Yes, you should rehearse. From a presentation coach’s perspective, the following 25 words are the dumbest phrase in the English language:
“I don’t want to rehearse because I don’t want to seem canned. I want to seem spontaneous and fresh so I’ll be better winging it.”
Ugh!!!

It is true that if you try to memorize your speech during rehearsal, you will cause problems and set yourself up for failure (exceptions for any reader who is a trained Broadway actor). But rehearsing your speech should never be about memorizing your words. If you don’t rehearse, you are throwing out your rough draft of your presentation to your audience. And rough drafts of most things are, well, rough.

Here is a question I ask every one of my clients: “How often would you dictate a letter to an assistant, and then instruct your assistant to send it to all of your clients, your boss, and the media, without spellchecking it, editing, reviewing it, putting it on nice letter head, or getting another set of eyes to review it?”

Clients usually chuckle and say “never.” But then I inform them, “That’s exactly what you are doing if you give a presentation and you haven’t reviewed a video of your presentation. A presentation is NOT the words you’ve created on paper or a computer screen. A presentation is you actually speaking in front of other people.”

Most people are nervous before they give a presentation and yet calm when they send out a letter to clients and prospects. What is the difference? With the letter you had the opportunity to work through several drafts and to get to the point that when you looked at the letter, you are pleased that it is the best it can be and is devoid of major errors before you send it out. That’s why you aren’t nervous about sending letters.

But the same principle applies to presenting. There is no good reason not to go through drafts of your presentation until you get to the point where you like your presentation. Again, I’m not talking about the words of your speech. I’m referring to you actually speaking.

This brings up a point that never ceases to amuse me. Countless how-to books on speaking say things like “if a video camera is available, try to record your speech and then review it.” “If a video camera is available…???” What year are we in, 1910?

You don’t see books on resume writing say “if a computer is available and if you can find a spell-check program, you may wish to check the spelling in your resume before sending it out.” It is equally absurd in this day and age not to use a video recorder to rehearse your presentation.
For starters, your phone probably captures video. Your computer likely has a web cam that will capture your rehearsal. Personally, I never go anywhere without a Flip Digital video recorder, it is no larger than a cell phone, has one button, cost less than dinner for one in Manhattan, and plays back instantly.

Please, please, please, I beg of you—video record your presentation rehearsal. If you disregard every other piece of advice in this book but follow this one piece of advice you will have unlocked most of the secret to giving foolproof presentations!
I will warn you, if you have never seen a video of yourself speaking, you will not likely enjoy watching yourself. Tough! Your audience has to watch you; shouldn’t you see what they are looking at and hearing?

If you are like most people, when you watch the first draft of your presentation, you will be amazed at how boring, tedious and monotonous you sound. Wouldn’t you rather know now than after you give this stuff to your actual audience?

You can’t give up after one video rehearsal. You’ve got to analyze the video and figure out what you like and what you don’t like. But here’s the rub, everyone focuses on the stuff they don’t like. The key is to focus on the parts of your presentation that you like so you can do more of it.
The next step is to rehearse and video record your speech again. Review again. Are you happy yet? If not, keep revising it, rehearsing it recording it and reviewing it until you are happy. Is this tedious? Sure. But you already do this with print documents going out of your office. Why is your presentation less important than a print document?

Clients always complain to me, “But TJ, I can’t stand looking at video of myself. Why do I have to do this?” Then I ask them, “How often do you get up in the morning, get dressed in the dark and go to your office without looking at a mirror once?”
Of course people say “Never.”

Then I ask why? After all, you don’t have to look at your face all day. Yet we all look at a mirror before we leave home because we want to get an accurate sense of how the rest of the world sees us all day long. We like to know if we missed half of our face while shaving, if our lipstick is on straight, or if there is grape jelly smeared on our chin. In fact, we don’t just look at a mirror once in the morning. Chances are we look at a mirror when new first wake up, then after we get out of the shower, then again while we are shaving or putting on makeup, again after we are dressed, and maybe one last time before we walk out of the house.

By looking at a mirror several times, we are essentially going through drafts of our public face. A mirror is the ideal way to do this. The result is that when you leave the house, most of us are confident in knowing that while we might not look or be perfect, we have at least put our best face forward and we have an accurate sense of how others see us.

When it comes to checking our presenting, mirrors don’t help; only video does. I strongly urge you not to practice presenting in front of a mirror. Instead of focusing on delivering ideas to an audience, you will focus on your big nose or some part of your face you don’t like. Plus, there will be nothing to analyze once you are done.

The video creates something tangible for you to critique to see your strengths and weaknesses. That’s important to learning most new skills. Imagine if, when you were in elementary school, you tried to learn how to write by dictating an essay to your English teacher and you never saw the transcript. Now, imagine that when she graded your essay but didn’t show you the words; instead the teacher just told you what you did well or poorly. Do you think you ever would have become a competent writer that way? Of course not; you would not have been able to see what you were doing.

You have to see video of yourself speaking if you want to improve and there is absolutely no excuse not to do so unless you make less than $1 a day.

Now, for the second part of my question—how long should you rehearse? You need to keep on rehearsing until you can look at the video and say “Wow, that (fill in your name here) is a great presenter. If I can do half as well in real like I will be the best presenter there.” That might take you five minute or five days of rehearsal; no matter how long it takes it will be worth it to the one person who counts the most—not you but each individual member of your audience.

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