Create a Presentation You Will Be Proud Of

Why Preparing One Exceptional Speech Can Change the Way You Speak in Public

Most speakers try to improve their presentation skills one technique at a time.

Better slides.

Better body language.

Better storytelling.

A stronger opening.

More confidence.

All of that can help.

There is another approach.

Choose one presentation that truly matters — and prepare it exceptionally well.

Work on the message.

The structure.

The stories.

The language.

The slides.

The delivery.

The difficult moments.

The rehearsal.

Then experience what happens when all these elements begin to work together.

Such a presentation can become more than one successful appearance.

It can become a reference experience for everything that follows.

Why One Exceptional Presentation Matters

There is a difference between learning about presentation skills and experiencing yourself giving a presentation that truly works.

You stand in front of an audience.

You know what you want to say.

The structure carries you.

People listen.

Your examples work.

The slides support rather than compete with you.

You handle questions well.

And afterwards, you realize:

So this is what it can feel like.

That experience matters.

Because the next time you prepare a presentation, you are no longer working exclusively from theory.

You have a reference.

A Positive Reference Experience

Confidence is often treated as something you need before you perform well.

In practice, the relationship works in both directions.

Confidence can support performance.

And a well-prepared performance can build confidence.

When you experience yourself communicating clearly in an important situation, your internal expectations begin to change.

Instead of:

“I hope I can do this.”

you have evidence:

“I have done this.”

That is considerably more powerful.

Choose the Right Occasion

Every presentation deserves reasonable preparation.

Some deserve considerably more.

A keynote.

A board presentation.

An investor pitch.

An important conference appearance.

A leadership presentation.

A major client presentation.

A speech connected to a new role.

A presentation that could influence an important decision.

These occasions can justify a level of preparation that would be excessive for a routine weekly update.

Choose where excellence matters.

Then invest accordingly.

Start With What Needs to Remain

Before opening PowerPoint, ask:

What should people remember?

Tomorrow.

Next week.

Perhaps next month.

If the audience remembers one idea, what should it be?

This question forces priorities.

Because a presentation can contain a great deal of information and still leave remarkably little behind.

The objective is not to say everything.

The objective is to make the right things matter.

What Is Your Core Message?

Try completing this sentence:

“If my audience understands one thing after this presentation, it should be…”

If completing that sentence is difficult, the presentation probably needs more thinking before it needs more slides.

A clear core message helps you decide:

what belongs,

what needs emphasis,

what can be shortened,

and what can disappear entirely.

It becomes the center of gravity for the presentation.

Know What You Want the Audience to Do

Understanding is one objective.

Action may be another.

What should happen after the presentation?

Should the audience:

approve something?

change perspective?

support a decision?

invest?

act differently?

remember an idea?

ask better questions?

feel confident about a direction?

The clearer the desired outcome, the easier it becomes to design the presentation around it.

Understand the Audience

A presentation is never simply about the subject.

It is about the subject for these people.

Ask:

What do they already know?

What do they care about?

What concerns them?

Where might they disagree?

What language do they use?

What questions are likely?

What assumptions do they bring?

What would make the message relevant to them?

A presentation becomes stronger when it stops being a transfer of information and becomes communication with a particular audience.

Good and Exceptional Are Different Challenges

Moving from a poor presentation to a competent one often requires fixing obvious problems.

The slides are overcrowded.

The structure is unclear.

The speaker reads.

The message is buried.

The presentation is too long.

These problems can often be identified quickly.

Moving from good to exceptional is different.

Now details begin to matter.

Which sentence carries the message?

Where does the audience need more clarity?

Which example earns its place?

Where should you pause?

What can disappear?

Which transition still feels mechanical?

What should people feel at this moment?

What will they remember tomorrow?

Excellence often comes from refinement rather than addition.

Remove Before You Add

One of the most useful questions in presentation preparation is:

What can we remove?

Another slide?

Another statistic?

Another example?

Another explanation?

Another bullet point?

Every additional element competes for attention.

Reduction creates space.

Space creates emphasis.

And emphasis helps the audience understand what matters.

A strong presentation is rarely the one containing the greatest amount of material.

