In the early days of typewriters, people would accept the occasional misspelling, correction, and whiteout. These were understandable errors made by people, and the documents didn’t suffer from these mistakes. Today, with word processors, we expect documents to come out clean, no spelling errors, no whiteout, and the only time something is left in with a strike through it’s intentional.

The same is now expected from our presentations. Movies and TV stars are allowed multiple cuts and takes. When, they make a mistake, it ends up on the cutting room floor. The people who go live, on stage, know they need to practice. Rehearsals, walkthroughs, over and over again, until they get it right.

While you’re on stage, giving a presentation, is NOT the time to come up with answers to questions. Especially questions you know will be asked. Practice, until you can rattle off the basic answer. Then think about which facts would augment your answer to respond to the concern behind the question.

Practice beforehand, people want you to give a good presentation, but they also want to be entertained.