7 Effective Ways To Structure A Knockout Presentation

Last updated on March 10th, 2023

A PowerPoint Presentation is a great way to promote your ideas, business and yourself.  You have an audience waiting to hear you and you can deal with any queries right there. For a successful presentation, you need to hold the attention of the audience and speak fluently and clearly.

7 Effective Ways To Structure A Knockout Presentation

A knockout presentation is the best way to wow investors, excite the board and inspire the staff. In order to make sure your presentation ends with a magnificent applause, there are some ideal ways that can help you structure a knockout presentation:

1. Use The Best Supporting Material

Most of the presenters justify their significant points with different kinds of supporting materials such as: graphs, charts, white papers, visuals, statistics, testimonies, anecdotes or references. Even fact, quotes and metaphors are sometimes useful. However, the one thing which is neglected is providing examples. They are the most powerful supporting material that provides clarity to help the audience understand a difficult issue.

2. Look At The Bigger Picture

Start your presentation by talking about the objectives, goals and vision and elaborate why the current situation is not aligned with the vision and goals. Further on, make a summary of the available options, make the suggestions and end your PPT with the call to action.

Structure your presentation in a way that it summarizes the message that you want to convey, without being too long.

A good way to start a presentation is by presenting facts about a specific topic. Another alternative is to generate an emotional sense into the audience, this is what the storytelling techniques can produce.

It is important to give the audience an overall idea of the length that will be taken by the presentation. Sometimes the use of a progress bar can help (e.g. showing XX% of 100%), as well as the slide numbers (with the total number of slides present). Alternatively, an agenda slide at the beginning of the presentation can be useful to show the audience the content of the presentation and implicitly let the participants know on which chapter they are at any time.

3. Utilize The Three-Part Consultant Template

You can use a three-part template that consultants use. It actually displays information in a three-part format; how you are positioned to solve the problem, what your customer must do about it and why there is a problem.

4. Pre-Plan Transitions

Transitions show your terrain of thoughts and guide your listeners. They are mainly connecting phrases or words that keep your story flowing readily from beginning to end.  Thus, as you move from one section to the other, make sure to include transitions.

5. Focus

It’s better to use cue cards than having a full print out of speech in front of you. Using these cards will give the freedom to talk naturally and help you in remembering the important points. Also, they will make you seem more communicative.

5. Give Bad News Directly

If you are about to deliver a bad news then don’t waste your precious time as it will not improve with age. It can have a negative impact on the audience but you need to get to the point quickly. Follow up with a recommended resolution and end it on a nice note.

6. Follow OBN

With executive and busy audiences, the OBN (Opportunity, Benefits and Numbers) framework is particularly effective. You can simply outline what the opportunity is and give an outline of the benefits. Then give a proof by showing your audience the numbers.

Hence, if you consider these ways to structure a knockout PPT, then certainly your presentation will be much more exciting and interesting.

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