I watch a lot of talks. Both live and on video.

Partly because I speak on stage reasonably often myself, and partly because it's a good source of new information.

Recently I took stock of some of the talks I've rated the highest. And an interesting common factor was that none of them were super polished and perfect.

I see talks every now and then that are technically brilliant, but that I just don't connect with.

It's like the speaker has rehearsed their piece to death. They're up on stage perfoming their piece and it wouldn't really make any difference if the audience was there or not.

By contrast, the talks I connect the most to are the ones where it feels like the speaker is having a conversation with the audience.

I don't mean they interact with the audience a lot and discuss things with them, though they might.

It's just that it feels like they're chatting to us 1-1. That they're aware of our presence and are reacting to it. That there's no pretense or performance. That it's just them, honestly talking to us just like they would if we were down the pub together.

For me, that's the hallmark of an effective presentation these days: that it feels like a conversation.

If you do talks in your business, or sales presentations, you should think about how to do something similar yourself.

Rather than getting your presentation word-perfect and polished. Rehearse how to be more relaxed and get into conversation mode with your audience.

It'll go down much better.