I think you should have five specific goals every time you present.
1.    You should want to look comfortable, confident, relaxed, and authoritative. You want to look your best. Partly, because we are all vain. But mostly, because this way make our messages more memorable and believable because we seem more credible. By looking comfortable and relaxed, we allow our audience to focus on our message without distracting them.

2.    You should want to be understood. If you use too much jargon or insider lingo, no one will understand you. Also, if you speak too quickly or too softly, no one will understand you either. If people don’t understand you, then no real communication is going to occur.

3.    You want people to remember your messages. Here’s where it gets tricky. Lots of people can speak in ways that are understandable, but few people can speak in ways that are memorable. Most people present in a manner that is so abstract and fuzzy that, while they may be understood, nothing sticks in the memory of the audience member. This is a critical problem if left unsolved. If you present information and no one remembers anything you said, what have you accomplished? Absolutely nothing. There is only one type of presenter I know of where it doesn’t remember if you remember anything—the standup comic. If I go to a comedy show on Saturday night and have a lot of laughs with friends, but I don’t remember any jokes Sunday morning, that’s OK. I still had a fun Saturday night. But if you are giving a business presentation and nobody remembers anything you said, chances are you weren’t wildly funny either. So what have you accomplished: bad standup comedy and that’s nothing the world needs more of.

4.    You want the people you are presenting to to take some action, in the form of placing an order, voting for you, hiring you, authorizing your project, or at least not eliminating your department. Unless you are a philosophy professor and you are speaking just for the intellectual enrichment of your audience, when you present to people, you typically are doing to because you want them to take a very specific action.

5.    You want people who heard you present to tell other people what your message is. You want people who didn’t write down anything you said to be able to tell their colleagues, associates, friends and business partners what your key messages are. This way, your presentation continues to benefit you and others—it lives on.
Remember, it’s not communication if it simply comes out of your mouth. It is only an act of communication if it comes out of your mouth and it is received, processed and understood by someone else. And it is only effective communication if you get that person to act on your messages.
The foolproof presenter realizes that it is possible to accomplish all five of these goals each and every time you speak. It doesn’t matter if it is a PowerPoint presentation or not. It doesn’t matter if you are sitting or standing. It doesn’t matter if it is a 60 minute speech or a 60 second toast at a friend’s birthday party. Every single presentation is an opportunity to shine, make a connection and to communicate with your audience.

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