How To Prepare For Your Teleconference

Basic presentation skills
Leaders make presentations to a wide variety of audiences, for example, Board members, employees, community leaders and groups of customers. Usually there is a lot that can be quickly gained or quickly lost from a presentation. A little bit of guidance goes a long way toward making a highly effective presentation.

The following guidelines are intended for general presentations. These guidelines can be applied to face-to face meetings, teleconference meetings, and desktop video conference meetings.

Basic Guidelines For Designing Your Presentation

1. List and prioritize the top three goals that you want to accomplish with your audience. It's not enough just to talk at them. You may think you know what you want to accomplish in your presentation, but if you're not clear with yourself and others, it is very easy - too easy - for your audience to completely miss the point of your presentation. For example, your goals may be for them to appreciate the accomplishments of your organization, learn how to use your services, etc. Again, the goals should be in terms of what you want to accomplish with your audience.
   
   
2. Be really clear about who your audience is and about why is it important for them to be in the meeting. Members of your audience will want to know right away why they were the ones chosen to be in your presentation. Be sure that your presentation makes this clear to them right away. This will help you clarify your invitation list and design your invitation to them.
   
   
3. List the major points of information that you want to convey to your audience. When you're done making that list, then ask yourself, "If everyone in the audience understands all of those points, then will I have achieved the goal that I set for this meeting?"
   
   
4. Be clear about the tone that you want to set for your presentation, for example, hopefulness, celebration, warning, teamwork, etc. Consciously identifying the tone to yourself can help you cultivate that mood to your audience.
   
   
5. Design a brief opening (about 5-10% of your total time presentation time) that:
   
   a. Presents your goals for the presentation.
   b. Clarifies the benefits of the presentation to the audience.
   c. Explains the overall layout of your presentation.



6. List the major points of in Prepare the body of your presentation (about 70-80% of your presentation time).
   
   
7. Design a brief closing (about 5-10% of your presentation time) that summarizes the key points from your presentation.
   
   
8. Design time for questions and answers (about 10% of the time of your presentation).