Corporate Presentation Skills to Make Every Meeting Count 

No matter how companies cultivate fun, laid-back atmospheres, lurking beneath every workplace gathering is the opportunity for high-stakes interaction. Meetings, virtual calls, even casual chats on- and offline offer critical moments for leaders to demonstrate their skillset. Beyond any other metric, corporate presentation skills are the true measures of success in professional environments, with leaders shouldering the bulk of these responsibilities.  

Whether communicating with executives, direct reports, customers, or external stakeholders, knowing how to articulate ideas and vision clearly is essential to gaining consensus, building trust, and moving projects forward. But unlike balancing budgets and writing operational code, evaluating “soft” skills can be nebulous for organizations. Where tidy books or a functional app provide the satisfaction of clear outcomes, presenting requires an ongoing commitment to and understanding of what drives human connection.  

However, this shouldn’t distract from the key takeaway: executive presentation skills can be learned and supported with proper guidance. At Duarte, our decades of writing, research, and agency work continue to reinforce why presentation skills training is necessary for leaders and teams to stand out in a competitive landscape. And it starts with a clear understanding of what constitutes effective corporate presentation skills. To this end, let’s explore the elements of a successful presentation, why they matter, and how training can refine soft skills, produce hard results, and make every meeting count. 

What are Corporate Presentation Skills? 

At a high level, presentation skills break down into three main buckets: content, design, and delivery. Easy right? But drilling down into each category uncovers the many nuances that complicate this equation. Each piece is a constellation of interconnected attributes that, together, form a successful talk. To ensure every element is finely tuned, it helps to unpack each bucket to understand how this web of speaker demands fits together. And where better to begin than the focal point of any presentation: its content. 

Content: The “Meat” of Your Presentation 

Content has become a catch-all term for anything (print, image, audio, or video) that competes for attention. In a presentation, many of the same rules apply. More specifically, content is the meat of a presentation and can include any thinking used to structure your Big Idea. On the flipside, too much of any one type can cause audience members’ minds and commitment to wander. As the central focus of your talk, all information, statistics, data, and media deployed within should reinforce the audience’s understanding of your Big Idea. The goal of effective presentation skills training is learning how to provide the right balance of evidence and persuasion to guide listeners toward adopting your Big Idea. 

To achieve this end, it’s helpful to consider content at both a granular and structural level. 

For instance, say you stumbled upon a study that revealed sales presentation skills training for the whole department could increase conversions by 35%. Intrigued by the findings, you decide it’s worth implementing at your organization. There are plenty of ways to approach convincing fellow leaders to invest in a presentation skills course. On a granular level, you already have figures from your organization to illustrate the potential for growth. This can include sales data, close rates, pipeline, website visits, etc. which, when set alongside the price of the training, can highlight the ROI for decision-makers. This is one way to string these data points together with a coherent thread. But to give your analysis greater traction, it helps to tell a story.  

Here’s where advanced presentation skills training can do the heavy lifting

Due to the myriad options, threading the needle between content and structure can be overwhelming. That’s why several of our training workshops explore how relying on narrative structures and rhetorical devices to guide your audience can be extremely effective for getting audiences to embrace your Big Idea. In our Resonate training workshops, participants explore key elements of persuasive storytelling as highlighted in Nancy’s second book, and gain an understanding of its broad application for presentations.  

By drawing from well-known plot structures and applying rising and falling action, learners gather the necessary tools to create contrast within talks to highlight tension and expose potential opportunities. This means fluctuating between describing the world as it is and how it could be, and arriving at a “New Bliss” through the adoption of your Big Idea. 

In the case of implementing department-wide sales training, mapping the decision-making process onto an existing story or personal anecdote can help give it weight. Consider whether an overarching Three-Act Structure or a relatable metaphor will best serve to foster understanding. For those with newly developed executive presentation skills, analyzing as many stories, talks, and keynotes as possible can help cement your understanding. Knowledge and experience can help dictate how to apply combinations of images, audio, video, or text to drive your Big Idea across the finish line. 

In short, content is both the stuff of your talk and how it unfolds for your audience. Learning how to differentiate between these elements and apply them is essential for maximum impact. That’s why it’s important to consider the value of implementing educational offerings for leaders, teams, departments, and even entire organizations. 

Once you’ve wrestled your Big Idea into a framework that works down to a granular level, it’s time to think about design. 

Design: Making the Most of Your Content 

If content is the protein of a presentation, then design is how it’s prepared. It’s how information, data, images, and the story you’re aiming to tell are dressed up visually for the audience. Too rare, and audiences facing a white background with text will crave color and contrast. Too overdone, and your message risks getting lost in the sauce. Just like the content section above, design can also be applied on a structural and granular level. And striking the right balance is essential to making your flavors sing. 

Oftentimes, macro design choices dovetail with branding (think color palettes, font, PowerPoint templates, minimalist vs. maximalist aesthetics, etc.) and are implemented company wide. This can help leaders in non-creative departments get their ideas in flight without needing to start from scratch. However, such benchmarks can vary between organizations, with even the best laid brand guidelines leaving some open-ended questions. One common pitfall for ad hoc design efforts is information overload. 

