Becoming a confident and effective presenter includes a lot more than just feeling comfortable in front of people, or knowing how to make eye contact with your audience (tip: stop reading off your own slides). You need to be able to read your audience (coworkers, employees, executive peers, clients, etc.) and deliver your information clearly and succinctly in a way that your audience can relate to. Below we’ll briefly touch on some ways to improve the effectiveness of your communication, and consequently increase your chances of business success.
Presentations Training Can Help You to Make a Good First Impression
When you stand in front of a group of people – be it an auditorium or just your company meeting room – all eyes are on you. Your personality, your confidence, and your knowledge of subject matter are all going to be made clear in front of people you need to trust and respect you. If you appear incompetent or unorganized, people will notice. If you have poor presentation skills, if you ramble or stammer, if you don’t know how to tie a point back to a central theme, people will notice. Your respect as an executive and as a leader are on the line whenever you put yourself in front of a crowd. Fortunately, executive presentation skills can be learned. So, why would you not get the best training you can to ensure a good first impression?
Whether you’re giving a daily presentation or a sales pitch to a room of other executives, it’s critical that you appear composed and articulate to earn and maintain the respect of your peers. Good executive presentations training is key to mastering the techniques that allow you to exude this confidence and competence.
Presentations Training Can Help You Learn How to Read a Crowd
You can be the most confident and comfortable person in the world when giving a presentation, but often times you aren’t the only one who’s going to be speaking. It’s not uncommon to have a question and answer session after an important briefing, and guess who’s going to need to be able to field all types of questions regarding what they just spoke about? That’s right; you aren’t just a presenter, you’re an interviewee, and there’s a big difference between being prepared to speak to a group of people and being prepared to answer their inquiries and concerns about what you’ve just told them.
With proper executive presentations training, you’ll learn to get a pulse on your audience before and throughout a presentation so that you can accurately predict the types of comments you’ll be receiving at the end of it and connect with your audience appropriately to gain their trust and respect. This can be as simple as watching who is jotting down notes during which parts of your presentation, or as subtle as watching for certain facial expressions or body language reactions to your key points. In either case, last impressions are as vital as first impressions; you need to be able to round out a good presentation with thoughtful, knowledgeable answers or your audience can quickly change their opinion of you from “well-spoken” to “unprepared to address concerns.”
Presentations Training Can Help You to Improve Your Body Language
People don’t often get a chance to see how they appear to others. You can practice your speech in front of a mirror for hours, but it’s never quite the same as how you perform in the moment when the spotlight is on you. Being conscious of your movements, your facial expressions, and your body language during an executive presentation is just as important as being conscious of what you say; if your mouth is saying one thing but your body language is saying another, people can interpret mixed messages – or worse, they can think you’re dishonest or lacking confidence in your own words.
Executive presentations training is a chance to have a team of professionals critique your performance in real time, giving you ample time to practice again and again, and to refine both your language and your visual cues. You’ll learn what to do with your hands when you’re speaking, where to look when you’re delivering your most important points, and how to engage with the audience in a way that exudes confidence and trustworthiness. At The Ammerman Experience, our program offers six 2-hour private sessions designed to help you master these skills and more while getting feedback from some of the most experienced professionals in the business. And, it gives you a chance to watch recorded playback of your own presentations so that you can better understand the impression you’re giving to your audiences.
Next Steps for Executive Presentation Training
If you’re looking to hone your professional presentation skills as an executive and reach your greatest potential speaking in front of your employees and colleagues, reach out to us today to find out how executive presentations training can work for you.