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Business presentations are a frequent part of the CEO’s life. Do you make a speech and make a difference? When you incorporate these 7 tips for highly effective CEO presentations, you can be sure that your speaking is making a difference.

Tip #1: Put the audience first.

Ask yourself what the audience wants you to talk about, rather than thinking about what you want to talk about. Asking yourself “What is on the minds of the people who will be in my audience?” will lead you to a highly effective presentation.

Options: what they are worried about, what troubles they are having or how they feel about things that are going on within the company.

Tip #2: Articulate a clear and specific call-to-action to deliver at the end of the speech or presentation.

Information is widely and easily available, so you must go beyond giving information. What do you want the audience do after they listen to you?

Some options:

• Take a particular action that can be measured and evaluated
• Change their thinking about something
• Renew their enthusiasm and commitment for a specific outcome or result

Tip #3: Surprise them with the first words out of your mouth. Avoid the standard “Thank you for being here” or “Thank you for coming to hear me” or “Today we’re going to talk about…”

Grab them with a story, a provocative question or a challenge. Some options:

• “What would you do if you were in charge of meeting next quarter’s financial goals?”
• “Imagine you are meeting with the auditors tomorrow. What would be on your mind?”
• “‘Your company has great products but terrible customer service. ‘ That harsh comment came from a dozen of our best customers. It’s hard to accept what many people think about us. What can we do to change this view?”

Tip #4: Be real

People like people who are genuine. Genuineness is easy to understand and decipher. The perfectly written speech read word for word is not genuine. It slides right out of the minds of the audience.

Tip #5: Be sure your speech is perfect for listening to

As a well-educated professional, you have great writing skills. You write with excellent sentence structure, word choices and perfect grammar. Your long sentences are constructed with just the right words connecting phrases and clauses. Your writing is literary and a pleasure to read.

Audiences do not have the leisure that readers have to go back, read something again, pause and think, and make notes. Audiences have only one chance to get your message as it moves past their ears at a steady pace.

Keep the limitations of listening in mind when writing the notes or text for your speech. Make your notes with the same fits and starts of spoken conversation. Use familiar words and keep sentences short and in the active voice.

Tip #6: Get out from behind a lectern.

Do not ask for nor accept a lectern or podium. These separate you from the audience when you should be doing everything possible to get close to them.

Require a hand held wireless microphone or a lavaliere microphone, rather than one that is fixed to a podium.

If you’re nervous without a lectern, practice enough to reduce your nervousness. If you need to have notes, prepare neat note cards and hold them in your hand.

Tip #7: Be scintillating every time on every subject for every audience.

Even though you’re the CEO and command attention due to your position, you will gain immeasurable respect through great speaking and presentations.

Time to prepare is always an issue. Shorten your preparation time by using a speech development system for every speech or presentation. My speech development system has 5 simple steps:

1. Describe the audience’s mindset in 10 words
2. Write your call-to-action close
3. In a few words each, articulate three key points that drive to the call-to-action
4. Select some leading materials to make your key points attractive and interesting
5. Write an attention-getting opening that ties to the call-to-action.

Avoid power point slides. The audience will be glad and you’ll be able to devote the time you do have to your content and your preparation.

Make Use of Pictures with Good Quality

When creating PowerPoint presentation slides, never settle for low quality images, including photographs for your slides. It’s not advisable to stretch a tiny, low resolution photo because it will degrade the resolution further. Always go for a good quality camera when taking pictures or you may also hire a professional photographer to take the pictures instead.

Clip arts are incorporated in the software probably since their advent and people are very familiar with them. They are not as interesting as they were during the 90′s. Most of the time, when a presenter makes use of these clip arts the audience question the presenter’s professionalism and competitiveness. Although not all clip arts are terrible, they still need to be used with caution.

One of the helpful tips for PowerPoint presentation to keeping the audience’ interest is by putting images of people on slides. This type of images provokes the audience to relate to the slides emotionally.

Keep a Visual Theme but Avoid Using PPT Templates

Consistency in the visual theme is very essential during the presentation; however one should avoid using PowerPoint templates as people have seen them a million times. It is necessary to provide the audience with a new and fresh material. If it’s not, why would the audience want to attend your presentation?

You can choose to make your own background template which you can edit to suit what you require. Simply save the PowerPoint file as a Design Template (.pot) and afterward you will see it among the other standard Microsoft Templates in your software. This means you can still use what you created in the future.

Choose an Appropriate Charts/Table

Presenters have the tendency to put excessive information in their on-screen charts. To avoid this, the first thing to do when choosing which charts/tables to use is to assess how much detail you will need.

Additional Tips for PowerPoint Presentation on Using the Right Color

Color plays a significant role in motivating the audience since it has the potential to induce feelings and emotions. Based on studies, the use of colors helps in enhancing the audience’ interest; hence it will be easier for them to learn, comprehend, and remember what you discussed. Since color usage is important, business professionals are encouraged to be familiar with the subject so they will know how to use it to their advantage.

I’m a Christian so I thought an article on ethical negotiating tactics might be in order. When you talk about negotiating tactics, some people feel uncomfortable thinking about how to negotiate better, especially when they aren’t thinking in terms of ethical negotiations. Chances are, it’s because someone who knew these kind of tactics used them to take advantage of them or someone they knew, instead of using ethical negotiating tactics to create win-win accords and make all parties happy with the solution agreed upon. Either way, whether you want to know how to negotiate better or protect yourself from the unethical types among us…you’ll like reading this article on ethical negotiations.

31. Remember, addendums supersede the main agreement.

32. Negotiation tactic for big deals: Hire good attorneys and pay them what they are worth. Few know how to negotiate better than skilled attorneys.

33. Read George Ross’s (Donald Trump’s attorney, you might know him from the Apprentice early seasons) book, called Lessons of a Billionaire Investor .

34. Always leave the door open to counter-offers. Future circumstances bring new choices.

35. If you say you’ll call/email/respond at a certain time, do it. If you want to know how to negotiate better, learn how to communicate better.

36. “If this will cause you to lose sleep at night, I’d rather not do it. Is it going to be a problem?” Let people know it needs to work for them AND you, not just you.

37. Always create value. Create value. Create value. Put a value on it, describe it, make them want it, and give it to them. They don’t have to know it a. didn’t cost you anything or b. you didn’t want it in the first place or c. they would have gotten it anyway

38. Negotiation is a game. Why choose to be on the sidelines, when so little work is required to become a player? Now, if you want to be an all-star…

39. “What’s more important, X or Y?” Let them choose and hold them to it. Someone who uses ethical negotiation tactics expects the other person to do the same- but is prepared if they don’t.

40. Creative problem solving leads to big profits. Be a problem solver.

41. Become known as a businessperson whose word is their bond.

42. If they can’t or won’t, always ask “Why?”

43. “OK, I’ll give you your price, but you’ll have to meet my terms”. Tit for tat.

44. Remember, “every problem has a price tag” when you’re buying. If there’s a problem, quantify it, run the numbers and offer that much less.

45. Never say “Take it or leave it”. This is NOT a power play; in fact it is a sign of INSECURITY. Usually anyway, but it’s much better to say “never” than to list and explain in detail the few exceptions when this would be advisable in ethical negotiations.