Presentation Training Skills

Presentations Skills Training Classes

Presentations skills training classes are provided across the country via public open enrollment classes in most major metropolitan areas throughout the US and Canada and can also be delivered on-site via private presentations classes. Our presentation skills training classes can be provided as off-the-shelf seminars, ready to be delivered to a diverse audience or can be customized to provide a tailored presentation approach or in house presentation training classes based on client needs. All presentations classes are limited to a maximum of twelve participants so as to increase the presentation training class or classes effectiveness and provide the individual level of presentation coaching and interaction that is associated with the Presentations Skills Training Center.

For more information on our presentations skills training classes please contact us.

Presentation Classes: How to Write a Presentation

Step 1
Identify your topic - If you have been asked to speak at a special occasion, for example a wedding, birthday party or funeral your topic would be the person the occasion is honoring.

If you need to choose a topic ensure you choose a topic that you are passionate about.

Step 2
Understand your audience - who is your audience? What do they want to hear? Make sure your presentations speech is focused on your audience. Some speakers make the mistake of telling the audience what they want to tell them, as opposed to what the audience want to hear.

Step 3
What is the purpose of your presentations speech? - Is it is to inform your audience? Is it to demonstrate the use of something to your audience? Is it to persuade your audience to buy or change their thoughts, actions, behaviors? Is it to entertain? Make sure you have clearly identified the purpose of your presentations speech.

Step 4
Once you have your topic and purpose, the next step is to brainstorm ideas. For example, if you were writing a presentations speech with the topic 'The Benefits of Exercise', a good brainstorming exercise would be to list of all of the benefits of exercise as you think of them.

Benefits of exercise - brainstorm ideas:

Manage Stress
Prevent Illness
Emotional well being
Weight control
Enjoyment
Belong to a community/club-sporting group

You would then priorities the 3 top benefits of exercise for inclusion in your presentations speech. If you were to include all benefits your presentations speech would go overtime or you would not cover each benefit properly. Your audience will determine how you priorities. Who are they? What are their age and gender and reason for attending your talk? Using the previous example, if speaking to an older audience you may choose to highlight the ideas: preventing illness, weight control and belonging to a community or club.

Step 5
It is important to know how long you will be speaking as this will decide how much information to include. A trap speakers fall into is to include too much information and go over time or confuse the audience. If you are giving a ten to fifteen minute presentations speech a guide is to include three categories of information at the most.

Step 6
Start writing - There are many ways you can do this. I will use the previous example to illustrate how I usually start:

Having identified the characteristics of the target audience, start writing using the following process. In this example, the target audience is older.

Firstly - Core subject. Select the most relevant points from your brainstorm list:

Prevents Illness - sub points (describe illnesses in age bracket of audience, statistics people who exercise vs. people who do not exercise.)

Weight Control - sub points (how exercise helps you maintain and or lose weight, along with anecdotes supporting these points that the target audience can relate to.)

Belong to a group/club/association - sub points (types of groups in communities e.g., bowling clubs, walking group, swimming groups. Discuss some examples and stories about friendships and associated fun factor).

Secondly - Introduction. How will you grab your audience's attention in the first 30 seconds? What can you say to get them interested? Continue with an overview of what you will be covering in your presentations speech.

Thirdly - Conclusion. Make a summary of what you have just spoken about. How will you leave a lasting impact on your audience?

Fourthly - Review. Read through, check and rewrite your presentations speech. Practice it out loud. Often when you do this changes will be made for the better. Points may not flow as well as you thought or you may need to change the order of material or say words/sentences in a different way.

Fifthly - Delivery. Plan how to deliver the presentations speech. How will you vary your voice/emphasize points/gestures and stance to maintain audience interest? What visual aids do you need to support your presentations speech?

Step 6
Finally - Practice. Practice your presentations speech, and make any necessary revision.

Source: Maureen Bell link

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