12. Types of Presentations

Presentations come in nearly as many forms as there are life situations. All variety of presentations can be divided into 3 types:

Information Presentation

Idea Presentation

Review Presentation

To identify the type of future presentation the target of your speech is to be formulated. You have to think over the following questions: the reason of your speech, the result of it, thoughts and actions of the audience caused by your speech.

Typically information presentations are divided into two distinct categories - reporting and explaining. Information presentations include talks, seminars, proposals, workshops, conferences, and meetings where the presenter or presenters share their expertise, and information is exchanged. In a business format, it might be a supervisor explaining new forms, products, regulations to employees or newly hired sales clerks may attend a presentation on selling techniques or loss prevention.

Information presentation is the simplest one so the requirements to such presentation are minimal: it is to contain the introduction, the main part and the conclusion. The introduction consists of the greeting, the topic and probably the target of the speech, the name of the speaker and the organization presented by him. This part of a speech is often accompanied or changed by the visual components. The key point of the main part of information presentation is logic of speech and preferable speech segmentation. The conclusion is to be extremely short: the resume of the above mentioned and gratitude for the attention. Mastering the skills of professional speech can be started with information presentation.

Idea Presentation or persuasive presentation is most commonly used and the creation of such presentation requires special presentation skills and knowledge. The target of such presentation is an idea to change the audience attitude and persuade them to undertake certain actions connected with the topic. Sales presentations are referred to this type. Here you attempt to convince the audience to buy your product or service. Persuasive presentations, are often motivational.

In a business context, a supervisor may make a presentation on teamwork in order to motivate employees to support new cooperative efforts within the company structure. It may be a situation in which the board is asking the shareholders to support changes in the way dividends are distributed. It could be that the distribution arm of an organization is making suggestions about packaging changes that would reduce shipping costs. Or perhaps the marketing department is trying to persuade top management to spend more money on a new promotional campaign.

Review presentation is a report of the work done. Review experience is necessary first of all for the managers. One can even judge about manager's professionalism by his or her review presentation. Actually the purpose of such presentations is to persuade the audience in your professional competence. You have successfully fulfiled your work and you are worth rewarding.

Presentations, however, usually have more than one purpose. They can be called multipurpose presentations. A presentation to employees may be announced as an informative session on new regulations, but in fact may also be an effort to persuade workers to believe in the new rules.

Two essentials for success in any presentation are knowing and understanding your audience, and building rapport.

Notes: loss prevention – запобігання втратам

gratitude for the attention - вдячність за увагу

review presentation – презентація-огляд (результатів)

Golden rules of presentation

Let’s start from the main point of presentation. The general structure of your speech must be clear, convincing, and memorable. It includes introduction. As a rule, it is greeting, announcing the title of the subject. Then comes the main topic. It would be better to divide the main topic into some parts. The ending of your presentation has to summarize the topic and make conclusions. The sense of timing is very important too. It is necessary to make sure that what you say is significant, interesting and relevant to your audience. Remember:

• Significance creates passion.

• Passion attracts attention.

• Attention leads to action.

Give 3 – 4 reasons supporting each of your points. The audience will not remember more anyway.

You have to vary the speed – don’t talk the same pace all the time – a couple of seconds of silence are sometimes just as affective as words. You also should vary the volume. A quiet part should contrast with a louder one. A good way of varying the pitch is to introduce questions into your presentation. If you want to speak clearer you shouldn’t rush your words.

As you know short sentences are more understandable. You should avoid reading the text to reach this. It is good to use a lot of links - it is a natural way to guide your audience through the presentation and help you to vary the pace. Don’t be afraid to exaggerate a little. It could be some kind of emphasis.

You should hold contact with the audience all the time. Your communication will be more effective if your audience has an opportunity to participate actively. You have to know if your audience is interested in your presentation. If you are confident, it could help you.

Body language is not less important than delivery of speech. Your posture should be natural. You should use strong, clear gestures for emphasis. Please, don’t scratch your head if you forget something. If the audience is too big for eye contact, you can choose a few for keeping eye contact with them. People associate success with dynamic and enthusiastic person, so you’d better look like that person, even if you are not.

Visual aids are your first and probably last helpers during the presentation. Use them without limitations, but remember – they should be fairly simple and clear.

Power Point is widely used by presenters. It helps to visualize ideas, create key points, impress. Well-known design rules about 7 lines per slide and 7 words per line can be modified by the following:

• one point per slide

• few matching colours

• very few fonts

• photos, not clipart

• less text, more imagery

It is international tradition to use the US system of points for decimals (.) and commas for whole numbers (,). For example, 3.025 is said three point zero two five and 3,125 is said three thousand one hundred and twenty five. Ensure you make this change when you convert graphs and tables from a figure or text in your own language into an English version.

Design pie or bar charts and graphs in the way the audience can immediately understand them. Pie charts have good visual impact but do not show movement. The secret to pie charts is not to have too many slices. Bar charts are particularly good for making comparisons. Graphs are good for showing movements and how one thing varies against another. It is not necessary to describe every single movement on a graph; an outline of the main trends is enough.

Tables give very precise information, but their visual impact is poor. You’d better avoid them during presentations. If you still use them, don’t describe them. Just tell the audience where to focus their attention. Explain the importance of the data.