Even the staunchest upholders of professionalism in the business environment can achieve a trendy, yet sophisticated and informative presentation. Whether you are a financial group presenting to males and females ages 30+ about the different existing strategies for investing or a technology company discussing last quarter’s numbers at the Monday staff meeting, there are many ways to retain a balance between professional and creative.
Here are 5 tips for giving your professional presentation a little more flair:
1. Craft a compelling title
Every professional presentation – or really any presentation at all – absolutely needs a title capable of capturing audiences. This could be the difference between “Space Exploration Apps for Grades 1-6” and “Creating a Modern-Day Neil Armstrong.” The latter title option fosters suspense and increases expectation in those reading the first slide. It’s short; enough so that it won’t scare people away with a surplus of words. And the tone set through the second title is far more empowering and persuasive than the original title.
2. Include customer/client experiences
For our more creative clients, we typically suggest implementing a metaphor to create a highly-visual and enchanting deck. For the professional presenter who is uncomfortable with forming a narrative based on a metaphor, there is a next best option that will be almost equally entertaining and relatable. The customer or client experience story is best utilized during a presentation to potential customers and clients. Through a narrative grounded in the interaction of a person with your product or service, you can attain the storytelling aspects of a more creative deck, while still maintaining the appropriate standard of professionalism.
3. Reimagine the presentation of data
Your Excel chart reveals magnificent results, but it won’t furnish the full story for your audience. That’s why you need to rethink how you display data in your professional presentation. Although people in the crowd may understand the chart or graph, that doesn’t mean that they won’t appreciate you pulling out the most important aspects and illustrating it in a more intentional way. Navigating the transfer of information from a graph to your audience’s mind through pointed illustrations of crucial data points is an easy strategy for giving your presentation some life.
4. Build a cohesive structure
What you have to say won’t matter if you haven’t discovered the right flow of the narrative. Just throwing information out into the atmosphere willy nilly will only lessen the impact of your content. Instead, develop an outline – which we have found to be fairly simple, even in within a PowerPoint template. Tackle the opening and closing content first. Then, move to the headers and complete the process by adding supporting points and details within those header sections.
5. Incorporate interactive elements
It’s no secret that our attention spans are shrinking. If it’s not a text or a Tweet, we have little patience for it. So, it has become increasingly vital for a professional presentation to include “breaks” in the narrative where audience members can further discuss a relevant question or participate in a group or individual activity aimed towards providing entertainment and enhancing retention of the subject matter. Ethos3 recommends inserting some kind of activity into your professional presentation every 7 minutes or so.
The tone of your presentation never has to dictate the level of creativity contained in the deck. When embarking on your next professional presentation, try out 1, 2, or maybe all 5 of the tips fleshed out above to show your industry competitors that even your deck is dressed for success. Want to find out more about the qualities of a truly great presentation? Read the articles below:
The 4 C’s of a Good Presentation
Creating Conflict in Your Presentation
Storytelling Tactics: Is Your Presentation Relatable?
