My Three Top Tips for Delivering a Compelling Presentation or Talk
I Give a Lot of Presentations, Here Are My Tips for Making it a Good One
Over the years I’ve had the fortune to give many talks. Whether they be sermons in various churches, talks for youth and children’s groups, or as is the case in more recent times, presentations covering a variety of Salesforce-related themes to and for the Trailblazer Community. My point, I’ve been doing this for a little while now. In fact, the first real talk I ever delivered was 18 years ago this month. But allow me explain to qualify what I’m saying here. I’m not saying this to brag or put a spotlight on myself and tell you all how great I am. Rather, I highlight this at the start of this post simply to convey that I’ve been doing this kind of thing for quite a long time. Sure, the topics and audiences have changed over the years, but I’ve been delivering talks and/or presentations to a wide variety of audiences for almost 20 years.
I was thinking about this topic yesterday as I began drafting up this post. It amazed me to think that since 2019 I have delivered or been a part of delivering over 30 sessions for the Trailblazer Community, with more to come in 2022. With all that in mind, I thought I’d write up a post giving some of my personal tips on how to create a compelling presentation or talk. Bear in mind that these are my opinions, I’m not saying that these are the only ways to do things, nor am I saying that anything else you might read on this topic is wrong. For example, in this post I won’t be including points like know your and understand your audience. It’s a good and very true point, but my aim isn’t to talk about about how to deliver a good presentation from a technical point of view. Rather, I want to address this topic from a personal standpoint.
So with that being said, let’s look at my 3 top tips for delivering a compelling presentation or talk. Let me know what you think in the responses below.
Speak on Topics That Interest You
The first tip I want to include is to speak on topics that you like and think are interesting. It’s possibly a fairly obvious point, but I think it’s true nonetheless. The reality is that if you find something interesting, you will spend more time investing in that topic, learning about it and picking up the relevant skills and knowledge along the way. We do the same in principle when it comes to our hobbies, for example if one of our hobbies is reading, we will devote time to reading. If it’s playing video games, then we’ll play more video games.
So when you’re looking to present on a topic, look to speak on something that piques your interest. For me, I have a number of topics I find interesting. More recently I’ve been speaking on Flow Orchestrator. Honestly, I love Flow, and Orchestrator is a tool that really intrigues, it’s new enough to be interesting and it’s fascinating to try and think of use cases for this tool to be used in. What topics interest you? What cloud or tool do you love using? Maybe look into how you can deliver presentations on those things and work on putting content together on them. You never know, you might just find yourself speaking on the topic in your local community group or conference.
Allow Yourself to Be Available After the Presentation
This point is quite an important I feel. When you give a talk or presentation, the likelihood is that you won’t be able to answer every question that comes in, or that someone will come up with a question after your presentation. So it’s important to make yourself available to the community after you’ve given your talk. Quick caveat here, you don’t need to be available 24–7, you don’t have to be available at everyone’s beck and call, nor should people expect you to be, you have to be able to take time out for yourself, and that’s totally fine.
Back to the topic at hand. Like I say it’s good to try and make yourself available after presentations to talk to and answers questions from the community. No doubt people will want to connect with you on LinkedIn or Twitter, so when you present try and include those handles somewhere in your slides or put them in the chat if you’re presenting virtually. You will often find that being available after events will lead to you building relationships that are great on both sides. Some of the best connections I’ve made in the ecosystem have come out of events I’ve presented at or attended. So make yourself available after your talk, again you don’t have to available 24–7, but by being available it will lead to the community seeing as a voice in the ecosystem that they can trust and respect. It’s a good thing to do all around.
Be Authentically You When You Speak
This is by far the most important tip I can give. While it is true that when it comes to Salesforce events that attendees to tend to come for the topic or the group. It is also true that what will captivate many people the most is YOU. That might sound somewhat surprising, but I think it’s true (feel free to shout and scream at me if you disagree). The reason I think this is because in my experience it has been true. I think respect a presenter more when they’re authentic from the stage virtual or physical. I try not to peg myself as the expert when I speak on any topic. I’m not so naive that I don’t know that there’s a million and one people out there who are far better at I am at the topics I’m interested in. But the thing that I know is the biggest selling point about me, is not the skills that I bring to the table (although they are actually important), it’s the essence of my personality, my character, my ethos, it’s ME.
Many of the people I can call my closest confidants in the community met me through a session I attended at or spoke at, heard something I said, got in touch with me and began to build a relationship from there. In fact, when I talk to quite a few people the thing that comes up quite often when it comes to what stands out about me isn’t my knowledge, but that authenticity. I know exactly who I am, I know what I stand for, and I’m OK with all of that. That kind of mentality translates into how we talk to others, how we read things, how we right, and into how we deliver talks or presentations. So when it comes to delivering an amazing presentation, the most compelling thing about any talk isn’t actually the talk, it’s the presenter (shh, that’s a secret).
The way I see it, if one person decides to invest their time in whatever I’m talking about because they see my passion for it, then I’ve done a good job.
Closing Remarks
There are plenty of other tips I could add to this conversation, but these are the three that I feel are the most important to this topic. I wanted to keep to the on less of a practical level and keep it more focused on you as the presenter. But what about you? What are your top tips for delivering a compelling presentation or talk? Let me know in the responses below or in the comments on social media. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
