How to prepare for a presentation

How to Prepare for a Presentation in 4 Simple Steps

How many times have you spent hours preparing for a presentation only to feel unprepared and nervous in front of your audience? While most presenters spend some time preparing for their presentation, the reality is not all presenters are doing so effectively.

The reason you’re getting in front of your audience and feeling “presentation paralysis” is because you haven’t been equipped with the tools to set yourself up for success. Most presenters prioritize the wrong tasks and spend too much time debating colors instead of learning about their audience and practicing.

Here at Be Brilliant, we’re tired of seeing presentation advice that is not actionable or useful. That’s why our strategy is focused on providing true, actionable value for our clients so they move from presentation paralysis, where you feel anxious, overwhelmed, and unsure of yourself, to presentation paradise, a state of confidence, enthusiasm, and effective presentation. With this guide, you’ll be able to say goodbye to presentation panic and self-doubt. Let’s get started!

This guide aims to solve that problem and take you from presentation paralysis to presentation paradise through the following topics:

How Do You Give an Effective Presentation?

Before you start honing your presentation preparation and skills, you need to understand what makes a good presentation. Every presentation and every audience is unique, but there are a few key elements from our guide to effective presentation skills that will improve any presentation.

Create a detailed plan. A well-planned presentation is an effective presentation. Starting with a useful framework, like the Be Brilliant Blueprint, will give you the foundation you need to excel.
Speak like yourself. At Be Brilliant, we don’t believe in one-size-fits-all presentation advice. That’s why we work with each of our individual clients to help them apply our flexible strategies to their unique presentation style and skills.
Connect with your audience through storytelling. Take your individuality to the next level during your presentation by engaging your audience more personally through storytelling. This will help you guide your audience through the journey you’re taking them on, from the beginning to the end of your presentation.
Practice! Practice is crucial, but not all types of practice are effective. Be Brilliant follows their 1-2-3 to Mastery practice regimen where each practice session has a unique focus and the coach works with each client to ensure they perfect their presentation strengths and are prepared to wow their audience.

Be Brilliant’s services work to challenge the standard for presenters and elevate it by giving you the framework to stairstep your way to presentation paradise. Working with a coach is always helpful, but working with Be Brilliant is game-changing.

Why You Should Work with a Coach to Prepare for a Presentation

The internet is full of advice on how to be an effective speaker so you don’t need personalized help, right? Wrong!

Yes, the internet has endless tips and tricks, but that doesn’t mean they’re useful tips and tricks. For example: how many times have you been told the outdated advice of picturing the audience in their underwear and how many times has it actually helped? Probably not even once!

Instead, get practical, individualized advice that will drive results for you and develop your unique presentation style. Working with a coach gives you the opportunity to:

Accurately assess your unique presentation style and skillset
Learn about different types of effective presentations and techniques
Get customized advice and assistance to apply those techniques
Receive as much or as little design assistance as you need
Access continued support from the planning stages through final practice sessions

With Be Brilliant, your presentation will be supported in all of these ways through our unique methodology that guides you through a 4-step “hack” to help presenters go from unsure and unprepared to confident and effective.

4 Steps to Prepare for a Presentation

If you’re ready to move from labored, anxiety-inducing, and unclear presentations—or presentation paralysis—to effective, smooth, and exciting presentation paradise, explore Be Brilliant’s 4-step methodology for creating your presentation:

To help you plan your presentation, your coach will work with you using our Be Brilliant Blueprint tool. This tool is not a simple brainstorming session. It is a proven exercise to efficiently get you from a state of uncertainty to a state of confidence.

This tool facilitates a productive conversation between you and your coach where you will experience a combination of presentation coaching, consulting, training, and personal transformation.

During this conversation, you and your coach will:

Identify your presenting strengths and weaknesses
Pinpoint design elements to include to draw out your strengths and reduce weaknesses
Determine the best organizational structure for your presentation
Outline the opening, middle, and ending sections of your presentation
Clarify next steps, timelines, and responsibilities

By the end of your session, you will have blueprinted your audience characteristics, your organizational structure, your opening journey, how to embed storytelling, what content to include, and your do-remember-feel ending, all in under 60 minutes.

After planning out your presentation using the Be Brilliant Blueprint, you’ll move onto storyboarding before you design your presentation.

Storyboarding takes your presentation prep analog, getting your creative juices flowing as you outline the basics of each slide on paper. This helps you stay focused on the big picture, the overarching theme of your presentation, and the key visual elements you identified during the planning stage and avoid getting caught up in making your final digital presentation look perfect when you’re still brainstorming.

If you’re feeling great after your planning session, but the idea of storyboarding and designing your presentation alone is still overwhelming, you can choose the level of support you want from your coach:

Do-it-yourself. You sketch the storyboard and your coach can provide a review.
Have it done with you. You and your coach work collaboratively to complete the storyboard.
Have it done for you. Your coach delivers a completed storyboard for your review.

With this flexible approach, you can be as hands-on or hands-off as you want. In the next step of Be Brilliant’s 4-step hack, you’ll have a similar level of flexibility to customize your coaching experience to best fit your needs.

Now that you have a minimal and informative storyboard created either by you or your coach, you can move on to designing your actual slides. During this step, your coach will continue to adhere to any slide template, organizational, or other visual requirements you identified during the planning stage.

With the assistance of Be Brilliants buildout team, your visual elements will be created following solid instructional design with a variety of slide design applications as well as video and audio creation tools. This ensures your deliverables are not only in the file formats you need but are valuable individually and cohesive with the rest of your presentation.

Once again, you can choose to:

Do-it-yourself
Do it with your coach
Have it done for you

Be Brilliant understands the importance of highly-effective visuals that draw your audience in while delivering value through the information you’re sharing. Whether you need just a little help getting everything right, or you want to hand off presentation design to our team, Be Brilliant is here to help.

For the final step in your presentation prep, your coach will guide you through three separate practice sessions that target every aspects of your presentation:

Practice 1: Master your delivery of the visuals focusing on your verbal skills and word choice.
Practice 2: Master your delivery of the visuals plus the technical elements focusing on audience engagement, props, and body movement.
Practice 3: Master your delivery of the slides, technical elements, plus the nonverbal details focusing on body language and facial expressions.

This practice strategy ensures you polish every part of your presentation and leave your coaching experience feeling prepared and confident. After your last practice session, you won’t even remember what presentation paralysis feels like!

Whether you’re presenting to board members, a virtual audience, or at a large conference, Be Brilliant can help you hone your skills and wow your audience during your next presentation.

How to prepare for a presentation