It is often the one in which the speaker has made the clearest decisions.

Build a Clear Narrative

A presentation needs movement.

Where are we starting?

What question are we addressing?

What changes during the presentation?

Where are we going?

A useful structure may look like:

Situation → Challenge → Insight → Direction → Action

Another might be:

Problem → Consequence → Options → Recommendation

Or:

Past → Present → Future

There is no universal structure.

The structure should serve the message.

The audience should feel that one thought naturally leads to the next.

Give the Audience Orientation

You know your presentation.

The audience does not.

Help them.

Tell them where they are.

Use clear transitions.

For example:

“We have looked at the problem. Now let us examine what is causing it.”

Or:

“There are three implications. The first concerns our customers.”

Orientation reduces cognitive load.

The audience can focus on your ideas rather than trying to discover your structure.

Make Complexity Understandable

Professional presentations often deal with complex subjects.

Complexity deserves respect.

Confusion does not.

Your task is not to demonstrate how complicated the subject is.

Your task is to help people understand it.

Useful tools include:

• examples,
• analogies,
• comparisons,
• visualizations,
• stories,
• contrasts,
• and clear language.

Simplification becomes valuable when it preserves what matters.

Use Examples

Abstract ideas become easier to understand when they become concrete.

Instead of saying:

“Customer expectations have changed.”

show what changed.

What did customers expect three years ago?

What do they expect today?

What happened?

A specific example gives the audience something to see.

Use Stories Where They Serve the Message

Stories can create attention, meaning, and memory.

They can also consume time.

Before adding a story, ask:

Why am I telling it?

What does it illustrate?

What does the audience understand afterwards that would otherwise be harder to understand?

If the answer is clear, the story may earn its place.

If the answer is vague, it may simply be decoration.

The story serves the message.

Use Data With Purpose

More data does not automatically create more credibility.

Ask:

Which number matters?

What comparison makes it meaningful?

What does the audience need to understand?

A statistic without context is information.

A statistic with context can become insight.

Instead of showing twenty numbers, identify the few that change how the audience sees the situation.

Design Slides After the Message Is Clear

PowerPoint is a useful tool.

It is a poor substitute for thinking.

Starting with slides too early can create a presentation made from fragments:

a chart from last year,

a slide from another presentation,

three bullet lists,

a diagram someone sent,

and a photograph that looked impressive.

Then the speaker tries to discover the story connecting them.

Reverse the process.

Clarify the message.

Build the structure.

Decide what the audience needs.

Then ask:

Where would a visual genuinely help?

Slides Should Support You

A slide can:

show data,

make a relationship visible,

illustrate an idea,

create orientation,

or help the audience remember something.

It does not need to contain everything you say.

When speaker and slide compete for attention, communication becomes harder.

Let the slide do what visuals do well.

And let the speaker speak.

The Opening Matters

The beginning creates expectations.

Avoid spending the first minutes clearing your throat verbally.

Start.

A strong opening may be:

a clear statement,

a question,

a short story,

a surprising observation,

a relevant number,

a problem,

or a decision that needs to be made.

The best opening is the one that creates immediate relevance.

The First Minute

During the first minute, the audience is answering questions such as:

Why should I listen?

What is this about?

Does this concern me?

Where is this going?

You do not need to answer these questions explicitly.

Your opening should make the answers increasingly clear.

The Ending Deserves Preparation

Many presentations slowly run out of energy.

The speaker reaches the final slide.

Says:

“So… yes… that was basically it.”

And asks for questions.

A strong presentation deserves a deliberate ending.

Return to the core message.

Clarify what matters now.

Create a final thought worth remembering.

Then stop.

Prepare the Final Sentence

Know your final sentence.

It gives you something to aim toward.

The final sentence may summarize.

Challenge.

Invite action.

Create perspective.

Or return to the idea from the opening.

Whatever you choose, make it deliberate.

The last words deserve as much attention as the first ones.

Delivery Is Part of the Message

A strong manuscript can still produce a weak presentation.

Communication happens through:

• voice,
• pace,
• pauses,
• facial expression,
• eye contact,
• posture,
• gestures,
• movement,
• and attention.

