What are our goals for our presentations? And what are we really trying to build when it comes to our specific presentation skills in this course, and in general, I'm working under the assumption that when you present to people, it's because you want to influence them. If you are giving a presentation to one person you're proposing to, you want them to say yes to marrying you. If you are giving a proposal to a convention of angel investors, you want a specific action you want investors to come up to you afterwards after your presentation and give you checks. There is a specific outcome. Most of the time when we give presentations Now, sometimes it can just be a general vague, fuzzy notion that you're competent keep doing if you're giving a presentation on everything your department has done in the last quarter.

Sometimes it's just because you don't want to be fired or Hear budget cancel. But many times when you present it's because you want something specific. You want a specific budget item approved. You want someone to specifically sign a new contract, hiring you. You want an investment, you want a vote if you're presenting to a league of voters and you're running for office. So everything we do in this presentation skills class is designed to help you do that one thing, influence the audience to do something you want.

Even a comedian has a goal, a comedian when presenting to you as the goal of making you laugh, so everyone has an agenda doesn't make it make it bad or nefarious or a problem. But we do need to realize we're not just standing up to hero voice. We're doing it to influence people. Now. How are we going to do that? I break presentation skills down to full Very specific areas.

The first is knowing how to really look comfortable, confident, relaxed. Anytime you are presenting to someone, it could be sitting down one on one could be standing up speaking to five people, 500 or 5000. It could be in so called formal situations where you're in a boardroom. You're using PowerPoint presentations, handouts, a lot of different situations, but you still want to know how to look comfortable, confident, relaxed for any situation. problem a lot of us have is we're really comfortable sitting down talking to one or two people. We stand up and now we're talking to 20 or 30.

We're out of our comfort zone. What do we do? We freeze up, we start to read or we grab a lectern. That's not what we're after. I want you to look your best not your style, but my style anytime you have to present the second goal Knowing how to shape messages that are understandable to your audience, if you're speaking too quickly, they're not going to understand you. If you're using too many complex phrases, words jargon, they're not going to understand you.

So that's the second skill we really have to learn when it comes to presentation skills, making sure your audience understands us. The third presentation skill we're going to work on is making sure our message is memorable. This is where it gets tough. I want you to think of the last 510 20 presentations you've seen in your office, your work your school, your place of business or employment. Think of these presentations. Now.

Think of how many messages you remember from the best presenter Can you name 30 messages 2010 even five. Now this is a question I ask audiences I work with all over the world when I'm conducting one on one training workshops and small group workshops. On presentation skills, I say think of the best speaker you've ever seen. Tell me how many messages remember. Typically, people say, everyone's boring in our company, I don't remember anything. Or they remember one idea, occasionally two, sometimes three, every once in a while, four, and every six months.

Some will remember five ideas. I've never had anyone remember fourth and five ideas from the best speaker they've seen in their career. So that is the third presentation skill we're going to work on is really making sure your ideas are more memorable. Then and only then can we work on the final skill, which is influencing the audience to do what We want. So that's the whole point of this course, helping you with that one bottom line and helping you build those four skills.