Thursday, October 30, 2008

Presentations Not Me

Writen by Andy Britnell

There are some great reasons and some compelling benefits to doing presentations, but people often raise all sorts of objections. What barriers are there to going ahead?

1. The most obvious is the common fear of public speaking. We all fear standing up and making a fool of ourselves, but at some point most of us decide to confront this and go ahead anyway.

2. Allied to this may be a lack of confidence – again this can only be overcome by actually doing it.

3. You may fear you are not knowledgeable enough. Bear in mind that you are the expert and will usually know much more than the audience.

4. It means a lot of work to prepare the material, practise the delivery, organise the venue and equipment, and try to ensure everyone turns up. But it gets easier each time and the benefits in terms of exposure for you and your team will probably far outweigh the effort made.

5. You may simply feel you do not have capability to do all this. There is only one way to find out!

None of these problems is insurmountable if you are determined. Preparation is key. In fact, in the phrase referred to as the '6 P's' and much loved by trainers everywhere – 'Proper Preparation Prevents Pretty Poor Performance'!

As for anything in life, the better the preparation, the more confident you will feel and the better the chance of success. If you are prepared, you will be able to keep control even if the unexpected happens.

Andy Britnell specialises in sales and customer service training for the private and public sectors. Go to http://www.andybritnell.co.uk/ and you can sign up for my FREE short monthly newsletter and FREE e-mail coaching.

I coach corporate and SME clients who wish to fulfil more of their potential by thinking and behaving more effectively - see http://www.executive-coaching-for-business-growth.com/

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