In my weekly articles, I have discussed how to create, practice, and deliver presentations extensively. However, I have not often discussed what you should do before you create your presentation.

Before creating your presentation, you should take three essential preparatory steps to ensure your message is relevant, practical, and engaging.

These foundational actions lay the groundwork for clarity, audience connection, and the impact of your presentation.

Understand the Audience Deeply

To know what to say to the audience, you need to understand the audience.

Research the audience’s demographics (age, role, industry). Talk to the event planner about your audience. They should have valuable information on the audience’s age, role in their industry, and what frustrates them.

Identify their knowledge level, pain points, expectations, and cultural background.

Identifying their knowledge level is key to creating your presentation because it tells you what to say and what not to say. If your audience has a level of knowledge on your subject, you will start there, assuming this knowledge. You can discuss your topic in more depth.

However, if your audience has only a rudimentary knowledge of your subject, you must reduce your presentation narrative to a summary.

Identifying your audience’s pain points gives clues about what they want to solve regarding your topic. If you solve those pain points, you will more fully engage your audience.

To determine my audience’s expectations, I meet and discuss these expectations with as many audience members as possible before my presentation. I can’t change my slides, but I can always change my narrative.

Remember, you and your audience have different experiences, including your cultural background. Take this into consideration when you create your presentation.

Consider what motivates and keeps them up at night, and how they prefer to receive information.

Audience analysis allows you to tailor your content, tone, and delivery to resonate with your audience.

Knowing the audience ensures relevance, boosts engagement, and prevents miscommunication.

So, one task for you to do before you create your presentation is to understand your audience deeply.

Another is to clarify your core message and presentation purpose.

Clarify Your Core Message and Presentation Purpose

Define your presentation’s most important takeaway and make it the core message. Refer to it often during your presentation.

Repeating your core message throughout your presentation will enable your audience to retain it when you are done.

Identify whether the presentation is meant to inform, persuade, inspire, or entertain. This is key. Presentation formats for informing, persuading, inspiring, and entertaining are different. You need to use a particular format that supports your presentation’s purpose.

Before a novel writer starts, they “flesh out” their characters to ensure their dialogue and mannerisms are accurate to the particular character.

In the same way, write a clear objective statement for your presentation that guides all slide and script development. When in doubt on a particular slide of the narrative part, consult your presentation objective.

A clear message focuses the presentation, avoids content overload, and helps the speaker stay aligned. It also ensures the audience leaves with a memorable, purposeful impression.

So, before creating your presentation, you should understand the audience profoundly and clarify your core message and purpose.

Finally, plan the structure and flow of your presentation before you create it.

Plan the Structure and Flow

Choose a proven structure (e.g., problem-solution, chronological, storytelling arc) and organize your presentation with three main points in one specific structure.

You need to know that these are not the only presentation structures. Google “presentation structures” and you will get the rest.

If you are using the problem-solution structure, your three main points might be (1) the problem, (2) the result of the problem, and (3) the solution that solves the problem.

People attend your presentations to solve problems or frustrations in their personal or professional lives. It is your job to ferret out these and present a solution that will solve them.

If you are using the chronological structure, your three main points might be (1) the situation twenty years ago, (2) the current situation, and (3) what we can expect twenty years from now.

It is essential to give each main point equal time so as not to overemphasize one main point over another.

If you are using the storytelling structure, your three main points might be (1) what the conflict is, (2) who the hero is, and (3) who the guide is. To have a story, you must have (1) conflict, or there is no story, (2) a hero who is dealing with the conflict, and (3) a guide who provides the hero with the solution to resolve the conflict.

Develop a beginning that captures attention, a body that delivers value, and a conclusion that inspires action.

The best presentation with the most relevant information your audience can immediately use is all for naught if you do not capture your audience’s attention at the beginning of your presentation. Don’t forget this attention step. You will regret it.

Although some speakers like to structure their presentation from the bottom up, I recommend you work from the top down.

Create a rough outline before building slides. Start by determining your main points and then work to flesh out the sub-ideas for each main point.

So, before you create your presentation, you should (1) understand your audience deeply, (2) clarify your core message and presentation purpose, and (3) plan the structure and flow of your presentation.

Every minute of preparation is worth ten minutes of revision.

An old relevant saying is, “Prior planning prevents poor performance (5P).”

Call to Action

• Understand who your audience is before you utter your first word to them.

• Clarify your core message and the purpose of your presentation. Not doing this is like a ship without a rudder, aimlessly meandering in the ocean.

• Select a structure for your presentation and let the audience know what it is in your opening. They need a “map” for their presentation journey. Without this map, they will wonder where you are going and not listen to you.

References

• Lucas, S. E. (2019). The Art of Public Speaking. McGraw-Hill. Lucas emphasizes that “adapting to the audience is one of the most important keys to effective public speaking,” underscoring the need for thorough audience research.

• Duarte, N. (2010). Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences. Wiley. Duarte advises speakers to “articulate the big idea,” stressing that without a central message, the audience will struggle to retain anything meaningful.

• Reynolds, G. (2011). Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. New Riders. Reynolds promotes simplicity and structure, stating that “the best presentations are well planned and well organized,” not just visually compelling.Before creating your presentation, you should take three essential preparatory steps to ensure your message is relevant, practical, and engaging.

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Being a confident, engaging, and effective technical speaker is a vital personal and professional asset. With more than 40 years of engineering experience and more than 30 years of award-winning public speaking experience, I can help you reduce your presentation preparatory time by 50%, overcome your fear of public speaking and be completely at ease, deliver your presentations effectively, develop your personal presence with your audience; and apply an innovative way to handle audience questions deftly.

Working closely with you, I provide a customized protocol employing the critical skills and tools you need to create, practice, and deliver excellent technical speeches and presentations. Let’s connect and explore how I can help you become the exceptional speaker you were meant to be. Please reach out to me at frank@speakleadandsucceed.com or 703-509-4424 for a complimentary consultation. Schedule a meeting with me at calendly.com/frankdibartolomeospeaks