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Whether you are using whiteboard to get new ideas, run office brainstorms or give client pitches, one thing is certain. Poor presentation skills will cost you A LOT of money.

Presenting with a whiteboard is the fast and easy way to dramatically improve your ideas, process and results. Use this simple step-by-step whiteboard workout to boost your skills to a new level.

Step 1. Use A Storyboard To Plan For Impact
Organize the creative and logical flow of your story for your whiteboard presentation. A storyboard is a frame-by-frame blueprint of the sequence of ideas, as well as the details of each part of your presentation.

Benefit: Feel confident in front of a big group! Just imagine. You won’t have to wrack your brain trying to figure out what to do next.

Step 2. Write And Draw Your Ideas
Instead of being a ‘text-only’ presenter, use pictures and words to stimulate fresh ideas and innovative thinking. If you are hopeless at drawing, don’t worry. There are now easy reference guides teaching you exactly how to look like a pro, using a marker. One of the most valuable resources is a video tutorial showing how to draw on flipcharts and whiteboards.

Hint: Simple drawings have a high impact on flipcharts and whiteboards.

Benefit: You will connect with any audience. According to academic research from Stanford and Wharton, 60% of people are visual learners. Plus, kinesthetic learners account for an additional 25%. People with this learning style prefer to see the big picture before they take action.

Now, do the math. That’s 85% of the population that prefers to see information visually. With pictures and words, you’ll connect precisely with how 85% of participants learn – and make decisions.

Step 3. Connect With Hot Issues
The best presentations have a strong emotional connection with issues, problems and concerns of your audience. Do the extra legwork to find out what’s really top of mind for your participants. Informational interviews, informal conversations, and research are your best bets.

Benefit: Your audience listens. Instead of looking out at a sea of glazed stares, people are more likely to sit on the edge of their seats

Step 4. Write, Draw and Move
Naturally, you must stand in front of a traditional whiteboard or dry- erase board. It’s essential to write and draw. This means your back is briefly to the audience. While most presentation experts warn you: “Never turn your back to the audience,” it’s impossible at a whiteboard.

The solution: write, draw and move out of the way. Stay light on your feet. Step to the side so people can see what is on the board.

Benefit: Your audience sees what the story as it develops. Rather than staring at your backside, they watch an organic flow of words, pictures and story.

Step 5. Ignite Interaction
Get your audience involved. Ask questions and record answers. Use the whiteboard to promote, encourage and invite interaction.

While interactive whiteboards use electronic features to encourage interaction, you can achieve great results using a standard dry-erase board. Interaction is an attitude and commitment. As your comfort grows in guiding and facilitating interaction, your whiteboard presentations will be much more lively – and effective.

Benefit: Your audience participates. This is exactly why you’re using a whiteboard in the first place.

Step 6. Focus on Specific Action
Plan your entire whiteboard presentation to inspire, motivate and create a magnetic call to action. While this is true in every business presentation, with whiteboard presentations specific selling instructions are easier to deliver.

For instance, write the call to action. Draw icons to represent the benefits of action. Focus arrows on the action. Define the value of taking action in dollars, time and effort.

Benefit: Selling with whiteboard presentations inspires action. Your confused, overworked and stressed-out clients and prospects know exactly what to do.

Bottom line: Stop losing money with poor presentation skills. With the right whiteboard selling skills, you’ll win results. In fact, you’re most likely to be unstoppable.

If you’re ready to kick your career or business up to the next level, then make it a goal to become a powerful presenter. People view savvy communicators as being more capable, intelligent, and knowledgeable than those individuals who have difficulty in communicating their ideas. You can quickly gain the status of an expert in your field when you are able to present your ideas effectively.

Although many things go into giving a successful talk, I’d like to focus on one area that is very easy to apply – using body movements and gestures. When you use body movements and gestures appropriately, your presentation takes on a certain sense of aliveness that is often hard to accomplish when you use words alone.

Harness the Power of Gestures

Gestures include your posture, the movement of your eyes, hands, face, arms and head, as well as your entire body. They help to support or reinforce a particular thought or emotion. If our gestures support our statements, we are communicating with a second sense. People tend to understand and remember messages better when more than one sense is reached.

Winston Churchill was a master at using gestures to powerfully bring home his point. During World War II, Churchill rallied the citizens of Great Britain to continue their fight against overwhelming odds. He often visited the neighborhoods of London, which had been devastated by bombs and walked through them with his fingers held up in the sign of a “V”. This victory sign accompanied his famous message, “Never give in. Never, never, never give in.” This gesture so powerfully communicated Churchill’s message that soon people gained greater resolve to continue fighting whenever they saw the victory sign.

