How to Handle a Presentation

1. Stand tall and look confident and use silence before you start to get your audience engaged. When you start, give a big smile and say hello confidently, so that you look as if you are enjoying this and you seem as if you know what you are talking about. I would expect the intro to go something like this:

"Good morning!! As you know, I am Jane Smith, and what I would like to do is talk to you for 10 minutes about XXXX. I am going to try to summarise what I see as the main issues and explain why I think they are issues, and then at the end I will try to highlight which issues I think are the most important. I'd like to keep this informal, so feel free to interrupt with questions at any time!"

2. Most of us need some kind of a prop, and I often hold a pen in my hands so it keeps them busy. I find it helps me to appear animated because I can wave my hands around using my pen, but everyone will have their own technique. The worst thing to do is to stand still at the front without changing your stance or moving your hands. If it is a big audience, I will walk around a bit, and if it is a small audience (5 or less), I will step forward and step back from time to time to emphasise points.

3. After the introduction, I will launch into the issues. Using the word Ð''issues' is quite smart because every presentation can always be broken down into different issues. Generally, I want to come up with at least 7, but probably not more than 10. Here is an example of how I would explain an issue:

"I think that expansion into Poland is a major issue for the company. It matters because if they get it right, it seems that there is a potential for them to make an additional $5 million annually. This number is based upon the GDP growth for Poland, the high penetration (43%) of mobile phones, and the existence of only 2 competitors compared to 5 or 6 in other countries. Polish expansion is definitely not without risk, and I specifically refer to the massive losses suffered by XXXX when they moved into Poland 2 years ago."

"Another issue I thought was important is the technology used by the company. Some aspects of it are worrying, such as the continuing use of Windows 95, the departure of the 3 key members of the technology management group, etc., etc."

The above hopefully explains how I go through one issue after the other. I am succinct. I can cover each issue in 30-40 seconds, so if I do 10 issues, I expect to be talking for 5 or 6 minutes.

4. Below is how I would expect to wrap things up at the end.

"The last issue I wanted to mention was XXXX (and I give my 30 seconds of details to support my issue)."

"Let me now try and summarise which I think are the most important ones.