The objective is neither performance for its own sake nor theatrical perfection.

It is congruence.

The way you communicate should support what you communicate.

Presence Beats Performance

Many speakers try to look confident.

That can create additional self-monitoring.

How are my hands?

Am I standing correctly?

Do I look nervous?

What is my face doing?

Presence begins elsewhere.

Where is your attention?

With yourself?

Or with the message and the people in front of you?

A useful shift is:

from performing confidence to communicating with purpose.

Rehearse Until You Have Freedom

Rehearsal is sometimes misunderstood as memorization.

That can create rigidity.

Useful rehearsal does something else.

It makes the material familiar enough that you have more freedom.

You know:

the structure,

the key messages,

the transitions,

the important examples,

the opening,

and the ending.

Then you can respond to the room rather than clinging to a script.

Preparation creates flexibility.

Rehearse Out Loud

Thinking through a presentation is different from speaking it.

A sentence that looks elegant on paper may be difficult to say.

A transition may feel artificial.

An explanation may take twice as long as expected.

Speak the presentation.

Hear it.

Feel where it becomes difficult.

Then refine.

The presentation will eventually be spoken.

Prepare it as spoken communication.

Rehearse Different Versions

Can you deliver the core idea in:

20 minutes?

10 minutes?

3 minutes?

30 seconds?

This exercise reveals what really matters.

It also prepares you for reality.

Schedules change.

Meetings run late.

A moderator asks you to shorten.

An executive says:

“Give me the short version.”

Know what remains when time disappears.

Prepare the Difficult Moments

Do not rehearse the perfect presentation exclusively.

Prepare for:

critical questions,

interruptions,

technical problems,

time pressure,

skeptical audiences,

missing slides,

unexpected objections,

and moments when you lose your train of thought.

Ask:

What could realistically happen?

Then:

How do I want to respond?

Confidence grows when you know you have options.

Prepare Q&A

Questions are part of many important presentations.

Treat them as part of the presentation.

What are the obvious questions?

What are the uncomfortable questions?

Where is your argument vulnerable?

Which numbers should you know?

Where might you need to say:

“I don’t know.”

Practice answering aloud.

You are preparing flexibility rather than memorizing scripts.

Get Feedback Before It Counts

When you present, you experience yourself from the inside.

The audience experiences you from the outside.

That difference matters.

Professional feedback can reveal:

whether the core message is clear,

where the structure loses energy,

which explanations work,

where slides compete with you,

how your voice affects the message,

how your body language is perceived,

and which details deserve attention.

Good feedback does not search for everything that could possibly be changed.

It identifies the few changes that can make the greatest difference.

Use Video

Video can be uncomfortable.

It can also be extremely useful.

Memory is selective.

Video shows what happened.

You may discover that something that felt enormous from the inside is barely visible.

Or that a habit you never noticed is distracting.

The purpose is not self-criticism.

It is information.

Watch with a question:

What helps the message — and what gets in its way?

Refine, Then Simplify

At some point, preparation needs to stop adding.

The final phase is often about simplification.

Remove unnecessary words.

Reduce slides.

Strengthen transitions.

Clarify examples.

Shorten stories.

Create pauses.

Sharpen the opening.

Strengthen the ending.

The presentation begins to feel lighter.

And the message becomes more visible.

Do Not Polish Away Your Personality

Professional preparation can become excessive.

Every sentence gets optimized.

Every gesture planned.

Every pause calculated.

Eventually, the presentation becomes technically clean and strangely lifeless.

Leave room for yourself.

Your way of speaking.

Your humor.

Your observations.

Your personality.

Your relationship with the audience.

The goal is not a flawless presentation.

It is an excellent presentation delivered by a real person.

What You Learn Goes Beyond This Presentation

This is where preparing one presentation exceptionally well becomes particularly valuable.

You learn:

how to find a core message,

how to structure complexity,

how to remove unnecessary material,

how to use stories,

how to design useful visuals,

how to rehearse,

how to handle questions,

how to use your voice,

how to manage pressure,

and how you communicate when everything works together.

