A presentation is a great way to deliver your key business messages to customers, staff or investors. We highlight ten ways you can improve your skills to make your presentations more effective.
Presentations are an increasingly important form of communication for anyone running a business. Many people find speaking in front of any kind of group a daunting prospect, but with a little preparation, giving a presentation can be one of the easiest and most efficient ways of getting your message across.
The main thing to get right is the most obvious—you need to be crystal clear in your mind what it is that you want to tell your audience. If you’re not 100 per cent clear about your message, you’ll have an uphill struggle to convince your listeners. You should be able to summarise your presentation in a few clear and simple sentences.
Once you’re clear about the substance of the presentation, you need to get the style of delivery right. Practice makes perfect, so rehearse your presentation as often as you can. If there’s a problem, don’t let a potential customer or investor be the first to point it out to you—family, friends and colleagues can be a great source of feedback here.
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Top Ten Tips - Improve your presentations
Your monthly at-a-glance answers to frequently asked questions. This month we look at employee illness and recent changes to the law.
Q: How should I deal with an employee returning after serious illness?
Your first concern should be the employee’s welfare, and you should make sure you handle the matter with the utmost sensitivity. Under disability discrimination regulations, you must make reasonable adjustments to facilitate the return to work of an employee with a serious illness such as cancer or multiple sclerosis. Talk the illness and its workplace implications through with the employee, and make sure any decisions you take are based on sound medical advice.
Q: What were the main law changes that took effect at the start of October?
October 1 is one of the government’s two “common commencement dates” on which most rule changes affecting small businesses come into force.
This year, the main changes introduced were:
- increases in the national minimum wage rates;
- an extension of the rights enjoyed by pregnant and adopting employees;
- a new prohibition of discrimination on grounds of age;
- the replacement of the old system of fire-safety certification with a new regime built around risk assessments.
Read a comprehensive list of recent legislation changes
Many small and medium-sized businesses are family businesses. But being family owned needn’t necessarily mean being family run — new research suggests there can be big benefits to bringing in an outside manager.
There are many advantages to running a family business. Strong commitment, shared values and a focus on long-term success are chief among them. There can also be short-term benefits, such as increased flexibility and a willingness of family members to work for less than market rates of pay.
But it’s not all positive news. There are downsides too, and an important one concerns the management of family businesses. Often the small circle of family members doesn’t provide a big enough pool of management talent to guarantee the continuing success of the business.
A recent research project studied more than 700 businesses and ranked them on a score of one to five according to how well managed they were. The average score for family-owned businesses was 3.2. However, break that average figure down and there are interesting patterns. For instance, family-owned businesses with an outside manager outperformed the rest, with a score of 3.6. By contrast, family businesses run by the eldest son performed more poorly than the rest, scoring only 2.9.
New research has confirmed once again what we all know to be true—having friendly and reliable customer-facing employees is a sure-fire route to increased sales.
It’s no surprise to hear that customers are more likely to buy from friendly and knowledgeable employees, but it may surprise you to hear just how big a difference the quality of your employees can make on sales performance.
According to new research carried out by customer-value specialist Connection, friendly, knowledgeable staff make customers nearly four times as likely to buy your product than they would otherwise be.
This result highlights the importance of getting your HR policies and practices right—bringing in people of high calibre and investing in training to ensure they make the greatest possible contribution to the success of your business.
The research also points to surprisingly poor results for a number of familiar marketing approaches. Introducing a loyalty card scheme actually reduces customer satisfaction from a benchmark average, while celebrity endorsements are reported to be deeply unpopular, scoring 58 percentage points below the benchmark.
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Recruitment
Recruitment and interviewing
Publicity is a crucial source of leads and sales for small and growing businesses, yet many make little effort in this area. But it’s too valuable an opportunity to let pass by.
There are many tasks involved in building a successful business, and juggling them all can be a challenge. But there’s no excuse for turning your back on potentially valuable sources of new business. Yet that’s what many small and medium-sized businesses seem to be doing when it comes to publicising themselves.
According to a survey conducted by The Buzz Factory, only 60 per cent of UK SMEs send out press releases in an active attempt to attract media coverage and the increased profile it entails. The remaining two-fifths can’t see the point in sending out press releases, or don’t feel that it’s a priority.
But they seem to be missing out, because 86 per cent of PR-active SMEs said that the publicity they had generated had been beneficial to their businesses. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, but good PR comes close. Not every press release you send out will generate results, but those that do are like free advertising for your business.
If you think your business has been too publicity-shy, The Buzz Factory is running a competition to find the UK business that has let the most newsworthy story slip by without any media attention. For more details, visit www.publicityshybusiness.co.uk
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Effective PR
There’s no let-up in the steady increase of potential online threats to your data—new figures point to an 81 per cent increase in ‘phishing’ attacks this year. You need to make sure everyone in your business is aware of the risks.
More and more businesses are finding that the main IT-related risks aren’t only to do with maintenance or breakdown issues, but also with the prospect of valuable company data being lost over the internet. There is a thriving illegal industry in this kind of data theft. New figures from IT security firm Symantec point to an increase of 81 per cent in the number of ‘phishing’ attacks recorded, to 157,477 in the first half of 2006.
Phishing is a form of internet attack, but the weaknesses it preys on are human rather than technological. Phishers try to find ways of fooling computer users to voluntarily hand over valuable data (typically it’s bank account details they’re after).
It goes without saying that your IT system should be protected technologically—firewalls, anti-virus software and encryption all have a role to play. But don’t neglect the human side of things. Make sure that you and all your employees are security-conscious when it comes to using the IT system. Vigilance is the best way of preventing phishers and other online attackers from profiting at your expense.
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Security and the Internet
It pays to keep an eye on the economic indicators. After a long period of underperformance, there are signs that the economies of continental Europe are picking up. That should feed through to increased demand for UK goods and services.
News reports of changing economic indicators can seem a long way removed from the day-to-day priorities of running a business, but it pays to keep an eye on key trends as they can give you an early insight into changes in your market.
This is as true for exporters as it is for businesses selling within the UK—economic indicators provide a valuable source of market research for exporting businesses. Take the eurozone countries. They’ve been performing weakly in recent years, but 2006 has brought a steady stream of positive data. It looks like things may finally be picking up, for a time at least (analysts are divided as to how lasting the current upswing will be).
In the first half of 2006, the combined eurozone economy grew at its fastest rate for six years, expanding by 3.4 per cent. And while unemployment remains higher on the continent than in the UK, as many as five million new jobs have been created in the eurozone over the past five years.
These data aren’t just of academic interest. Improved growth rates in the eurozone means that more money is being spent there. Businesses are busier and therefore need more supplies, and consumers too have higher confidence and spending power. All of this amounts to a potential opportunity for UK businesses with an interest in selling into continental markets.
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First steps to Exporting
Research your export markets
Increases to the national minimum wage take effect from 1 October. There are a number of different minimum wage rates, and each is changing:
- the full rate for employees aged 22 years and over increases to £5.35 an hour
- a ‘development rate’ for workers aged between 18 and 21 increases to £4.45 an hour
- the rate applicable to workers aged 16 and 17 rises to £3.30 an hour.
Businesses should note that the second development rate is abolished. This had applied to workers aged 22 and over who were receiving accredited training while in the first six months of a new job. These workers are now entitled to receive the full rate of £5.35 an hour.
For more information about the national minimum wage, visit the Department of Trade and Industry website