|
Delivering an impactful presentation during an Investor Awareness Program is very crucial. One must learn the art of presenting. It takes a lot of time and continuous efforts to sharpen your presentation skills. Most people believe that the skill and art of presenting is something which is God gifted and cannot be learnt. This is half truth. I agree with the fact that many people are born good speakers. But it would be wrong to say that this skill cannot be learnt.
While I was doing my MBA, I was literally terrified at the time when I was supposed to present some project in front of whole class. But today the situation is totally different, whether the crowd consist of 20 people or 2000 people, I can do it confidently and effectively. In my career I have delivered hundreds of trainings and Investor Awareness Programs while I was doing my job. Even in just 6 months of starting my new venture called AnchorEDGE Trainings, I have delivered 150+ trainings and IAPs. And one thing I have learnt is that this skill is surely learnable.
Let me share few things and techniques which I have learnt which can help you in delivering the impactful presentation in front of any audience.
How to Start
It is rightly said that we never get the second chance to make your first impression. Your opening is nothing but the first impression which you are going to make in the eyes of your audience, so it must be powerful. Most of the time audience judges you and your presentation based on your opening only.
Here are some tips on how to start your presentation.
Avoid wrong & Negative starts - Your audience is waiting to hear from you and you must ensure that you do not start with the wrong & negative statements like.
Am I audible, can you hear me? I think we should start now, though we are expecting few more people but we will start now. Has everyone got the notepad and pen? Though I have not got much time to prepare but I will try to do my best. Though the topic is very boring but I will try to make it interesting.
The first impression must not carry any such wrong or negatives statement. I have seen many people start with such statements and according to me they self sabotagetheir own speech.
Grab attention It is very important to grab the attention of your audience at the beginning and for that you must have something interesting content to start with. I never start my presentation with "Hello my name is ....blablabla". I also skip giving my formal & normal introduction.
There are few techniques which I use to grab the attention of audience at very early stage.
Start with some humour - You may choose to start with some joke related to your topic. When you successfully create the humour, people will surely be more interested in hearing you further. Even while introducing myself I try to create some humour. This is how I do it normally "Let me give you a small disclaimer before we start. Today I am going to talk a lot about investing, stock market etc., and my name is Jigar PAREKH and I am no where connected to or in relation with Ketan PAREKH". Creating some laughs and smiles at beginning helps a lot in grabbing the attention.
Start with some question - Start with some question related to your topic. Because what questions do is that they hook the mind and make others to think and concentrate. I believe that asking question at the beginning is by far the best method of opening the presentation. Your questions should be very objective and such that it compels the audience to respond by nodding or raising their hands or saying YES. Getting some agreement from audience in beginning in forms of few nods and YESs will help you in lowering the resistance of the audience to great level.
I normally use the technique of asking question at the beginning during my training and IAPs a lot and I know the kind of the attention you can grab with the help of this technique. Some of the examples of the questions I ask during the IAPS are,
"How many of you want to be Successful Investors? Please raise your hand."
"How many of you want to be financial free into your life? Please raise your hand"
"Would you like to learn 6 powerful secrets which successful investors use to manage their portfolio?"
While asking them to raise their hand I also raise my hand, and in response to my question most of the people raise their hands.
Start with a Story We all love stories, so starting with some story with some moral which might be related to investing and financial planning may help you grab the attention of your audience. But make sure that the stories are related to the topic.
For example, I start with my own story of how I got carried away during the 2007 and subscribe to the RPL IPO even though I was very sure that this is not worth investing. I share this story to explain the people about how the emotion of greed can overpower the logic when it comes to investing.
I have seen many people who start with the story but then they stretch it so long that audience gets bored and loses the interest, so you need to ensure that your story is very short, interesting and realistic.
How to prepare and deliver your IAP
The maximum time you are going to spend during the presentation is to deliver the relevant content about the topic. So let's discuss few tips which might help you to deliver the speech effectively.
