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Have you ever felt you needed a ‘booster shot’ of confidence for that important business presentation coming up? Or perhaps, you’d like a quick ‘refresher’ of some proven success strategies to get you off on the right track?

As a full-time speaker and presentation skill instructor, I’ve often been asked at parties and social gatherings “What tips would you suggest for an upcoming presentation I have?”

Here are 4 Quick Tips that I’ve shared more than once in the past with individuals at social gatherings:

1. Focus on your Audience Not on Yourself! Take the heat off of yourself. The AUDIENCE & the MESSAGE are what is most important.
2. Be Crystal Clear about your message! If you had to summarize the main point of your talk in one sentence, what would it be? I know it seems like a challenge but it’s critical. Your Audience does it all the time – with or without your help. Wouldn’t you like ‘their sentence’ to match ‘your sentence’?
3. BE CONVINCED that your message will benefit the audience! They either WANT to know this, NEED to know this, or your message is somehow going to BENEFIT THEM. If you’re not sure that the message has value, what could you add to insure that it does? Confidence in the message and its value translates into speaker confidence. MORE VALUE FOR THE AUDIENCE = MORE CONFIDENCE FOR YOU! It’s a simple equation that works.
4. Explain the numbers!… Especially if you are a technical or financial speaker. Don’t just report the numbers, explain what they mean. Is a 20% increase a good thing or a poor showing? Is $50K a high number or a low number relative to your context? Also, PAINT WORD PICTURES. It will help your Audience really grasp the significance of your data. For example, if I simply made a factual statement that 25,000 American men died annually of prostate cancer, almost everyone would say they ‘understood’ the information. But, simple understanding is NEVER the entire goal. We want people to REMEMBER what we say and TAKE ACTION on the information they receive. What if I could explain the same number in a way that connected at a deeper level of understanding?… one that would help the audience retain the information, or, perhaps, even motivate them to take action?

“Imagine a jumbo jet with 500 passengers crashing into the side of a mountain. The following week another plane crashes, with no survivors. The third week, another… for 52 weeks in a row! How many weeks would it take before we were all ‘up in arms’ demanding that the aviation industry do something to fix this? Yet, that is how many American men die each year from Prostate Cancer – a curable disease.”

Don’t just tell the numbers, find ways to explain the numbers and your audience will listen, understand and, perhaps, actually remember long enough to take action. Now, there is a GOAL worth having!

So the next time you are reflecting on your own upcoming presentation, pretend we just met last night at a party and chatted. Take a deep breath and relax knowing that any one of these tips can help you deliver your presentation with more confidence knowing that you are providing VALUE to your audience.

In the current recession debts are growing by leaps and bounds. Instead of filing for bankruptcy one should first attempt the other debt relief options like debt settlement program, which has become the most popular. Even if you have multiple creditors pressuring you to make payments or if you have medical expenses, high limit credit cards or business loans or if your debts are due to taxes you should first consider going for debt settlement programs and if you hire a professional negotiator, the chances increases for you of having a better reduction.

A professional negotiator can reduce your debts to up to 60% making it easier for you to pay off your debts faster. The reason behind this is that when an individual negotiates with the creditors himself, they, considering individual naïve, do not listen to him. They use their terminologies which an unprofessional person do not understands thus creditors defeat him making him pay to them by any means. In contrast with that, a debt negotiator or a debt settlement firm knows very well how to arbitrate with the creditors. They are professional people who are well educated or trained to perform this service. Creditors are likely to hear them because it becomes very difficult to defeat them. Moreover many debt negotiators have established relations with creditors so that they can easily convince the creditors to reduce the debts.

Professional debt negotiator sketches a realistic payment plan making it affordable for you to pay. In addition to that all the calls, letters and discussion are handled by the debt negotiator. He also help in freezing the payments made to the creditors by the borrower and starts it again after settling the deal. The best negotiators do no impose personal bias in conversations. They allow documentation to carry the load and speak for itself. Creditors generally agree to negotiators because they know that if they do not agree then they would also face the consequences of bankruptcy, so creditors evaluate the documentations prepared by negotiators carefully, and determine the maximum recovery available.

Now days, it is quite difficult to distinguish between a real debt settlement company and a counterfeit. There are many fraud companies in the market from which the consumers need to stay away. So before you join any settlement firm, do a thorough research. It is important that you do not fall into a trap and keep spending instead of meeting the desired output.

Useful hints and tips about preparing to present a web-cast presentation.

