in this lesson, I'm going to talk about the very first thing you want to do when preparing presentations. So question for you, what's the very first thing you do when you prepare your presentations now? Here is the mistake. I see the mistake I see, is that what most business professionals do when they need to start preparing the presentation is to either just open power point or any other presentation tool and put together some slides or a bit better. They start thinking about their key messages, what they want to communicate, which is better than just opening power point, but it's not the very first thing you want to do. The very first thing you want to do if you think about it is to start with the audience, when you give a presentation, it's their presentation, not yours, it's always the audiences presentation. Think of the presentation as a present, if I want to give you a present, it's your present, not mine. And so I need to make sure that I know you so that I can buy something th...

at you like. Now a presentation is very similar when you give people a presentation, it's their presentation nor yours. And so you need to make sure that you know, your audience definitely before you open power point, but also before you start thinking about your key messages and how can you do that? Now I'm going to share with you, a very simple but very effective technique that we use when we work with our clients, we call it the abc. Of course we start with the abc audience. Bernie needs context. Abc audience. Bernie needs, context. So you need to ask yourself some questions in these three key areas what kind of questions but for example audience Okay, who is the audience? What the key people in your audience? Which company do they work for? What are the job titles if you don't know? Can you ask around, can you search on linkedin, try to find out as much as possible by your audience? Otherwise it's hard to create something that works for them. It's their presentation and then Bernie needs Okay, what do they need? What do they expect from your presentation? What challenges do they have? How do those challenges relate to your activities you may want to know? Do they have any concerns about your activities? What do they expect to hear? What do they need to hear? And then finally, context, at what time of day will be presented? In what kind of room is it a conference? Ok. Will anybody be speaking before or after you? If that's the case, what would they be talking about? Maybe there are some connections and you want to know, do you want to show some visuals? Can you do that? Is there a screen or a projector? Will they give you a microphone? What kind of microphone? Now? Don't get me wrong? I'm not saying that you need to have an answer to all of these questions all the time. But would you agree that let's say that you have some answers, let's say that you have an understanding at least of who your audience is, what they need a little bit about the context. Would you agree that you will be much better prepared than most business professionals who If we're lucky, the very first thing they do is to start thinking about their key messages what they want to communicate, but you see it's about them, it's never about the audience and if we're not lucky and I can tell you, I see every day, 99% of the time we're not, they just opened power point and put together some slides. So remember always start with the audience. Now, I'm also not saying that if you don't know your audience you can't create a representation. You can. But the risk is that you create perhaps a fantastic presentation for the wrong audience. For example, some time ago we were working with a client in paris, her name is Marine and Marine is an executive, she's an expert in leadership And she was invited by an association in Finland to give a talk about leadership. So she was super excited. It was one of the first international speaking opportunities. And so she prepared very well. She knew what she wanted to communicate. She said she had 50 beautifully designed slides and she also rehearsed properly. So she was ready to go, she flew to fill and the day before then arrived there on the day, half an hour before the conference and when she was about to connect her laptop to the screen, she realized that there was no screen. So a little bit of panic, she went on and asked the organizers, assuming that they would say, oh sorry, now we're going to fix this for you, we're going to find a screen somewhere. But actually what they did was they started laughing, they started laughing. And so she said, well why are you laughing? And they said, look, you've been invited to give a talk to the association of blind people in Finland and you want to show 50 slides. Now I know extreme example, but true story, it happened for real Marine was very well prepared apart from one thing, she didn't know her millions, she didn't even take the time to translate the name of the association from finish to French. And she would have realized that perhaps there was no need to have 50 beautiful slides. So remember always start with the audience. Now, first exercise for you. First exercise of this curse is for you to understand, to analyze your audience. So I've provided a template for you. It's called abc so have a look at it. There are some questions for you to answer answer those questions in terms of who your audience is, what they think about the presentation you are developing as part of this course, Who is the audience? What do they really need A little bit about the context, do this, and then you can jump to the next lesson, and what we're going to do in the next lesson is we're going to start talking about the objective, what's the objective of the presentation? I'll see you there.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Exercise #1: ABC - Understanding Your Audience

Exercise #2 - Define Your Objective

Exercise #3: ATR - Brainstorm To Find Your Key Messages

Exercise #3: Mind Map - Brainstorm To Find Your Key Messages

Exercise #3: Traffic Light - Brainstorm To Find Your Key Messages

Exercise #4: 70 Words

Exercise #5: Storylines - Develop Your Storyline

Exercise #6: Storyboard - Sketch and Design Your Visuals

Andrea Pacini

Certified public speaking and presentation coach with 10+ yrs experience helping hundreds of businesses including 300+ TEDx speakers

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topics covered in this class

Business Design Projects Public Speaking

Ratings and Reviews

julie haskett

I was just beginning to create a series of presentations when I noticed this course. Serendipity! I thought I knew what I was doing, but learned some great techniques. More importantly I learned what NOT to do. Now I have much more confidence in the process.

michal babula

A lot of useful information.

Sara

Exceptional course. Very well organized and taught. The course was engaging and practical, with clear actionable approaches, examples, and activities from beginning to end.

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Understanding Your Audience

Understanding Your Audience

Lesson Info

2. Understanding Your Audience

Lessons

The Importance of Presentation Skills in Business