Types of presentations
Different types of presentations and ways of holding presentations are available for you to choose from. You need to consider several components when preparing for your presentation. Primarily, you should think about the main purpose of the presentation. For example, determine whether your main objective is to inform, motivate, or persuade the customer.
Informative/instructional
An informative/instructional presentation should be concise and educational. Additionally, it should be straightforward and give the customer the information that they need. An example of this type of presentation would be one about licensing. In that presentation, you’ll inform your customer about the type of licenses that are available and the benefits that they’ll get from these licenses. You’re educating them about the licenses and what they need to build their system rather than talking them into buying the licenses.
This type of presentation is helpful in teaching or demonstrating your product to the customer. It can be a presentation of your design document, your functional overview, or of the proof of concept.
Motivational
A motivational type of presentation is one in which you try to inspire your audience. A typical motivational presentation in business is the project kickoff. This presentation is where you inform your customers and other consultants about your remarkable project and its exceptional results. Your goal is to inspire everyone who will be involved in the project to look forward to it.
Another common motivational presentation in business is the solution demonstration for the end users. Likely, it’s your users’ first look at the new solution; therefore, it should be uplifting and should motivate them to start using the system. Make sure that you bring the right energy to a motivational presentation, especially if you’re presenting to a customer. Be engaging so that you can inspire them and energetic so that you can stimulate the audience to be excited about using the new system.
Persuasive
A persuasive presentation is where you need to convince the audience about something. A classic example of this type of presentation is a sales presentation. At some point, most consultants will do a sales presentation.
A sales presentation can involve any or all the following elements:
- A demonstration for a new customer
- An explanation of a new functionality to an existing customer, where your goal is for them to buy it
- An opportunity to persuade a potential customer to buy something from you