Presentation Skills HQ

Here’s ten questions Andrew Abela suggests you ask yourself or others when preparing and designing your presentation to get you off on the right foot.

1. Who are the most important members audience?  
2. What you want your audience to think and do differently as a result of your presentation?
3. What’s the most important problem that your audience has, and what’s your contribution towards a solution to it?
4. Do you have a wide range of evidence?
5. Are you supporting your evidence with well-structured anecdotes?
6. Is every important new piece of information in your presentation sequence preceded by a Complication that creates the need for that information in your audience?
7. Have you selected the best chart for communicating each data-supported point, and are you showing enough detail?
8. Does the layout of each page reinforce the main message of that page?
9. Have you identified all stakeholders that could affect the success of your recommendations, and do you have a plan for dealing with each?
10. Do you know how you will measure the success of your presentation?

Abela, AV 2013, Advanced presentations by design : creating communication that drives action, 2nd edn, Pfeiffer, San Francisco. p152