It’s quite likely that you will have to do presentations to stakeholders or your team in your role as a business analyst. Sometimes even before you can get the business analyst job, you have to do an interview presentation as well. So presentation skills are of utmost importance in the business analyst career and if you are not comfortable with it, you have to improve your presentations skills to continue as a business analyst.
In this article I will be sharing some tips on how to do presentations that are effective and share with you some of the things that work and the things to avoid. The video below has a detailed explanation on how to improve your presentations skills for business analysts so check it out as well or skip past it and keep reading!
Know your audience
In order to do a good presentation as a business analyst, you have to tailor the presentation to the audience. Knowing who your audience is, what they care about, how much background knowledge they already have, will help you know how to structure your presentation and how much background you need to give. This is probably the most important part of making a great presentation: knowing who you are presenting to! This one tip will help you greatly improve your presentation skills as a business analyst.
State the objectives at the beginning of the presentation
In your role as a business analyst you could be presenting to C-level executives or clients or other stakeholders. It’s always good to state the objective of the presentation up front especially where you want a decision at the end of the presentation. This way, as you go through your presentation, they can have this in their minds so that they are better able to give you the decision at the end. Even if you are not requesting a decision, stating the objectives at the beginning frames your audience as to what to expect and provides clarity on why they will be shown what you have prepared in your presentation. This helps you too to stay on track and that will improve your presentation skills overall.
Organize your slides to gradually tell a story to
When your presentation includes slides, don’t put too much on one slide. Make each slide represent just one idea. Each slide in your presentation should build on the one before its so that by the end of the presentation you would have walked your audience through a logical flow of concepts. This is the magic of great presenters – how they tell the story and mastering this will improve your presentation skills as a business analyst greatly.
Use clever slide designs to improve your presentation
The design of your slide can do a lot to enhance or distract your audience. Be deliberate about the slide design you choose to make sure it clarifies what you are presenting and not distract from what you are saying. For the corporate setting there is no need to be too elaborate. Make sure the slides background colors match with the other graphics you might want to display such a screenshots, charts and graphs.
Improve your presentation by limiting animations
Animations are cool but sometimes they can distract. For the kinds of presentations that a business analyst does, often we will have to go back to slides to clarify a point, if you use too much animations they can get in the way when you have to go back during the presentation.
Avoid jumping between multiple systems
Based on the type of presentation, you may have to jump between different systems and different environments to show the information in its native way. This requires a lot of coordination and making sure the systems are all ready, logins work and files can be accessed. this can quickly become a nightmare if any one of these don’t work. To avoid this, where possible use screenshots from the multiple systems so that you don’t have to jump back and forth.
Get the technology setup done ahead of time
Some presentations require more setup than others. Make sure you get the IT person to help you if you need it so that you can get everything checked out before the presentation starts. Sometimes you will need TV setup for a video conference or the phone system for those dialing in or the WIFI password or the system logins – any one of these things can give trouble and the last thing you want is to have everyone waiting on you while you try to figure out the technical issues. So, budget at least 15 minutes before the presentation to work out any technology related issues.
Dominate the content of your presentation
As the presenter, you have to be the one who knows what you want to achieve from the presentation. In some cases, you may be facilitating the session so you may not the be subject matter expert, in these kinds of presentations make sure you steer the conversation in the right direction to accomplish your intended purpose.
Presentation Skill Secret: Be confident
Finally, the most important thing to remember is that you are in control. You brought all these people together to accomplish some purpose with your presentation so be confident and assertive. Don’t be nervous, don’t be shy. Look out for personal things that you need to make sure you present well.
For example, I had a friend who would get dry mouth whenever she spoke in front of a crowd so she always had to have a bottle of water handy. I myself have a habit of trailing of when I speak so I am careful to keep my pitch higher at the end of my sentences ( very hard!). I have another friend whose voice was confident but his foot would shake so bad at the beginning that he always preferred standing behind a podium on remained seated for the first part of his presentation until his leg got over it! Everyone has a different symptom, know what yours is and work around it till you get enough practice to overcome it.
So, go out there and do your presentations business analysts! I hope that you found this useful! Check out my YouTube channel for more videos on Business Analyst and Information Technology topics: Kara Leise Youtube
For more on managing meetings better, check out this article for tips to Have More Effective Meetings and Prevent them from Getting Derailed.
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Thanks everyone!