How to choose the best presentation coach for your needs

Most of us who are not naturally gifted with oral communication, when it comes to preparing for a speech, we could benefit from a presentation coach. Some of us may find public speaking intimidating and may not find it natural to pick up on. These reasons might make it plausible to hire a presentation coach. One thing is for sure, at some point in life most of us will be tasked with speaking in front of a crowd.

Whether you’re giving a speech at a wedding or pitching an idea to staff, or even presenting information to an entire audience, brushing up on your presentation skills could not hurt. Let’s say you’re presenting in a board room, today we will touch on ways a coach can help strengthen your presentation approach.

 

 

What is presentation coaching?

The objective of presentation skills coaching is to forge a community of dynamic communicators who can push others into action from their speeches. It involves working with a coach that provides personalized guidance to improve various aspects of presenting, ideally like a presentation coach or a communication coach.

There’s more to a message than just delivering it verbally. You must also interact with your audience, use clever slides that astound but don’t distract, adjust the tone of your voice so it sounds confident yet friendly … you’re starting to get the idea.

What is a presentation coach?

A presentation skills coach can help you with your speech anxiety and debunk the idea that not anyone can be proficient at public speaking. You want to present your ideas coherently without boring your attendees. No one will remember your speech if it isn’t accurately worded.

If it never penetrates, nothing will get through to your audience. The methodology of great presentation coaching is where real magic takes place for most presenters to keep things focused.

What goes into presentation skills coaching?

Presentation coaches will normally fixate on three necessary presentation skills for effective communication. These include:

• The actual presentation itself and the Big Idea™ you are trying to convey
• How you deliver the speech (cadence, tone, etc.)
• How you engage / interact with the people you’re presenting to.

A proficient presentation skills coach highlights flaws in speech by observing mannerisms during your rehearsal interaction. You should never underestimate the importance of a speaker coach. Just to clarify, a presentation coach and speaker coach have subtle differences in the terminology, but both types of coaches are essentially the same.

What kind of scenarios have we done executive presentation coaching before?

Storytelling is the foundational backbone of our methodologies. We’ve provided immersive presentation training to well-known brands and their learners, and we’ve had high satisfaction and application rates.

For example, when Cloudflare came to Duarte for guidance, they were looking to enhance communication through a “thought leadership program” they wanted to create to help drive revenue and retain their talent.

They wanted to go from a $1 billion dollar company to a $5 billion-dollar company, and one way to help them get there was to upskill their sales department. They lacked the persuasive communication skills to accomplish this, and turned to Duarte for help.

Duarte brought Cloudflare aboard and trained their sales leaders in storytelling techniques. After a four-month journey with us, Cloudflare had the skills to better connect with audiences, leading to a strong return of investment.

As done with businesses like Cloudflare, we provide tools to improve sales effectiveness, customer engagement, and revenue growth.

 

 

In another example, we were tasked with perhaps a monumental presentation. Duarte performed presentation coaching for former vice president Al Gore. He had mountains of data, statistics and photo archives captured, and the Duarte team was tasked to create compelling slides to enhance Al Gore’s talking points. The result, the construction of an Oscar-winning documentary called “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Many projects and speakers can benefit from a presentation coach.

Why hire a presentation coach?

It’s not just words that you’re saying on that stage, those words must deliver impact and move audiences. Let’s say you have a big boardroom presentation coming up, a presentation coach with strong expertise can come in and help you design key messages for each of those board members. Remember, understanding your audience is key. A tool like our Audience Needs Map™ can help with this step.

 

 

When to not hire a presentation coach

While a presentation coach can help you with sales effectiveness and winning leadership buy-in, there are several factors to consider why you might not need one.

For example, you may not have a high-stakes presentation coming up, making you think twice about acquiring a coach. Hiring a specialized coach for anything is an investment. But just like in sports, the investment is worth it when the stakes are high.

Depending on what you’re in the market for of course, you may not be looking to advance your team’s communication skills right now. Presentation coaches can possibly be seen as an investment, especially for smaller businesses or if you’re operating on a tight budget. In these instances, you might be better off enrolling your team (or yourself) in a group training, like Captivate™. This is our highly-rated public speaking course that is conducted on a regular cadence, provides group feedback, and allows for rehearsals and practice sessions.

Also, if you feel your presentation delivery is being impeded by the visuals or flow of your presentation, you might want to take a presentation visual design course like Slide:ology® or Slide Design. A presenter equipped with a top-notch presentation can move mountains!

The true power of Duarte’s business presentation coaching

There are many options to choose from when evaluating presentation skills coaches. Sometimes, you might not need a presentation coach, just a training like our public speaking course Captivate™. (Shameless brag: The course was recognized as the #1 world’s top communication development program at the Global Gurus 2023 Awards).

Realizing your strengths as a presenter and wishing to amplify them is one of the main reasons for looking into business presentation coaching. Through Duarte, you’re exposed to an array of opportunities to fine tune your skills, because coaching and training combined will lead to astronomical results.

If you have a team of emerging leaders you know are looking to step up their game on the stage, let’s dig deep and figure out where your pain points are and how we can mold your presentation skills to blow some socks off.

Of if you’d like to hire a presentation coach for yourself, don’t delay. We have rotating availability, so reserve a coach today.