Top Ten tips for presenting your key points with lasting impact

How can you best emphasize the key points of your presentation so that your audience hears, digests and remembers your message? What are you doing to ensure that your listeners remember the right parts of your presentation?

Picture yourself delivering a presentation to your management team, a proposal to the evaluation committee or instructions to your staff. Guess what? They aren't hanging on your every word. However, when you present your key points - you want people to listen, believe and remember your message. How do you do that? Use the following techniques to give the key words of your presentation more impact.

1. Announce, "This is important." Then deliver the important line. Teachers grab attention by saying, "This will be on the exam." You could state, "This is a million dollar tip."

2. Pause, just before, and after, you say the important point. This is similar to placing quotation marks around the important line. Notice the effect of the pause at an awards presentation when the MC says, "May I have the envelope please?"

3. Deepen the tone of your voice to increase the believability. Practice this, "And in conclusion," (deepen your voice) "I am the best one for the job." Just for fun, when you are alone, try it in a higher pitched voice and notice the difference. Think James Earl Jones.

4. Make them laugh just before, then get serious and deliver the important message. This is a good attention getter and very helpful when you want to change directions. When your listeners laugh they open their minds and are more willing to accept new information.

5. Move just before you speak - then stand still while delivering the important message. This is especially effective if you pace or move a lot when you speak. Stand still when you deliver the important words. Your audience can't listen to your words if they are busy watching you move.

6. Look your audience in the eye - never read the important message. If you have to read it - then it looks like you don't really know your message or believe it. Know your message, rehearse it and deliver it directly to your audience.

7. Smile. Your audience will believe you more when you smile during your presentation. They listen with their eyes and ears. Be friendly to the eyes and the ears of your audience. If they don't like what they see - they won't listen.

8. Tell a story of how this lesson was learned or applied. The earliest presentations were stories told by our cave-dwelling ancestors. The story lessons were remembered. If only more teachers and professors of today remembered the wisdom of our ancestors. Folks love stories. They hate lectures. Just ask your kids.

9. Repeat your main message three times during your presentation. If you want it remembered - repeat it and repeat it again. The first time they weren't listening. The second time they caught part of it and the third time they might hear it and remember it.

10. Reinforce the key message with images. Your listeners retain images better than words. Attach your presentation messages to word pictures, visuals and body language.

In your presentation some key words will be more important that the rest. If you want your audience to pay attention to any part of your presentation - it is the key words. Wake them up and anchor those key messages with these top ten tips for presenting your key points with impact.

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