Learning how to exercise restraint and strike the right balance of information is another instance where choosing a focused presentation skill course is essential. Everyone’s sat through presentations with slides bursting at the seams with text. Even when well-intentioned to inform, cumbersome slides can have a detrimental effect on your audience’s ability to understand and connect with your talk.  

In fairness, a worthwhile presentation should impart some knowledge to its audience, even if only as steppingstones to a desired outcome. However, too much can obscure your overall message, or distract listeners as they try to read every word. Instead, choosing text wisely (and sparingly) allows content to breathe and flow logically. This is just one example where corporate presentation skills can be vastly improved with the right guidance.  

How a Presentation Skills Training Course Can Open Your Eye for Design 

While becoming a designer can spiral outward into a lifelong passion, learning how to think like one can yield similar benefits in a fraction of the time. In fact, any arrangement of corporate presentation skills should include an intermediate to advanced understanding of design principles to avoid making public faux pas in slide decks or one-pagers. If every moment is an opportunity to stand out, avoid being remembered for glaring skills deficiencies. Thankfully, our Slide:ology training workshops inspired by Nancy Duarte’s debut book covers foundational best practices to help enhance content with thoughtful design choices. 

To add further contour to your toolkit, Slide Design and SlideDocs® cover additional elements to continue your design journey. While you can still invest time to learn the finer points of design or illustration software, knowing what you’d like to accomplish before tinkering is half the battle. With proper training, your ability to discern between effective and detracting design choices will become second nature, and you’ll develop a symbiotic relationship with your narrative abilities.  

In the meantime, accumulating and building off various tips and tricks will continue to show dividends and lay the groundwork for long term applications. Not to mention, balanced, well-executed slides can make or break a presentation’s ability to sway audiences toward adopting your Big Idea. 

Now, with content and design firmly in place, it’s time to give life and depth to your presentation. That’s where delivery comes in.  

Delivery: Putting Your Ideas Out into the World  

To drive this culinary metaphor home, after an idea is prepped and prepared, it’s time to get it plated. Delivery is the presentation of your presentation. In other words, these are things you can do as a presenter to ensure your Big Idea is conveyed properly. This includes eye contact, posture, stage presence, affect, inflection, and other attributes that dress up your content and are thrown into relief by your design. To illustrate how these characteristics can manifest in conversation, on stage, or during a meeting, try asking yourself a few orienting questions to prepare: 

• What do I do with my hands? 

• Where should I fix my gaze? 

• Is my tone of voice right for the setting and content? 

• Do I gamble on being funny? 

• What do I do if the audience feels disengaged? 

• How do I harness their energy if the reception is positive? 

• What impression or feeling do I want to impart? 

A period of self-reflection ahead of a talk can help narrow down the most effective approach for delivery. Although much like with content and design, having a trusted guide to cut through the noise and fine-tune your abilities can help get your presentations from inert to targeted for fast results. Here’s some of the educational opportunities available to sharpen your delivery and make your next presentation a knock-out performance. 

Why Presentation Skills Training is Right for Your Team 

When you imagine your strengths as a speaker, what comes to mind? This is the jumping off point for our Captivate™ training workshop which aims to leverage your unique personality to you presentation’s advantage. In turn, reining in or counterbalancing other personality traits can help encourage broader audience appeal. Does your demeanor register as more extroverted or introverted? Is your affect naturally emotional or analytical? Can you pull off humor or do jokes land with a thud? A little honesty and facilitator guidance can help your on-stage/on-camera persona find equilibrium and reach audiences no matter where they’re situated.  

While there are considerations to keep in mind for hybrid talks, our Presenting Virtually training course has you covered. With light conditioning, Duarte experts can help you and your team convey actionable messaging in any setting. Just think what these outcomes could provide for your whole team? With everyone trained to communicate clearly and effectively, messaging and productivity will go hand-in-hand. 

In fact, our work over the years has uncovered a wide range of resources and strategies for leaders to communicate better at work. Decision-making power aside, leadership also means setting an example, striving to meet and exceed expectations, and charting new ways to enhance and evolve company efforts. And few things convey a sense of empowerment than the confidence to speak and share actionable ideas. After a facilitator-led training, your team can apply practiced, polished delivery to tackle communication challenges and rise to any occasion. 

Make Every Meeting Count with Corporate Presentation Training 

With the life cycle of an effective presentation front of mind, why not bring those skills in-house with Duarte? Our training academy offers a range of educational offerings beyond those mentioned above and can help your organization find the right cadence to implement and maintain bespoke learning goals. With time always of the essence, teams that can lasso content, design, and delivery will turn every meeting into an opportunity, and make the most of a fleeting resource.  

For more information on taking your team, department, or organization’s “soft skills” to a “new bliss,” book a call with a Duarte training concierge to discover our full menu of academy offerings. There’s no better time to make the most of every meeting. Leave inefficiencies, bad decks, and communication breakdowns by the wayside and start realizing your team’s full potential.