By Dale Isip

Group presentations can be an excellent opportunity to generate interest in a product or service, develop relationships with potential clients, and introduce co-workers to new concepts and ideas. These presentations, however, may not come easily to most people – with an estimated 77 percent of all adults facing anxiety over public speaking.

The following is a guide to approaching group presentations, with tips on how to keep your presentation focused, your delivery concise, and your audience engaged. With these suggestions, you will be able to make group presentations that can attract customers, build relationships, and promote your business.

Prepare to Prepare

If you are making a group presentation, you will have to be ready to prepare extensively for it. This will require an acute knowledge of your subject matter, with the ability to answer questions about the topic at hand. Preparation can also include the creation of slide presentations, booklets, worksheets, and interactive exercises for the group participants.

The next step in preparation includes a knowledge of your presentation goals. Is this presentation intended to introduce co-workers to a new software? Is it meant to generate sales among new clients? Or is the presentation meant to explain quarterly business performance to senior level executives? With a better knowledge of your goals, you can better prepare a group presentation to achieve them.

You should also keep your target audience in mind when preparing presentations. Educational and sales presentations may need interactive exercises to keep co-workers and potential customers engaged. At the same time, you may want fewer interactive activities for formal business presentations to C-level executives – but you might have to judge this on a case-by-case basis.

Stay Organized

Your group presentation should have relatively set times for introductory remarks, the informational body of the presentation, activities, questions and answers, and a conclusion. A good presentation keeps the audience at the core of its setup – keeping their attention, getting them enthusiastic about the presentation matter, and potentially answering their questions before they can even ask them.

For this, it is necessary to stay organized and keep to a schedule, if possible. The presentation should absolutely be rehearsed several times to accommodate for questions, lapses in scheduled times, and activities. Ideally, extra time should be reserved for group exercises – the audience may need more time to get engaged and enjoy what they are doing.

Coordinate and Deliver 

If you are not presenting alone, you will want to coordinate with your co-presenter on what topics to cover and when to speak. Switching off at regular intervals may help keep an audience’s attention – which is always desirable, and it can also help you, as a presenter, compose yourself for the next phase of the presentation.

Double-check your slides, booklets, and group materials for typos before the presentation, and time your rehearsal presentations, if possible. With these approaches, you can make better group presentations – ones that can serve as a basis for improving your business.