Presentation skills

I often get asked by trainers what they can do to improve their presentations. A presentation isn’t that different to a training session. There is a speaker and the main idea is to get across a series of points. In a presentation there is generally a small number of points, less interaction and a greater reliance on the actual speaker’s ability to excite and sell to the audience their points. In training we need to not only get across our points but we must always aim to bring about the long term acquisition of some knowledge, skill and behaviour. In a presentation this isn’t typically the goal. In a presentation it is about selling the points and getting some action to occur because of it. There maybe little, if any, acquisition of skills, knowledge or behaviour. Presentation skills are critical to a trainer though because it is often through a presentation that we have to sell a training program, convince a client of a particular learning strategy or sell our usefulness to the organisation. This blog post contains 5 good tips for effective presentations but also contains a variety of very useful links. Do you  have any presentation tips that you find work for you? Let me know.