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3. Practice with a “fake audience.” Take a few sheets of paper and draw crude faces on them (actually all you need is the eyes). Tape them up on the walls, at seated eye level. Then, practice your speech, looking into the “eyes” of your audience.
Remember, going over a presentation in your mind is not the same as delivering the presentation in front of a crowd. The more you practice doing so, the less chance you will crack under pressure. At first, your body may react the way it was built to: Your heart rate may increase and your palms may sweat.
Familiarize instead
Instead of memorizing focus on familiarizing. Put together a thorough outline of the presentation, but do not write it out word for word. From there, practice expanding on your points and delivering the speech out loud. Tell it to yourself in the shower or during your commute.
The five p’s of presentation are planning, preparation, consistency, practise and performance.
A good introduction needs to get the audience’s attention, state the topic, make the topic relatable, establish credibility, and preview the main points. Introductions should be the last part of the speech written, as they set expectations and need to match the content.
The magic number is 10. Assuming that you’re delivering a standard business or sales presentation that runs anywhere from 20-45 minutes, you should strive to rehearse every slide from start to finish at least 10 times. Give yourself at least ten days ahead of time to devote one practice session a day.
If you’ve already rehearsed many times and branded the presentation into your memory, then don’t worry; you’ll do fine. Rehearsing too much on the day of the presentation may just make you edgy, affecting aspects of your performance such as pronunciation and body language.
Rehearsal is important because it allows you to practice different parts before you actually deliver the total speech to an audience. Rehearsal is important because you can put the effective parts back together to create a total speech and practice before delivering it in front of the actual audience.
Body language “DO’s”: Stand straight, both feet on the ground in a parallel position. Keep both feet behind the podium. Watch your posture. And this bears repeating: Look up at your audience often, make eye contact with people throughout the whole room, and not just those closest to – or smiling at – you.
Vocal qualities include volume, pace, pitch, rate, rhythm, fluency, articulation, pronunciation, enunciation, tone, to name a few.
Volume. Volume refers to how loud or soft your voice is.