It’s showtime! You have fully prepared and practiced so now is your opportunity relax and enjoy delivering your presentation. As you stand up in front of the audience, here are 3 final tips to improve your delivery:
1. Jacket
2. Pace
3. Milestones
1. Jacket
Even though the room may be warm and you are likely to generate heat as you actively deliver your talk, keep your suit jacket on. Under presentation conditions it is natural for us to sweat and this will be easily visible through your business shirt particularly around the armpit area. Keeping your jacket on helps maintain your image as a confident presenter.
2. Pace
We tend to increase our speaking speed when we are excited. Therefore, remind yourself to slow down. If necessary write “SLOW DOWN!” on your hand so you don’t forget. Use plenty of pausing and concentrate on building as much of a connection with your audience as you can.
3. Milestones
Your presentation may be 10 minutes or longer, but don’t focus the whole talk as you present. Instead, break your presentation into much smaller parts and make reaching of the next part your target or milestone.
A milestone might be a keyword or statistic. In the opening of your presentation have several targets. Doing this will both likely build your confidence and make sure you slow down. If you want to, you could write down each milestone on a card in large lettering. Rather than holding the cards, place them somewhere you can see if you need to.
Do not worry about remembering your every word of your speech. Instead, speak naturally and just focus on reaching the next milestone with your most effective delivery. Each time you pass a milestone, you can congratulate yourself internally and focus on the next.
