Stories are data with a soul, it creates images in the listeners’ minds, so your ideas will be better understood, remembered and retold in many cases.

Whether you are pitching your business ideas, products or presenting your achievements; your audience wants to know your perspective on the topic not just your bullet points, and storytelling will serve you best when well told.

You can tell a story of how your product or service changed the life of a customer, or how you and your team achieved the desired results, the examples are endless, but you have to start with the end mind, which is what do you want your audience to take away from your story.

Here are seven basics to master the art of storytelling in your presentations:

1. Know your audience, in order to create content that is relevant to them and captures their attention
2. Choose one theme, stories should be focused in order to serve the ending ( the takeaway)
3. Your story should have a beginning that hooks the audience’s attention and makes them feel what the characters felt.
4. A plot, where the tension is increased and the audience feels more with the character
5. The ending, should transport the audience to a resolution. which is what you want your audience to take from the story.
6. Tip: When you write your story; It is easier to start with the beginning, write the ending and then go back to the middle.
7. Tip: Rehearse your stories, edit them down into a short meaningful story, remove unnecessary details that might distract your audience from the takeaway.

Stories can be two minutes long, but when well designed and told will have an impact on your audience, specially when you practice telling them with a clear voice, intonation and supporting body language, it will make you unforgettable.