{"id":297,"date":"2025-01-27T08:23:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T08:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/blogs\/?p=297"},"modified":"2025-01-27T12:55:18","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T12:55:18","slug":"how-to-make-your-business-presentation-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/how-to-make-your-business-presentation-interesting\/","title":{"rendered":"How to make your business presentation interesting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-298\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/How-to-make-your-business-presentation-interesting-300x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"252\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/How-to-make-your-business-presentation-interesting-300x252.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/How-to-make-your-business-presentation-interesting-768x646.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/How-to-make-your-business-presentation-interesting-856x720.jpg 856w, https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/How-to-make-your-business-presentation-interesting-257x216.jpg 257w, https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/How-to-make-your-business-presentation-interesting-514x432.jpg 514w, https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/How-to-make-your-business-presentation-interesting-500x421.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/How-to-make-your-business-presentation-interesting.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>According to a recent study, 58% of business presentations are deemed to be too long, uninteresting and lacking relevant information.<\/p>\n<p>Here are 21 ways to make certain that your presentations hold your audience&rsquo;s interest and help them make the decision you want them to make.<\/p>\n<p><b>Preparation<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Build a story.<\/b>\u00a0Presentations are boring when they present scads of information without any context or meaning. Instead, tell a story, with the audience as the main characters (and, specifically, the heroes).<\/li>\n<li><b>Keep it relevant.<\/b>\u00a0Audiences only pay attention to stories and ideas that are immediately relevant. Consider what decision you want them to make, then build an appropriate case.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Cut your intro.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b>A verbose introduction that describes you, your firm, your topic, how you got there, only bores people. Keep your intro down to a sentence or two, even for a long presentation.<\/li>\n<li><b>Begin with an eye-opener.<\/b>\u00a0Kick off your talk by revealing a shocking fact, a surprising insight, or a unique perspective that naturally leads into your message and the decision you want made.<\/li>\n<li><b>Keep it short and sweet.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b>When was the last time you heard someone complain that a presentation was too short? Make it half as long as you originally thought it should be (or even shorter).<\/li>\n<li><b>Use facts, not generalities.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b>Fuzzy concepts reflect fuzzy thinking. Buttress your argument, story and message with facts that are quantifiable, verifiable, memorable and dramatic.<\/li>\n<li><b>Customise for every audience.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b>One-size-fits-all presentations are like one-size-fits-all clothes; they never fit right and usually make you look bad. Every audience is different; your presentation should be too.<\/li>\n<li><b>Simplify your graphics.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b>People shut off their brains when confronted with complicated drawings and tables. Use very simple graphics and highlight the data points that are important.<\/li>\n<li><b>Keep backgrounds in the background.<\/b>\u00a0Fancy slide backgrounds only make it more difficult for the audience to focus on what&rsquo;s important. Use a simple, single colour, neutral colour background.<\/li>\n<li><b>Use readable fonts.<\/b>\u00a0Don&rsquo;t give your audience an eyestrain headache by using tiny fonts. Use large fonts in simple faces (like Arial); avoid\u00a0<b>boldface<\/b>,\u00a0<i>italics<\/i>\u00a0and ALL-CAPS.<\/li>\n<li><b>Don&rsquo;t get too fancy.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b>You want your audience to remember your message, not how many special effects and visual gimcracks you used. In almost all cases, the simpler the better.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Presentation<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Check your equipment &#8230; in advance.<\/b>\u00a0If you must use PowerPoint, or plan on showing videos or something, check to make sure that the setup really works. Then check it again. Then one more time.<\/li>\n<li><b>Speak to the audience.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b>Great public speakers keep their focus on the audience, not their slides or their notes. Focusing on the audience encourages them to focus on you and your message.<\/li>\n<li><b>Never read from slides.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b>Guess what? Your audience can read. If you&rsquo;re reading from your slides, you&rsquo;re not just being boring\u2013you&rsquo;re also insulting the intelligence of everyone in the room.<\/li>\n<li><b>Don&rsquo;t skip around.<\/b>\u00a0Nothing makes you look more disorganised than skipping over slides, backtracking to previous slides, or showing slides that don&rsquo;t really belong. If there are slides that don&rsquo;t fit, cut them out of the presentation\u00a0<i>in advance.<\/i><\/li>\n<li><b>Leave humour to the professionals.<\/b>\u00a0Unless you&rsquo;re really good at telling jokes, don&rsquo;t try to be a comedian. Remember: When it comes to business presentations, polite laughter is the kiss of death.<\/li>\n<li><b>Avoid obvious wormholes.<\/b>\u00a0Every audience has hot buttons that command immediate attention and cause every other discussion to grind to a halt. Learn what they are and avoid them.<\/li>\n<li><b>Skip the jargon.<\/b>\u00a0Business buzzwords make you sound like you&rsquo;re either pompous, crazy, or (worst case) speaking in tongues. Cut them out\u2013both from your slides and from your vocabulary.<\/li>\n<li><b>Make it timely.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b>Schedule presentations for a time when the audience can give you proper attention. Avoid end of day, just before lunch, and the day before a holiday.<\/li>\n<li><b>Prepare some questions.<\/b>\u00a0If you&rsquo;re going to have a Q&amp;A at the end of your presentation, be prepared to get the ball rolling by having up a question or two up your sleeve.<\/li>\n<li><b>Have a separate handout.<\/b>\u00a0If there&rsquo;s data that you want the audience to have, put it into a separate document for distribution after your talk. Don&rsquo;t use your slide deck as a data repository.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to a recent study, 58% of business presentations are deemed to be too long, uninteresting and lacking relevant information. Here are 21 ways to make certain that your presentations hold your audience&rsquo;s interest and help them make the decision you want them to make. Preparation Build a story.\u00a0Presentations are boring when they present scads [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3145,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions\/3145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafigo.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}