Winning The Room

SECTION 6Delivering: Final Presentation Preparation

After you've developed your data‐driven presentation content, you must prepare for and practice your delivery. Knowing what you'll say, anticipating the questions you'll receive, and validating that your spoken words flow smoothly are critical to success. Without proper preparation, you risk having all of your previous work be for naught. Here are some of the concepts discussed in this section:

• Consult a confidant and/or sponsor.
• Adapt your presentation to the audience.
• Be prepared to cut your presentation substantively short.
• Have multiple backup plans for handling problems that can arise.
• Ensure your key points are clear and that you draw attention to the right places.

Your final preparation is the last chance to ensure your messaging is on target, your slides are easy to follow, and that you're able to successfully drive home the points that you want to make. During final preparations, you'll always find some fine‐tuning that will make your presentation better as well as spots where you need to make your verbiage clearer and crisper. Most important, you can identify where your content is strongest (and weakest) and adjust your presentation flow for maximum effect.

Tip 83: Practice Your Presentation

You won't know how long your presentation will take without practice runs. Next time you have a presentation ready but have not yet delivered it, make an estimate of how long it will be. You'll almost certainly be off, and ...