Some people are uncomfortable with role-playing or making a ‘pretend’ presentation to an empty chair. But that discomfort is as nothing to the discomfort you feel when the wheels come off your presentation in the presence of your prospective client!
So practise.
Get a couple of people to take the role of the client, and literally walk and talk your way through the whole presentation, all the way from handshake and hello to handshake and goodbye.
The first time through may well be awful, embarrassing, excruciating. But don’t get angry, or upset. That is precisely why you practise.
Practice sessions help you to find out where things are not working, and give you time to fix them. Perhaps the argument does not flow. Some information may be missing. The order of the slides could be improved. Maybe you may feel there is too much information and you need to use fewer words, or fewer slides.
Maybe you need to swap roles within the presentation. Perhaps someone needs to firm up their handshake!
All these things come to light while you practise. Through practising, you can radically improve the quality of your presentation so that, when you come to do it for real in front of your client, you are really impressive.
