With that said, Germain gives us seven key points to improve presentation performance:

1. Focus on one idea. Too many people try to get too many things in one presentation,” Germain says. “They present slides with 15 bullet points and they read them, while the audience is thinking, ‘How can I get out of here?’ What your audience really wants to know is, ‘What’s in it for me?’ So presenters need to focus on that point.”
2. Give it structure. Try something such as “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” to get your company information out, suggests Germain. “You can quickly say, ‘We were the leaders in 1970. Today we are here, and tomorrow…’ It’s much better than doing an outrageously long timeline.”
3. Be flexible about time and content. “This trips up salespeople the most,” says Germain. “Sometimes salespeople expect to talk with an entire team for an hour and they walk in the room only to learn that there’s one person and they have 20 minutes to present. Then they don’t know what to do. As a salesperson you have to know what you can throw away before you get there. You need to have a bag of tricks, and be ready to throw away the PowerPoint, reorder the content, or share an anecdote.”
4. Say something interesting. This may seem like a no-brainer, but have you really thought about what your customer wants to hear? They don’t want to hear you ramble on about yourself and your company, they care about their own needs, says Germain. Think about your presentation from your audience’s point of view.
5. Stop repeating yourself. It’s boring. “Yes, it’s nice to reinforce your point, but if your point of view was sharp and focused in the first place, you wouldn’t have to say it three times,” says Germain.
6. Ditch the PowerPoint. This scares everyone, but it emphasizes the point that you need to know your content, says Germain. “If you know your content, you don’t need your slides,” he explains. “If you know your content, then you own that presentation.”
7. Practice. “I mean really practice,” advises Germain. “This is difficult for many executives because they haven’t given themselves enough time.” Often, he says they’ll get a group together to listen to the presentation, by doing this they may not receive the feedback they really need such as, “I didn’t get your presentation” “You rambled on too much” or “What did that third slide have to do with anything?” He advises asking someone from outside your organization to give you objective, valuable criticism.

Final suggestion: Ask yourself what one word you want your audience to leave with when your presentation is finished, says Germain. Once you think of that word, look at your presentation and your slides and make sure everything speaks to that one word. If it doesn’t, drop it; you didn’t need it.

Check out Germain’s website at www.gocsg.com.