93. How I Prepare for my Presentation

 

"WALANG KUPAS!!" 

..is the best compliment I am getting now, this is very meaningful to me because as being someone who have been giving talks and presentations since the late 90s, and coming from an audience who has heard me already for countless times.

This is very rewarding to me, it justifies all the hard work I am doing to come up with a relevant, informative and enjoyable talk.

Let me share how I conceptualize and prepare my presentation.

First Step: After getting confirmation as to the date/time/and time allotment of my talk, I would interview the "client" as to...

1. The nature of the event (it could be the launch of a marketing initiative, a financial advisory congress, a sales kick-off, a forum intended for agents/clients or an awarding ceremony)

2. The objective of my talk (was it to build up talking points to support the initiative? was it to teach a new approach in developing new markets? was it to guide the audience in a new way of serving their clients? was it to suggest ways on how to increase their personal productivity? etc.)

3. The average profile of the audience (new or seasoned, as I try my best to match the complexity or simpleness of my talk with my audience)

Second step: Do my research, the best lead time for me is around two weeks before the event.

1. As most of my talk involves the financial services industry, my first go would be to check out the latest market and economic update

2. Second would be to find "best practices" ideas to support the event objective

Third step: develop an outline highlighting three to four major points of my talk.

Fourth step: Building up my talk, i usually start with a clean sheet approach, simply writing down ALL ideas pertaining to a particular topic, then i would cut or expand on the idea by further research.

Fifth step: start preparing the presentation (I am using Canva for my presentation design, I can say that getting the Pro version is one of my best investment in support of my speaking career)

Sixth step: clean and align, cut and add slides, do additional research.

Seventh step: read up on supporting materials and start trial runs. 

While i am very sure that there would be other more efficient ways to do this, this system has so far worked very well for me.

hope this helps my friends!!

#acgadvice