Another reason that using appropriate gestures is so critical to your presentation is that communication does not just consist of words. Less than 10% of the words we use in speaking gets through to others. On the other hand, over 55% of our body language is communicated to others very clearly. Whether you are trying to sell your product or service to a client or you are trying to persuade a group of people to change their behavior, it is critical that your words and gestures match. Many people have sabotaged their messages because their words were saying one thing, while their bodies were saying the exact opposite.

Can you think of a time when someone told you that he would be able to do something while his head was shaking no? Which did you believe, the words or the gesture? When your body movements are congruent with your words, your message will have a very powerful impact on your audience.

Make the Most Out of Movements

People will begin to make judgments about you as soon as you stand up. The time to begin using effective body movements is when you walk to your position in front of a group. Stand up tall and walk with a strong posture. Let your body communicate that you have something important to say and the audience needs to hear it. If your posture is slouched, they will feel that you aren’t convinced about your message and they will begin doubting you before you have uttered a single word.

When you get to the front, take a deep breath, calmly look at your entire audience and smile. One of the biggest mistakes presenters make is to begin talking as soon as they get up to the front, or even worse, as they are walking there. When you take time to look at your audience before you speak, you begin to establish that critical connection with them. You also give the audience sufficient time to focus on you and what you are about to say.

Look directly at the faces of your audience members, not over their heads. Eye contact is one of the most important aspects of speaking. An easy way to get over stage fright is to look at the faces of individual audience members and just talk to that one person instead of the entire audience. Rotate the people you talk to – someone on the left, someone towards the middle, a person on the right, someone in the front, etc. This will help you maintain rapport with the entire group, while allowing you to feel at ease.

A further advantage of maintaining good eye contact is that it will help you gauge how your message is coming across to the group. If you are trying to explain something and members of the audience give you blank stares, then you need to adjust your words so they can better understand you.

Use Conversational Gestures

Like Winston Churchill, you should strive to incorporate gestures into your talk. People naturally use gestures in conversations. They are not on the spot, so they easily move their arms and hands and make facial expressions to illustrate the points they are trying to make. However, an amazing thing happens when people stand up in front of a group to speak. They suddenly think, “Oh no! What am I going to do with these things attached to my shoulders?” and they either don’t move them at all or they move them awkwardly. Gestures should be a natural extension of who we are. Presenters should strive to be themselves. They should be as spontaneous with their movements as if they were talking to their family or friends.

Practice Makes Natural

A good way to be comfortable with gestures is to know your speech well. Several of the most outstanding speakers offer the same piece of advice: “The key to effectively using gestures is to know your material so well, to be so well prepared, that your gestures will flow naturally.” Practice your speech and know it well so that you can enjoy sharing your message with others.

Become a master at using your body to support your words. Have fun with gestures, be yourself, and you will certainly present your message with power and pizzazz.

The Tibetans have a saying;

You will have to stand for a very long time

with your mouth wide open

before a roasted partridge will fly into it…

It is a rather droll way of expressing high levels of improbability, but nevertheless useful, in reminding us that some things that we may pine and hope for are simply ‘unrealistic.’

The fact is that we could stand outside ‘forever,’ with our mouths agape and there is no way in the world that a ‘roasted partridge’ will ever fly in!

The odds are completely against this ever happening and it is like this also with a lot of things that we may cling very vehemently to as aspirations, hopes, dreams and wishes.

This is not to say that we should not have any. It is only to point out that it is wiser to actually get out and take the needed steps that would enable an ‘outcome’ to eventuate.

We must measure our wishes against our ability to create the causes that will engender the hoped for ‘conditions.’

When we wait too long, the chances are we may miss out altogether.

If you are into ‘roasted partridges’ it makes more sense to scour the markets.

There is a huge advantage in learning to ‘surrender’ to life and accept what actually ‘is.’ Instead of dancing through our days like animated ‘puppets,’ tossed about here and there, in a relentless cycle of ‘hope and fear,’ we can simply learn to relax and allow our attention to fully greet exactly whatever arises before us.

Most of the time, we do exactly the opposite. Our ‘attention’ is fixed elsewhere; any where, but right ‘here’ and right ‘now.’

We need not live our lives as slaves to longings, hopes, desires or fear. We ALWAYS have a choice.

We can do ourselves the greatest possible favor and recognize the treasure of the ‘present moment.’

The ‘present moment’ deserves our closest attention, gratitude and even devotion.

Take the hint and look again more carefully at the very thing that you routinely take for granted. Things are seldom ever quite as they ‘appear’ to be.

This present moment, when it is just lived out for what it is, provides us with the supreme opportunity to discover an incredibly important truth.

If it were not for the present moment we could not exist at all.

Truly this present moment is precious indeed!