Have you ever been asked to give a presentation, or lead on a pitch, and felt that stomach-wrenching fear at the mere thought? Feeling nervous before a presentation is perfectly normal, even for people who make presentations regularly, so the first thing to do is stop beating yourself up about it. If you recognise that you're not alone in suffering nerves, you can take positive steps to numb their effects and control them.

Both the start and finish of your presentation are perhaps more important than the main body or content. This is down to the Primacy and Recency effects which we talked about in our storytelling blog, but to refresh your memory, here's a little more detail.

Have you ever sat in the audience of a presentation and thought 'why am I here?' Ever been presenting and seen this exact thought behind the glazed-over look of your audience? In our experience, this is often because you've designed your whole presentation in your own head, and forgotten about the 'what's in it for them' factor.

Story telling is so important when you're trying engage your audience, whether you're giving a presentation or a pitch. You should do whatever you can to make your presentations fun and engaging, you want people to remember and understand what you're telling them, and stories are the way to do it. And the best thing is, it's fairly easy to add storytelling in; you don't have to be a natural, you can learn how to do it.