Delivering Business Presentations - Essay Example

Delivering business presentations has turned out to be part of many people’s lives. PowerPoint slides have become common for businesses or sales presentations. Microsoft PowerPoint software allows the creation, management, and display of presentations to the audience. It helps in the description of ideas in a more detailed way to enable those who might be lacking the technical knowledge to digest the subject matter. The presentation quality will determine the success or failure in achieving the desired objective, whether it is selling a product or selling an idea to the management. In Terry’s case, the PowerPoint presentation contained technical information, and it was appropriate for engineering students (Rutledge & Mucciolo, 2001).

To make an effective presentation, the speaker must be adequately prepared in advance. Terry could have known the audience well, their purpose for attending the meeting, and what they expected from the presentation. Slides are supposed to be few, short, and to the point. They should contain the key points that the speaker delivers quickly. Students are too busy to be bombarded with long-winded discussions. In Terry’s case, the slides were too many and did not contain all the information he was required to give. To choose an appropriate language for explaining technical concepts, Terry ought to have contemplated his audience and their purpose of attending the meeting. The slides could be better if accompanied by pictures or graphics of the product (Davis, 2004).

Questions always arise during a presentation, and the speaker must anticipate them. Terry ought to have explained to the group earlier that he would have the questions and answers session at the end of the meeting. Instead of being angry and defensive, he had to courteously say that the research had not supplied the answer to the questions. To have the students buy the idea, he had to make handouts of the presentation and distribute them to all to complement the presentation. They needed to have all the information instead of jumping to questions about the information that was in the remaining slides.

The project manager is responsible for solving problems, coordinating efforts related to lights and time signals, and requesting questions. In this presentation, the manager could fill the remaining time with questions and discussion to stay on schedule. He could then adjourn the meeting by briefly summarizing the presentation and adding a few last-minute comments (Rafinejad, 2007).