Why You Need to Rehearse Your Presentation

Presentation day is upon you. You’re mentally prepared and have put the work into creating a stellar presentation. Yet suddenly, as you begin your talk, you realize that you’ve forgotten something — a slide, a statistic, or maybe even your own name.

And you’re realizing that all the brilliant slides in the world can’t save you from looking like an amateur on stage.

This is why rehearsing your presentation over and over again is such a critical part of presentation design. It’s also one of the most overlooked aspects of creating a presentation.

In this article, we’ll cover the following:

• Rehearsing Is Your Secret Sauce
• Practice You Presentation to Help With Your Delivery
• Rehearsing Ensures You Get the Timing Right
• Rehearsing Builds Confidence
• Rehearsal Tips to Get It Right

Rehearsing Is Your Secret Sauce

No matter how great-looking your presentation is, it’s all for nothing if you don’t rehearse.

You need to know your content well enough to speak without visual prompts, including your presentation deck. Otherwise, you’ll look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.

When you rehearse, you get so comfortable with your content that you come across as knowledgeable and trustworthy. It sounds like a conversation, not a script — only you’re the one doing all of the talking.

When you don’t, you come across as someone who memorized the words they wanted to say. Someone who appears stiff, awkward, and unnatural. Someone who “crammed for the big exam” the night before instead of the person who innately knows the content backward and forward.

It will be blatantly obvious to your audience.

And they will tune you out before you get a chance to persuade them to take your desired action. As I say in this article, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and part of that includes coming to your presentation prepared.

Practice Your Presentation To Help With Your Delivery

Rehearsing is not only an excellent way to get comfortable with your content, but it’ll allow you to relax and speak more naturally once the spotlight is on you.

Not only that, but your body language will be more authentic, too. Rehearsing takes away the stress of knowing what words you want to say — and thus eliminates any nervousness you might otherwise show to your audience.

When you’re nervous, you tend to display body language cues that close you off to your audience, like fidgeting, pacing, and referring to your screen too much. These are telltale signs that you aren’t confident in what you’re saying. So why should your audience be confident in accepting what you’re communicating?

Even if your presentation is via videoconference, your nervousness will show if you haven’t rehearsed. Don’t assume you can refer to notes just because you’re on camera; you should rehearse as though you’re giving your presentation in front of an audience on stage.

You should also assume things can go wrong like technology glitches, which won’t matter if you know your content.

Rehearsing Ensures You Get the Timing Right

Like rehearsing for a play, presentation rehearsal helps you get comfortable with the timing of your talk. You will know how long each section should be and what information to convey with each slide.

You’ll get all your content in without having to skip over anything important. You won’t leave anyone hanging.

Rehearsing also gives you an opportunity to smooth out your transitions between slides. You’ll have a more seamless delivery, so that your slides add value but don’t distract from what you’re saying.

Rehearsing Builds Confidence

Your presentation is easier to remember if you’ve rehearsed because it becomes part of your muscle memory.

It’s like practicing a sport: The more you do it, the better you get at it, and the more likely you are to succeed in your performance. It’s the difference between a yoga instructor who has their sequence down, delivers the right cues, and engages students …

And the “green” instructor who fumbles with their notes, stumbles over their words, and forgets parts of the sequence.

The same goes for presentations. The more often you practice them, the better they’ll go when it’s showtime.

Rehearsal Tips to Get It Right

Make the most of your rehearsals so you don’t waste any time and you walk into presentations feeling like a pro. Here are a few tips I’ve learned through the years:

• Run through your slides methodically so that you know what is going to happen when you click on each one of them.
• Your presentation is you, not your slides. Don’t rely on slides to carry you; know your material so your slides are simply a complement to your presentation.
• Nail your opening. A powerful hook sets the tone for the entire presentation.
• Rehearse in front of other people. Get their feedback, tweak, and make your presentation better before you have to deliver it live.

When you rehearse, you can focus on what’s important: conveying the message that matters most in your presentation. You can get out of your own way and start focusing on connecting with your audience by delivering information they want to hear in an engaging way.

You should know your material so well that you could speak to it under any circumstance — whether the power goes out, the screen breaks, or you forgot your cue cards.

Just you and your audience. That’s all you need.

Because why waste your time and money designing a presentation without putting in the effort to know your story inside and out?