Presentations - Essential Planning Strategies For a Successful Presentation

This is a strange topic for me as I frequently advocate spontaneity and surprise in many areas of life including the business environment, but when it comes to presentations I take the absolute opposite stance. I see planning as one of the hidden presentation skills, the part most overlooked in presentations.

For a presentation, planning is vital. If you want to give a presentation that makes the points you want to make in a memorable way (and after all isn't that the point of every presentation?) then you MUST put in the proper planning.

Not only do you need to plan but you need to plan the right things in the right way. Before you open up your presentation software or write any content, you need to decide on exactly what your audience to take away from your presentation. Begin with the end in mind. You need to get clear in your mind what points you are going to make them remember because that's your goal. I'm going to stick my neck out against popular opinion here and tell you that really you want a maximum of three points. If you try to make more than three points then you risk making none at all. Pick three core elements to your subject and make those the basis of your presentation.

Next you need to decide how the three points link together. This is where the time and effort come in. You need to weave your elements together so that they flow seamlessly from one to the next. You need a stream of narrative to your presentation that is logical and easy to follow. Think of your whole presentation as a story, it has a beginning, middle and end and is made up of chapters.

One of the easiest ways to begin to create this structure is to create an mind map. I personally favour getting a large sheet of paper for each point, writing the word or phrase in the middle of the sheet and the let my brain pour out every conceivable link I know of to the subject. How you structure your mind map isn't as important as making sure that you let the process flow without forcing it. If you are of a technological age where doing anything with pen and paper is alien to you then look for FreeMind, an open source mind mapping program that does the job very well.

When you have your mind maps put them together and you will soon begin to see where you have crossover topics and these are natural links. When you start to make these links they will suggest a natural order in which they should occur. Play with the order to see which make the most sense. Before long you will have a skeleton of the presentation you are about to create.

Once you have your skeleton look for you "chapters". By this I mean small segments of your content that make a point on their own that fits within the context of your message. At the end of each chapter you should relate one of your key messages. A simple way to do this is to have a one or two line phrase that you can repeat to punctuate your message. As an example, one of my pet phrases is "practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes habit" and when I am teaching the importance of practicing in the correct way I use it frequently. In fact by the time I am done the students are usually chanting it along with me! That's the kind of hook you need. Whenever my students think of "practice makes habit" they don't just remember the phrase but also the learning behind it.

You already know what points you want to make so find a hook for each one and use them to punctuate your chapters. The bonus here is that when you have your three hooks you more or less have your conclusion written! Just repeat the hooks you have been using throughout your presentation.

Once you are armed with your skeleton and your hooks (as macabre as that sounds!) then you can begin to write your content and create your slides. Just as your presentation as a whole must tell a story make sure you include short stories throughout to illustrate your points.

Use these presentation skills to plan your presentation and you will have the makings of a great presentation.

Stephen Hendren is a leading expert on communication skills and teaches people the most effective ways to communicate for both business and personal environments.

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