It has become more and more common for conference presentations to be web-cast. This increase in popularity is due to a number of factors. For example:

o The demands on people’s time, or the reality of financial constraints, can result in many people being unable to attend conferences, especially if there’s a need to travel any distance.

o Most organisations are fully aware of the environmental issues involved when their staff have to travel distances, especially by car.

o Social factors, such as young families or caring considerations, can often influence people’s decision to attend a conference or seminar.

With these in mind, web-casting is a growing option for those who can’t attend an event but who are interested in the topics being covered. However, web-casting your presentation can be quite different from presenting to your live conference audience.

So, if your conference presentation is likely to be web-cast (and the likelihood is increasing) it might be helpful to understand what factors you should consider.

Most of the hints and tips contained in this bulletin are really just common sense and, dare I say it, plain good manners.

Consider the Remote Viewer as Part of the Live Audience

It’s very easy when you are in full flow to forget that you have people joining in via your web-cast. So, when you’re developing your presentation cues and reminders, make a note about acknowledging your remote viewers, both at the beginning of your presentation and frequently during it. It is equally important to build a rapport with your external audience as it is with the live audience in the auditorium.

A Different Perspective

When your presentation is being viewed by a remote viewer their perspective is different from that of a live audience.

On the following page is a typical layout of what a viewer would see during a live or archived web-cast.

You’ll notice from this graphic that the screen is divided up into different sections and that the video of the presenter appears at the top left of the screen.

To the presenter’s left is the area showing the presenter’s PowerPoint slides. It is therefore important for continuity and clarity that you always have your PowerPoint screen to your left when delivering your presentation to your live audience. This allows the remote viewer to follow your eyes or hands when you refer directly to the PowerPoint information. There’s nothing more distracting than a presenter referring to something to their right when you are seeing it positioned to their left on the web-cast screen.

A word about PowerPoint slides.

We’ve all suffered “death by PowerPoint” at some time or another. Why? Because too many PowerPoint users forget that their audience can read and they make the classic error of displaying long pieces of text on all but a few of their slides. Don’t do it.

The other common error in presentation is to read out what is up on the screen for all to see. Don’t do this either.

If you do decide to make these types of errors, we can just about guarantee that your audiences (live and web-cast) will lose interest. And that means your presentation will lose impact and the messages you’ve prepared may be lost.

Wherever possible, try to use graphics instead of text – but avoid the mistake of using Clip Art – if only because everyone else has already used it over the past 20 years and audiences have already seen all the clip art they can be expected to cope with in a life time. It’s also very unoriginal.

Probably the best book on creating PowerPoint presentations is Nick Oulton’s Killer Presentations. If you follow his basic rules you’ll be able to create truly memorable presentations to engage your audience and significantly enhance your presentation.

Incidentally, from a technical point of view, it’s always best to use a font size that’s no smaller than 12 points (bigger if you can) and try not to make the slide too busy.

Preparation

If your conference organizer asks you for your PowerPoint slides 48 hours before the event they are doing this for a very good reason. It’s because they need to get your presentation over to the web-cast company so they can upload it to their server and, if necessary, make any changes to the format if it’s not compatible with the web-cast.

If the organizers can’t access your slides until the morning of the conference, or you decide to make last minute changes, you create huge problems for the web-caster, the possibility of additional charges to the organizers and the potential for disaster when the cameras roll and 5000 people tune in to see your performance.

Again, it’s simply good manners, not to mention professionalism, to have everything prepared prior to the actual event.

Another little technical point is a microphone. If your conference organizer can provide a tie-clip microphone you’ll be in a much stronger position, since your audience will hear you clearly, especially those who are viewing via web-cast. And remember, unless the lectern has two microphones, one on either side, you run the risk of losing volume when you turn to address the screen.

Finally, a word about presentation style. Some people love to wander all over the stage. Because of lighting conditions and light-spill from the screen, this can cause headaches for the web-cast camera operator and, during your presentation, you may suddenly disappear into silhouette. If you must go for a walk, do it an hour or so before going on stage.

Questions from the Audience

If you are taking questions from the audience, it’s always helpful if you can either repeat them or rephrase them for the remote audience, especially if the organizer did not provide remote microphones for audience questions. Also make sure that you look over to the web-cast moderator who’ll indicate if there are any questions from the remote audience. The moderator will tell you who is asking the question and what the question is. When you reply, it’s nice to repeat the questioner’s name in your response.

If you stick to these simple suggestions it will help your organizer deliver a more effective and engaging conference to their remote viewers.