Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

• How many will there be? 
• What is their status range? 
• Will they want to be there? 
• How much do they already know about the matter? How 
much more do they need to know? 
• What will they be expecting? What is the history, the 
context, the rumour, the gossip? 
• How does your message and your material relate to the 
audience? Relevance defines what you will research, 
include and highlight. It will also help you to decide 
where to start: what your point of entry will be. 
Write your objective down in one sentence. This helps you 
to: 
• clear your mind; 
• select material to fit; 
• check at the end of planning that you are still addressing 
a single clear issue.
Write a simple sentence beginning: 
‘The aim of this presentation is to…’ 
Make sure the verb following that word ‘to’ is suitably 
inspirational!
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121 Making a Presentation
• Is the audience young or old? Are they predominantly 
one gender or mixed? 
• Are they technical specialists or generalists? They will 
want different levels of detail. 
• Where are they in the organisation? Different working 
groups will have different interests and different ways 
of looking at the world. 
Think, too, about the audience’s expectations of the presentation. 
They may see presentations often, or very rarely. They may also 
have specific expectations of you, the presenter: they may know 
you well or hardly at all; you may have some sort of reputation 
that goes before you. 
Constructing a message 
Once you have your objective, and you have some sense of who 
your audience is, you can begin to plan your material. Begin