In the last lesson, you defined what makes a presentation effective. Now you're going to learn how to begin the process of creating your own effective presentations, which begins with planning.

Once you know your objectives for your presentation, it is important to spend time designing the presentation's structure and writing the crucial elements before you begin working in your presentation software. This time spent in design will make your presentation more focused and will make the development process easier.

Once you have organized your thinking and written the conclusion and introduction, it is time to develop the body of your presentation. This is the core of your talk and will take the most effort to design.

In the prior two lessons, you designed and developed your presentation and created individual visual slides. In this lesson, you will pull all the pieces together into a slide deck, create your own speaker aids to help you deliver the talk, and create audience handouts.

After you have written out your presentation and created your slide deck and other supporting materials, you need to begin to prepare for the delivery of your talk. You will want to rehearse so that you can deliver your talk confidently. And you will want to pay attention to the logistics of the event so you can minimize any surprises the day of your live event.

A successful presentation starts with the preparation of your message and ends with the delivery of that message. How you say it is just as important as what you say.

While an excellent presentation establishes your credibility, you also need to answer questions diplomatically in order not to damage that credibility. In this lesson, you'll learn how to respond gracefully and strategically to questions.

Not all presentations in the business world are delivered by a single presenter, or with the audience and the speaker in the same room. These common business situations bring unique challenges, but you are capable of adapting what you've learned so far to be successful in these scenarios.

You'll wrap things up and then validate what you've learned in this course by taking an assessment.