Those lessons remain.

The next presentation begins from a different level.

Create Your Own Reference Experience

Imagine finishing an important presentation and thinking:

That was me.

Not a performance persona.

Not an imitation of another speaker.

You.

Clear.

Prepared.

Present.

Connected with the audience.

Able to respond when something changed.

That experience can become an internal reference.

Next time, you know what you are aiming for.

When the Presentation Really Matters

Sometimes a presentation deserves more than routine preparation.

A keynote.

A board presentation.

An investor pitch.

An important conference appearance.

A major client presentation.

A leadership speech.

A presentation connected to a significant professional moment.

Then we can work directly on the presentation ahead.

Depending on the situation, we may work on:

• the message,
• structure,
• storytelling,
• language,
• slides,
• delivery,
• voice,
• body language,
• Q&A,
• mental preparation,
• rehearsal,
• and professional feedback.

One-to-one. In Berlin and online.

[Presentation & Speech Preparation]

Related Topics

For broader presentation development:

[Presentations & Speeches]

For spontaneous speaking and Q&A:

[Impromptu Speaking]

For mental preparation under pressure:

[Mental Training for High-Stakes Performance]

For professional communication when the stakes are high:

[High-Stakes Communication]

Final Thought

A truly excellent presentation is rarely created by adding more.

More slides.

More information.

More effects.

More techniques.

Excellence often emerges from clearer decisions.

What matters?

What can disappear?

What does the audience need?

What should remain afterwards?

How can you communicate it in a way that feels credible and genuinely yours?

Choose one presentation that matters.

Give it the preparation it deserves.

And create an experience you can carry into every presentation that follows.

Prepare one presentation exceptionally well — and you may change much more than that one presentation.

Preparing Important Speeches and Presentations

The Art of Effective Communication

Those who do not speak are not heard, and even those who do speak are not always successful. True success in communication requires mastering a few additional, critical steps to ensure your message resonates.

Make Your Message Shine

Do you want your message to be convincing and your personality to shine? I can help you prepare your speeches and presentations to achieve exactly that. Whether you need comprehensive guidance or just a few tweaks, you decide the level of support that fits your needs. At a minimum, I recommend a test run with professional feedback to fine-tune both your delivery and your content. This helps you understand how you and your message are perceived, identify what works well, and determine areas for improvement.

Why Wait for Feedback?

Why wait until after your real performance to receive valuable feedback, when it's too late to adjust? Early preparation is key. As the saying goes: 'Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.' With thorough preparation, you will not only feel more confident but will also be well-equipped to make a lasting impact.

Tailored Support to Fit Your Goals

You can decide where the effort is most worthwhile, based on the expected benefits. I offer support covering all areas of effective communication, including psychology, language, structure, voice, body language, storytelling, rhetorical techniques, and the use of media like PowerPoint. My goal is to help you deliver a well-rounded, impactful presentation.

Flexible Meeting Options

Not in Berlin? No problem. We can meet via telephone or video call. Of course, visiting Berlin can also be an enriching experience, and I am happy to welcome you here.

Overcome Stage Fright

Many people struggle with intense stage fright, which can cause their performance to fall short of its true potential. With my guidance, you can overcome these challenges and deliver your best possible performance. Together, we'll turn anxiety into confidence, ensuring that your message and personality shine through.

Contact Me for More Information

If you have specific questions or want to know more about how I can help, just ask me directly. For questions that might interest others, please feel free to post them in the comments section below.

Looking for Professional Support?

If you're interested in coaching, training, or consulting, have organizational questions, or would like to schedule an appointment, the best way to reach me is through this contact form (where you can choose whether to provide your personal data) or by email at mail@karstennoack.com. You can find the privacy policy here.

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Have you already made such a remarkable reference experience during a speech or presentation? How do you benefit?

Articles

This article is a short excerpt from the more comprehensive course materials my clients receive in a group or individual training or coaching.

Published: August 3, 2016
Author: Karsten Noack
Revision: November 19th, 2024
Translation: ./.
German version: https://www.karstennoack.de/ueberdurchschnittliche-reden-redekompetenz-berlin/
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