Types of Presentations

Presentations come in nearly as many forms as there are life situations. All variety of presentations can be divided into 3 types:

Information Presentation

Idea Presentation

Review Presentation

To identify the type of future presentation the target of your speech is to be formulated. You have to think over the following questions: the reason of your speech, the result of it, thoughts and actions of the audience caused by your speech.

Typically information presentations are divided into two distinct categories - reporting and explaining. Information presentations include talks, seminars, proposals, workshops, conferences, and meetings where the presenter or presenters share their expertise, and information is exchanged. In a business format, it might be a supervisor explaining new forms, products, regulations to employees or newly hired sales clerks may attend a presentation on selling techniques or loss prevention.

Information presentation is the simplest one so the requirements to such presentation are minimal: it is to contain the introduction, the main part and the conclusion. The introduction consists of the greeting, the topic and probably the target of the speech, the name of the speaker and the organization presented by him. This part of a speech is often accompanied or changed by the visual components. The key point of the main part of information presentation is logic of speech and preferable speech segmentation. The conclusion is to be extremely short: the resume of the above mentioned and gratitude for the attention. Mastering the skills of professional speech can be started with information presentation.

Idea Presentation or persuasive presentation is most commonly used and the creation of such presentation requires special presentation skills and knowledge. The target of such presentation is an idea to change the audience attitude and persuade them to undertake certain actions connected with the topic. Sales presentations are referred to this type. Here you attempt to convince the audience to buy your product or service. Persuasive presentations, are often motivational.

In a business context, a supervisor may make a presentation on teamwork in order to motivate employees to support new cooperative efforts within the company structure. It may be a situation in which the board is asking the shareholders to support changes in the way dividends are distributed. It could be that the distribution arm of an organization is making suggestions about packaging changes that would reduce shipping costs. Or perhaps the marketing department is trying to persuade top management to spend more money on a new promotional campaign.

Review presentation is a report of the work done. Review experience is necessary first of all for the managers. One can even judge about manager's professionalism by his or her review presentation. Actually the purpose of such presentations is to persuade the audience in your professional competence. You have successfully fulfiled your work and you are worth rewarding.

Presentations, however, usually have more than one purpose. They can be called multipurpose presentations. A presentation to employees may be announced as an informative session on new regulations, but in fact may also be an effort to persuade workers to believe in the new rules.

Two essentials for success in any presentation are knowing and understanding your audience, and building rapport.

Notes: loss prevention – запобігання втратам