Business presentation skills are the combined attributes that contribute to a clear, informative, and — if appropriate — persuasive business presentation. These skills may, depending on circumstances, include widely ranging abilities. Some of the most often used business presentation skills are: crafting and presenting a speech, creating and disseminating visual aids and training materials, and using presentation software or online applications to contact your audience. Improving business training skills can happen through practice, changing your approach, and learning something new or getting training or instruction.
Practice means rehearsing. One can practice or rehearse business presentations skills in a variety of ways. First, if you are making a speech from prepared material, you can practice it in different manners. Early on in your process, it’s a good idea is to make sure that the words on the page work as speech. To do this, read the speech out loud, focusing on shaping it with dynamics, stress, pauses, etc. If you don’t feel you can rely on memory for this kind of thing, you can mark your speech, with highlighter, for example, to give yourself reminders.
Another practice method that combines with changing your approach, if you feel comfortable doing so, is to adapt your speech so you can give it from short notes on index cards or an outline form, rather than reading word-for-word. If this is new for you, you will want to try this several times to get comfortable with it. Because one of the benefits of this method is that it allows you to make eye-contact with your audience, you might ask one or several friends to watch you so that you can practice this. Finally, you could try memorizing your speech or the points you wish to make and giving your presentation without any written reminders. Again, practicing this change in approach will help you become comfortable with it.
Whether you learn new techniques or material on your own, take a course, or attend a training function, adding to your repertoire is a useful method of improving your business presentation skills. Using whichever approach you prefer, you could focus on improving your understanding of the best ways to present information graphically, learn finer points of preparing Microsoft® PowerPoint® or Apple® Keynote® presentations, or develop a clearer handwriting for use with on-the-spot notes on flip charts or whiteboards. Practiced familiarity with online meeting technology — whether videochatting through Skype™ or hosting a conference on Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ — is another way to improve your business presentation skills.
