Right at the beginning of your presentation, make sure your audience is listening with curiosity. Generate excitement by posing a provocative thesis and promising to prove it in your presentation.
Examples:
♦ I am sure that you are spending 35% too much on (…) and I will clearly prove this to you in the next 30 minutes.
♦ They could all make a lot of money with (…). I will now show you how this works.
♦ Germany could increase domestic sales tenfold in the next 5 years. I’ll explain how amazingly easy it is to do.
Another trick to make the audience curious is to connect seemingly incongruous things that at first glance have nothing to do with each other. For example, you could put up a poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger and ask your audience what the Terminator might have to do with product (…). You might add that there are a certain number of commonalities (depending on what you can think of) that you will point out in your presentation. The important thing, of course, is that parallels or similarities actually exist between your subject and the seemingly non-matching object. Then there is hardly a limit to your imagination. In addition to images, you can of course include objects in your presentation. The only important thing is that the solution to your “puzzle” generates enough curiosity through the presentation.
Play with your own creativity. What can be used for your presentation? A blue whale, a sports car, Donald Duck, a hand grenade, Napoleon? The more absurd or provocative the better. Of course, always be mindful of good manners and the feelings of your audience.
Should you have the opportunity to watch a magician at work, you could borrow a trick or two for your presentation. David Copperfield and his colleagues like to use boxes, cylinders and cartons to make things disappear or appear. For example, you could put four boxes on a table and explain to your audience that there are four secrets related to (….) that you are about to reveal one by one in your presentation. Once you have explained one of these secrets in your presentation, you can open one of the boxes and pull out a picture or object that symbolizes that secret. By the end of the talk, all the boxes are open and the visual effect has anchored your key messages with your audience. Just as well you can make something disappear. Let’s say you want to present yourself as a problem solver to a target audience. In that case, of course, you can symbolically “whisk away” problems into the boxes or boxes.
Of course, it is important to know which audience you can expect at your presentation. In our Presentation Booster Method , we introduce the different types of audience members in detail. Each type requires special focus when addressing them personally . When you speak in front of art students, you will use different images, words, and “magic tricks” than you would in front of an auditorium of controllers.
Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Informatiker Matthias Garten as the expert for multimedia presentations and professional PowerPoint presentations knows about the art of professional slide design. He is an entrepreneur, speaker (TOP 100 Speaker), trainer (TOP 100 Excellence Trainer), multiple book author, presentation coach (presentation training), member of the GSA and Club 55, organizer of the Presentation Conference, Presentation Bootcamp and Presentation Rocket Day. In addition to PowerPoint and presentation training, he inspires and advises companies to present themselves even more effectively and thus stand out from competitors. He is the business owner of the presentation and PowerPoint agency smavicon Best Business Presentations and with his team has created over 15,000 professional PowerPoint presentations for over 150 industries since 1993.
