’t need to pay much heed to but is actually very important. The way you speak will determine how the audience takes the information you provide. For example: lower, deeper voices are linked to authority and power. Hence, the audience would take you seriously.?

The best way is to keep a conversational tone with the audience, rather than making it a speech. All the greatest speakers of all time can do that. When we watch Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone, we can see how he keeps a conversational tone and is always enthusiastic. This keeps the audience from zoning out.?

• Keep the audience engaged?

For an effective presentation, you need to keep the audience engaged. Don’t just state facts, convey information and leave. Keep the audience involved. Employ strategies such as asking questions, taking quizzes, and using humor. The more engaged the audience is, the more successful the presentation will be.

• Use animations and transitions?

Animations and transitions can be used to strategically move the audience’s eyes from one part of the deck to the other. These can be used to keep the audience engaged and also to make the presentation dynamic. However, too much transition and animation might cause the audience to get confused and distracted. These tools are designed to strengthen the concept so use them cautiously.

• Use pauses to your advantage?

Nervousness often makes people stutter or pause a lot. Instead of getting scared of them, use them to your advantage. Use pauses to allow your audience time to comprehend what you're saying. Take a deep breath, calm down, and use pauses to reclaim control, stress a point, and build tension for dramatic effect.?

You can always watch other presentations and see how others have done it. Check out how Bill Gates uses pauses in his presentation to give the audience enough time to process all the information he is conveying.?

• Never read from your slides!?

One of the most devastating mistakes you can make while presenting is reading from the slides. If you spend your whole presentation staring at the screen or your note cards, you'll quickly lose your audience's attention. Your audience will get bored and your presentation will fall flat.?

Reading from a piece of paper or a computer screen also makes you appear unprepared. It's something that a lot of people do, but it's something that no one should do. As a general guideline, only deliver material that you are acquainted with and have mastered the essence of.

• Add a Call to Action?

If you want your presentation to be impactful, you need to call your audience to action. Don't presume that your presentation will motivate them to act; instead, tell them exactly what they should do.?

The easiest approach to achieve this is to start with the negative effects of not taking action and then go on to the positive effects of taking action. This way, your presentation will finish on a high note, and your audience will be conscious of the difference you've made. A simple “Visit us”, “Buy” could go a long way!

• Proofread your presentation?

Make sure you proofread your presentation before the D-day. You can even show your presentation to someone else and ask for their opinion. Sometimes, as a creator, you might miss a few errors that someone else can point out.?

• ?Customize your presentation according to the audience

Different audiences expect different things from a presentation. Content appropriate for a pitch might not be right for a presentation for investors. The general audience might not be as well versed with the concepts as experts. You need to tailor your presentation accordingly.?

• Practice!?

Last, but certainly not least, PRACTICE! Even the greatest presenters in the world practice multiple times before the final presentation. Before the date, go over the presentation as many times as you need. ?

Keep learning to get better with your presentation.

If you are a presenter, you must have had a few failed presentations. It is all about learning from your mistakes and from the people who are doing it right. I am sure these ways and examples must have gotten your creative juices flowing! So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and design your perfect business presentations!?Remember successful presentations are understandable, memorable and emotional.