Business presentations centre around establishing the credibility of your service, product or organization, right up front. Your viewers are more likely to pay attention and listen to you when you are credible. As an entrepreneur, at some point in time in your career, you will be required to create a business presentation and present the same in front of a potential audience. Your presentation really needs to stand out when you’re looking for new investors and opportunities. How your presentation looks and how it feels does matter. It is the design of a presentation which evokes emotions in the audience, motivates them and further initiates a call to action. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sales demo, pitch for a new idea or market push for a new product, you have to make sure your presentation is a winner.

Treat your business presentation like an investment, therefore you should get it right in any case. Presentation is a game of impressions, if your first impression is good, chances are high that you’ll end up closing more business deals. When the room is full of important venture capitalists, potential customers, business partners and senior management, you have to establish credibility as soon as possible through your presentation. It all boils down to one aspect, people don’t buy products, they buy ideas. So, whatever you’re selling, you’re still selling your ideas. An effective business presentation is no longer about projecting numbers and text, rather it has become a medium to germinate ideas which resonate with the viewers.

Let’s move to some amazing tips which can help you presentations stand out in the crowd

Begin with a story

Starting your PowerPoint presentation with personal stories will make you look more interesting and likeable. Moreover, when your audience resonates with you, they trust you better. One should understand that ordinary text and stats only stimulate two areas of the human brain, however, with stories and attractive visuals, more than seven areas can be activated. This triggers a plethora of emotions and responses amid your audience. Beginning your presentation with a story is one of the most successful ways of connecting early with your audience. Through this, you can transform their presentation experience into an amazing journey. For instance, while presenting to venture capitalists or potential investors, you can help them see the bigger picture of business success and how your idea can revolutionize the segment. Sharing references, legwork, support information can all help you garner your audience’s attention.

Use supporting materials to back your points

While you’re presenting the material on stage, you need to back whatever you say with relevant facts and figures. Supporting material for your slides should be used liberally since it helps you establish the credibility of presentation data. You may also include supporting facts and figures in your speaker notes if not in slides. Citing research references, study findings, audit conclusions, SWOT analysis reports etc. provides a great deal of credibility to your content and makes your presentation well-respected. You must know your subject matter inside-out. Keeping it simple is the key to success. You shouldn’t overwhelm your audience with a lot of figures or pointers. Three to five points per slide is more than sufficient. Always highlight the powerful points and keep them as straightforward as possible.

Creating a compelling pitch is an essential aspect of preparing a successful presentation speech. A well-written pitch not only serves as a roadmap for the presentation but also helps to capture the audience’s attention and engage them in the topic being discussed. The pitch should highlight the key points of the presentation and provide a clear, concise overview of what the audience can expect to learn. During pitch presentation training programs and workshops, you can learn how to craft a strong pitch that can set the tone for the entire presentation, creating an atmosphere of excitement and interest that encourages the audience to stay engaged and focused.

Use a professional template

A professionally crafted presentation template can help you do wonders with your business PowerPoint presentation. Your professional presentation is as important as the company’s letterhead, logos and business cards. Your presentation can benefit hugely through engaging graphic design provided by the template. Moreover, it boosts the branding of your business, provides you with deep customization features and most importantly, consistency can be ensured throughout slides. Templates come with a readymade design framework and hence, makes your job a lot easier while creating a presentation. These also encompass attractive backgrounds, themes and infographics which can help you woo the attention of your audience. You can make your presentation more interesting and worth watching when it features captivating design.

Describe your data well

Using graphs, charts and pictorial diagrams in your presentation can help you present data in a compact, consistent and concise manner. This encourages your audience to get a hold on information easily. The human brain appeals more to visuals than to plain textual content. Visuals make your presentation more engaging and provide rightful assimilations. Nobody likes to read numbers right off the slides. Providing a comprehensive view of data in the form of graphs, charts and infographics can help your audience draw conclusions and understand the subject matter better. It is imperative to make an assessment of facts easier for your audience only then higher engagement can be ensured.

Ask questions

When it comes to actually involving the audience into your presentation, asking relevant questions can do a great job. You should carefully place questions amid your slides so that your audience will be excited to answer those. Basically, when you ask questions in between of your presentation, you warm up your audience. This encourages them to participate more in your presentation and be an active part of the same. The Q&A session must be segregated throughout your presentation and not in the end. What happens is people often keep questions for the end, this can make your audience drift away during the presentation. You can also consider conducting live quizzes or polls in between your presentation. Including a few engaging questions about the topic right from the slide one to end can keep the endeavours going for everybody.

A business presentation is much more than just a couple of good slides. Today, the audience has low attention spans and they expect to get entertained. Opening your presentation strong can have an everlasting effect on your audience and can set the tone for the rest of your presentation.