Presentation Skill Training

Most of us are "presenting" for a significant portion of our waking lives, certainly when we are at work. We have to sell our ideas to our colleagues, to our managers and to our direct reports. Then we probably have to go and sell those ideas to our customers (even in research!), but just how much effort do we actually spend on refining the skills we need to present more skilfully and more successfully? Probably not enough is the short answer. So thank you for finding TBD Presentations’ website, because that means you already recognise the importance of properly prepared presentations, presented professionally. We can certainly help you deliver even greater success, whatever it is that you need to present.

"Presentation" means different things to different people. It can be a full-blown platform presentation in front of a large conference audience (ALL conference audiences are large when you are stood in front of them ready to put up your first slide!), you could be meeting a customer and his boss to finally get sign off on that huge order you have been working on, or you could be welcoming customers into your hotel or restaurant. Being successful in each of these scenarios is equally important to us – in such competitive times we all need to win more, more of the time, which is why presentation skills coaching from TBD Presentations is so important to you and to your organisation.

If you are working in academia or some other R+D environment, ask yourself just how good are your presentation skills? Of course you know your subject, but how well can/ do you plan the effective delivery of a presentation, or even a lecture? You have put a lot into your work, your project, your students, your thesis. You have trained hard in your field, and now is the time you have to go out there and deliver the goods. You really know your stuff; you have worked long and hard making sure everything in place.

What can possibly go wrong?

Well, the biggest risk you now face is that no one listens, or worse, they listen, but simply don’t understand what it is you are saying. So much of real value gets lost due to poor communication.

• You were asked to give a presentation, but did you really make sure you knew what was expected of you?
• You taught your staff what to do with the customer, but did you train them how to do it to your best advantage?
• You were so keen to make sure you covered all the bases, that you put too much in and never completed any of your key points
• If you are a postgraduate researcher asked to present at a conference, the chances are your next boss - or one of his colleagues, is sitting in the audience. Can you really afford to not make the very best use of such an important opportunity?

TBD Presentations provides on site coaching seminars in a range of situations and markets so that you and your team can make the very best of each and every opportunity that comes your way. There is not one of us who has come away from a presentation wishing we had done some part of it that little bit better or that we had kept to our plan, or that we had cut out about 50% of what we had tried to cram in! If you are not one of these people, then go no further, but for the rest of you, read on...

Don't turn your audience to stone!

Each and very opportunity to develop good presentation skills is a vital part of post-graduate experience. Sooner or later everyone who attends university has to go out and find a job. The current recession means that there are many more applicants for every position; inside academia, or out in the private sector. Developing good presentation techniques will make your presentations at conference much more memorable, and for all the right reasons! You have to add that certain something, that magical spark that makes your presentation, your interview, your reviews that much better than your competitors. Our presentation skills coaching for post-graduates is custom designed to address those issues that have been so sadly lacking in the UK’s development of our students.

Our seminars address the whole of the planning and execution of good presentations. From making that first decision about what topic to address, to structuring a logical demonstration of your work and what the results allowed you to conclude. We will look at ways of staying on message, refining graphics to lead us through our delivery and to define exactly what the key messages are that we want our audience to take away. You will be surprised at just how little stays with an audience, so you really do need to make sure you stay on message!

I have been attending scientific conferences for well over 30 years, and for a lot of that time I have been disappointed to see just how poor we are at planning, and delivering platform presentations in this country. My level of dissatisfaction grew significantly when I started to attend overseas conferences, especially in the US and Germany.

The best science, the best research and the most earth shattering results are of little value if we do not go out there and sell the work.