How to Deliver Powerful Presentations with Pizazz:

Tim Richardson: When we first begin to design a training program, I think we need to ask ourselves a some questions:  What is it about this topic that's interesting?  What is about this topic that's new?  What is it about this topic that's fun?  What is it about this topic that's serious?  When we start answering some of these questions we can say, how can I make this come alive?  How can I make it fun?  What can I do to add a little jazz or a little pizazz or a little excitement to that?

We’ve all been PowerPointed to death where somebody just does slide after slide after slide of information.  That makes a presentation boring.  Anything that's a long list of things where a presenter is presenting and reading slides to an audience is a recipe for putting people to sleep. One thing we could do is have a little bit of fun by creating some type of list, like a Top 10 list.

Another thing we could do take some of that dry, dull or boring typed content and turn it into a game.  If I were doing a smaller type training session, I might give the audience an opportunity to come up with the questions.  They would write down three questions based upon some of the content that we have covered on the front of a Post-It Note.  On the back lightly in pencil they would write the answer. I would have them placed  on a flip chart.  Periodically throughout the training program I would simply pull a Post-It Note off the flip chart, read it and ask for the first person who knew the answer to stand and then I would give them an opportunity to answer the question.

Then I would say something like, “Congratulations, you've won a cheap and highly superficial prize,” and I might toss them a candy bar or something like that.  It doesn't really matter if there's a prize or not, just kind of creating a little bit of fun and creating a little bit of energy.  There’s a benefit of having the audience write the question, it allows you as the instructor, to judge if learning has occurred or not.  You know if they get the answer correct because they came up with the question and the answer. It allows you an additional teaching opportunity to make the learning fun and to do a check-back to make sure that they've gotten the message that you want them to get.

Tim Richardson is a motivational and inspirational speaker. He works with sales and service professionals to show them how to live, create and think "IM RICH!”  For more information you can visit www.timrichardson.com.