Creative Business Presentations, by Eleri Sampson

Category: Book Reviews

The subheading to this book is "Inventive ideas for making an instant impact" and the sub text is "leave the PowerPoint at home and think of new ways of getting your message across".

Eleri Sampson is a presenter and executive coach who has helped more than 2,000 people to present themselves at their professional best. The book is in three independent and useful parts.

The first part deals with presentation essentials, ensuring that this is a useful book for the novice as well as experienced presenters. It covers natural presentations, style, audience, material, support material, the setting, and your delivery, rounding off with the thorny subject of confidence.

It is the second part that justifies the title of the book. The author explains how to address the basic senses through the use of sound, movement, language and pictures. Each chapter includes a questionnaire so that you can benchmark yourself against the behaviours of people for whom this is the primary sense. It also includes many practical examples of things that you could do to bring variety into your presentation using that particular sense.

The final part of the book includes six ''recipes' for different types of presentation, including introducing a speaker, saying goodbye to a colleague who is leaving, and more general purpose presentations. The book concludes with checklists and a list of sources and resources.

Skimming through the book as I write this, I notice that I have highlighted a fair number of comments for me to refer back to before my next presentation. However, I would generally recommend this as a sound reference for someone wanting to learn the basic skills.

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