TAKEAWAY GUIDE
IMPROVING
PRESENTATION SKILLS
Identifying Your Audience and Their Needs
Education
What is the education level of your audience?
If well-educated, you can use sophisticated vocabulary;
if not, you want to keep things simple.
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Does your audience know the specialized vocabulary
and technical terms related to your topic?
If not, avoid the terms or take time to explain them.
If they do, use the terms; it will make your presentation more
efficient and dynamic.
If you are aware of any misconceptions, spend time correcting them.
Familiarity
What do people know about the topic already and
what do you need to explain?
If they don’t know a lot, you will need to spend time educating
your audience on the topic. If they are already familiar with it, you
can spend more time communicating your own ideas.
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Interest
How interested are they in your topic?
What’s important to them?
If there is little interest, focus on what they care about and show
the impact your message will have on their individual lives.
If interest is high, you can build on it, get your ideas across, and
change mindsets and behavior more easily.
Misconceptions
What incorrect ideas might your audience have?
Attitude
What will be the audience’s mood? Will they be hostile,
supportive, curious, worried? What is their opinion?
The attitude and opinion of your audience should affect the tone
and content of your presentation. A worried audience will
require comfort or reassurance; a celebratory audience will want
a positive, high-energy atmosphere.
TAKEAWAY GUIDE Improving Presentation Skills 2

Basic Presentation Outline

Opening
Open your presentation with a “hook,” something that grabs the
audience’s attention. Hooks include a compelling story, joke,
intriguing rhetorical question, or surprising statistic.

Body
Organize the body of your presentation around
a simple pattern. Patterns include chronological
order, problem/solution, simple to complex, order
of location, or broad to detailed.

Review
Summarize the key points you want taken away from the
presentation. This will reinforce your concepts and help the
audience remember them long after the presentation is over.

Closing
Restate the main point of your presentation. In some
cases, you may want to give people a “call to action” —
something you would like them to do as a result of your
presentation.

Q&A
Somewhere near the end, you may also want to have
a “question and answer” period where the audience
asks you questions.
TAKEAWAY GUIDE Improving Presentation Skills 3

Revising, Editing and Rewriting Making Adjustments

Organization
Does the opening provide a good idea of what the
presentation is about?
Are the main ideas arranged in a logical order?
Are your ideas consistent with your main message?
Completeness
Is your information complete?
Does your presentation answer the
who, what, where, when, why and
how of your topic?
If your audience starts to look confused, bored, or in pain, make
an adjustment:
• Take a five-minute break
• Change the pace—talk faster, slower, or alternate back and forth
• Ask questions
• Have someone come up and help you with a demonstration
• Conduct an informal poll (“How many people think that…?”)
• Introduce a brief, interesting digression (go off topic for a few
minutes)
• Use a brief anecdote (preferably one related to your topic)
• Lighten up, be less formal, tell a joke
• Have people do an exercise of some sort
• Have people break into groups, discuss a topic, and report on
their discussion

Language 8
Do you use clear, active language?
Have you eliminated jargon as much as possible?

Length
Have you devoted an appropriate
amount of time to each part of
your presentation?
Is your entire presentation an
appropriate length?

Audience Engagement
Do you engage your audience with
thought-provoking questions?
Do you include time for discussion?
Is there a call to action?
TAKEAWAY GUIDE Improving Presentation Skills 4

Creating Powerful Visual Aids

URGENT!