How to Present a Project Your Audience Will Relate To

How To Present A Project and Get The Approval You’re Looking For!

In this post, I’ll offer a few tips and insights that can help you with your presentation. Also, you’ll find an extensive resource section provided by various authors with hundreds of tips you can use to create and present your ideas that capture the attention of your audience.

Quality of Your Presentation

The quality of your presentation will influence the decision to approve or reject your project. If you give a barely understood presentation, do you think you’ll get approval for your project? If you miss important facts, you won’t get approval. If you present your project lacking confidence, management may not have enough confidence in you. You must prepare your presentation and practice it until your satisfied.

Here are a few points to help you with your presentation that you can use anytime you have a project to pitch.

Know Your Audience

Make a list of who will be attending and write the characteristics of each person.
For Example:
Jack, Senior VP of operations: With Jack, you must get your numbers correct, you can’t guess, and can’t go back on what you say.

Paul, VP of Operations: Paul is laid-back and fair; he likes professionalism; he listens more than letting you know what he is thinking. He is an advisor to Jack.

Cathy, Head of HR: Cathy is a hard head; she likes to look important and wants people’s approval; she’s not very practical, but she has a way to persuade Paul.

You can make sure to emphasize the issues they care about when you know the characteristics of your audience and especially the influencers and decision-makers.

For the example above:

To appeal to Jack, make sure your numbers are exact. Instead of saying, This process can reduce costs by around 12%. Say, this process will reduce costs by 12.31% in 24 days of 8-hour shifts.

To Impress Paul, wear professional clothes, be polite, make direct eye contact, and speak clearly.

To appeal to Cathy, include her in the conversation, acknowledge her attendance, ask her questions.

When you know your audience, you can put a little something in there that is targeted towards each of them. This strategy is not to be deceptive but to fine-tune your presentation for a personalized impact.

Play What-If

Questions will be asked by your audience. For each part of your presentation, you can play “What-If.” “What if Jack wants details?” Consider the questions he might ask.

Jack may ask, how did you come up with the 12.31% reduction? He may also ask, how can you guarantee the process will work?

Using the what-if strategy puts you in a strong position when considering the questions days before they are asked.

The Number One Confidence Builder For Me

It’s not easy to present a project. A lot of people are terrified of public speaking. I am a shy person and could not speak in front of a group of people. There are times in life when you don’t have a choice, and you need to make a presentation or perform training sessions.

Now I’m comfortable wherever I’m required to speak or train groups of 10-20 people. Here’s my secret. I know what I’m talking about, and when you know your stuff, that is an outstanding confidence builder that allows you to focus on the topic and not the fear of being in front of an audience.

When you’re knowledgeable, you’re perceived as an expert. People want to listen to what you have to say. When you know your stuff, you can answer questions and agree and disagree with your audience regarding the subject matter.

7 Keys To A Good Presentation

1. Practice
Practicing your presentation using a strong and loud voice a few times before your meeting will help you fine-tune your content. Practice in front of someone that will be honest with you is an excellent idea because they can give you pointers from an outsider’s perspective.

2. Tell Your Audience What You’re Going to Cover
When you let your audience know what to expect, and the time required for your presentation, it keeps them from wondering what’s next and losing focus when you’re talking.

3. Make Your Information Relevant
Make everything in your presentation relevant to your point. Use examples and be specific. If you’re making a presentation regarding implementing software, rather than talk about industry standards, talk about how it can streamline the process in your organization.

4. Avoid The Fluff
Don’t present information only to make it look like you put in a lot of work. Say what needs to be said and only add information that will add value to your presentation.

5. Content Transition
The way you transition from one issue to the next is essential. You wouldn’t start a presentation with bullet points and then go to the introduction, would you? When your draft is complete, look at the transitions, are they in the right order?

6. Give a Summary
It’s good to tell your audience what you’ve covered. It gives a quick summary of your presentation and reminds people of any question they may want to ask during the question and answer period.

7. Have a Q&A Session
A question and answer section can help by allowing discussions to take place without interrupting you during the presentation and help keep the presentation flowing. Be sure to mention at the beginning of the presentation that there will be a Q&A session at the end.

During the Q&A, if you are asked a question you are unsure of, you can say, for example. “Let me look into the exact numbers for you and get back to you, would that be alright?

Resources:

There are do’s and don’ts for presenting a project. To help you get the best information available, I have put together a collection of resources that will help you present your project with confidence and success. Take the time needed to go through the articles and prepare your presentation in advance to impress your audience.

The Latest about Presenting A Project

In this section, you’ll be able to stay up to date on the latest related to presentations including videos, news, the latest Google search results, what people are tweeting, and more.