Entrepreneurs never stop presenting. Of course, that doesn’t mean that every entrepreneur is giving grandiose speeches to large audiences every day. Presenting in an entrepreneurial context comes in all sorts of different forms. You might be presenting a company mission to investors one day and delivering numbers and updates to a team the next. And maybe the day after that you’re interviewing with a major media outlet.
Entrepreneurs have a unique set of presentation needs. Master this distinct skill set to be effective for all audiences. Elevate your presentation game to the next level by mastering the following skills.
Know Your Audience
It’s important for every speaker to know their audience. The wide range of audiences entrepreneurs face make this even more critical. Presenting to a team of people in your company should take on a very different tone than speaking to a group of investors. Giving an interview to a media outlet requires a different voice than presenting to board members.
Therefore, before you present to any group, make sure you do your due diligence. Research to whom, exactly, you’re speaking. For a large audience at a major event, reach out to the coordinators to find out more about who will be there. For a small company team, think about the roles of those you’re speaking to. Better cater your presentation to their unique duties. For a virtual audience, you can usually find out from where most participants are coming from.
Cater Your Content
It’s tempting to talk about your business and all of the amazing things it does to every audience. Speaking too much about your business and not enough about what your audience will gain from your presentation and you’ll come off as way too sales-y.
Take care to include a nice balance of representing your brand as well as representing your audience’s interests. You can still highlight compelling aspects of your company, but angle those aspects to the needs of your audience. For instance, let’s say you’re speaking to a group of investors. Rather than rattle off all of your hopes and dreams for the company, point out specific ways that your company can enhance their lives. Use real-life examples they can relate to. If your content is catered to their interests, then you can bet they’ll take time to find out more about your company on their own; you don’t need to be the one to tell them every single thing.
Don’t Just Prepare; Rehearse
Whether you’re speaking to a tiny team or a vast audience, rehearsal is critical. It’s important for any presenter to rehearse. Entrepreneurs need to do this even more. They speak to a wide range of audiences that require a variety of tones.
Ideally, you have a partner or colleague you can practice your presentation in front of, but if not, simply doing it by yourself will still make your presentation more effective. The reason rehearsal is so important is that it shows you where you should pause for effect or tension, whether you should speed up or slow down, and generally how to refine your delivery in order to better connect and engage with your audience.
If you feel like your presentation game isn’t quite what it could be, then check out our Catapult training that’s designed to elevate your skills to the next, next level.