Research your audience Before preparing your power slides and content of the IAP, you must research about your audience. If you don't know your audience you might end up preparing the things which might be irrelevant to the audience. I remember during my early years of career, once I was suppose todeliver the IAP to the audience of the 50 people and I prepared interesting presentation about how power of compounding can help you create a wealth into long term. Most of my slide was focused on starting to invest at early age. I was very confident and when I reached the venue, I realised that the average age of the audience was 50+. What a disaster! Right?
Do enough research on your audience in advance to avoid any surprises or rather shocks. You must know few basic things about your audience like, whether they are young or old, salaried or business class people, men or women, middle class or HNIs. This will help you to prepare the relevant content.
Use audio visuals When you use the enough audio-visuals during your presentation it becomes very easy to engage the audience. As far as possible avoid having too many text and points into slides. Rather use some pictures, images, graphs or small videos which are related to what you are saying.
When you use the interesting and colourful images or videos, you are involving not only his auditory sense but also visual sense which will help client to understand it in better way and also to retain the learningfor longer time.
There are many good small videos created by many AMCs and even AMFI which can be used during the IAPs to make your presentation more engaging and interesting.
Make it SIMPLE
As far as possible avoid the financial jargons and speak into very simple and local language. Even if you want to explain some complex points, start with some simple points and as and when you feel that client understands what you are saying you can move slowly from simple to complex points.
Use stories, examples & Questions
I always prefer to use less of data and more of stories and examples to make my point rather than bombarding with lots of complex data and calculations. To keep the audience engaged into the presentation you can also ask few questions during the presentation where they can respond by raising their hands or by saying YES or NO. This will ensure that your clients don't get switched off during the presentation.
Focus on 4 to 5 points Always focus on 4 to 5 major points during your presentation and build your presentation around these 4 to 5 points. Trying to include too many points will not have desired impact on your audience. To decide upon this 4 to 5 point the simple technique I use is that I ask a question to myself. "What are the 4 to 5 main key takeaways or action points which I wish to bedelivered to the audience?" This helps me in deciding main points of my IAPs.
There are many people who speak very well and audience love listening to them. But they miss to focus on giving some action points. Your goal should not be only to make them feel good about your presentation; it should be also to share some concrete action points along with the motivation to act on those points.
How to End the presentation
Concluding is to your IAP what dessert is to your meal after dinner. If the ending is not proper then your audience will feel that something is missing. Proper closing helps you to make your speech memorable. Here are few tips to conclude your speech effectively.
Avoid emergency Brakes To hit the emergency brake while your car is running into speed increase the chance of accident. I have seen many good speeches getting concluded badly. Never conclude your presentation with emergency brakes. For example, "I think we are out of time, I should now stop speaking" or "I finish my speech here and thank you very much for listening to me." Or "Well, that's all I wanted to say, thank you."
No matter how good speech you have delivered, but ending all of a sudden will make audience to feel that the speech was incomplete.
Give something for FREE: Offer something for free. You may offer Free Financial Health Checkup, FREE portfolio evaluation, 30 minute FREE consultation etc. to motivate your audience to take some actions. You may also offer some FREE report of e-book to them in exchange of their contact details. Everyone loves the word FREE, and it is the biggest motivator to act.
Summarise what you have said While concluding, give the brief summary of whatever you have talked about along with the key takeaways. Don't take longer time into summarizing the points, make it short and effective. Avoid giving any new information during the summary. I also have done this mistake few times. While summarize even if you remember missing some important point, avoid discussing it as your audience will get confused.
In a nutshell, presenting effectively is very crucial to conduct your IAP as it helps you in establishing you as an expert. To make your IAP effective, you must work seriously on three aspects namely opening effective, delivering main content effectively and closing effectively. And finally, the most important tip to successfully educate your clients through IAPs is to practice, practice and practice.
Share your thoughts and perspectives
Do you have any observations or insights or perspectives to share on this issue? Did this help you understand the topic better? Do you disagree with some of the observations? Please post your comments in the box below ..... it's YOUR forum !
Share this article
|
Saturday School - Teach to Grow