Guide to Persuasive Presentations

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Preparing an important presentation? Whether your

audience is a small group of colleagues or a larger gathering

of clients, this guide will give you the practical advice you

need to master public speaking. You’ll learn how to:

Shape your information to specifically address your audience’s needs

Prepare visual aids that develop, rather than distract from, your points

Overcome stage fright

Grab your listeners’ attention and hold it

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Guide to Persuasive

Presentations

2

The Basic Presentation Checklist

5

How to Make Your Case in 30 Seconds or Less

by Nick Wreden

8

Coping with Stagefright

by John Daly and Isa Engleberg

12

Presentations 101

by John Clayton

15

Easy on the Eyes

by Kirsten D. Sandberg

19

Plan for Visuals

22

Why the Best Presentations Are Good Conversations

by Roly Grimshaw

25

Connect with Your Audience

by Nick Morgan

28

Presence: How to Get It, How to Use It

32

Are Your Presentations Inspiring?

35

The Twentieth Century’s Greatest Speech—What Made It So Powerful?

h a rva r d m a n ag e m e n t c o m m u n i c at i o n l e t t e r

The Basic Presentation

Checklist

Here’s how to prepare and deliver that next

speech effectively

In a perfect world, you would have learned about the presentation months ago. Your personal

assistant would have spent weeks researching startling factoids about the topic. And you’d be sitting

down well in advance of the event with hours to spend preparing your presentation.

Instead, the reality usually is last-minute. You’re pulling together material on the fly from a number of

old talks and hoping no one will notice that the whole hasn’t really been thought through.

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