Three essential skills for an effective Presentation:

These are the three essential pieces of information that can make your presentation fly.
- Use visual aids where you can
- Rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse
- The audience will only remember three messages
Use Visual Aids:

Professor Albert Mehrabian did a lot of research into how we take in information during a presentation. He concluded that 55% of the information we take in is visual and only 7% is text.
There are some important conclusions that we can take in from this information
1. Use visuals (pictures, graphs, tables, props) whenever you can
2. In a speech you are only using 38% of the communication medium
3. Ditch the bullet points
In a Study at the Wharton Research Centre they showed that using visual slides had a dramatic effect on message retention. The effect of using visuals is truly staggering!

Rehearse your presentation
"If you fail to prepare, you are prepared to fail"
Rehearsing could make the difference between a good and an average presentation.
Plan to rehearse your presentation out loud at least 4 times. Make sure that one of your rehearsals is in front of a really scary audience - family, friends, partners, colleagues; children. They will tell you quite plainly where you are going wrong - as well as providing you with the support that you need.
Rehearse against the clock. If you have to give a presentation in a short period of time then try to practice your presentation against the clock. This is particularly true with something like the five minute job presentation.
Audience will remember only three things
People tend to remember lists of three things. Structure your presentation around threes and it will become more memorable.
The audience is likely to remember only three things from your presentation - plan in advance what these will be. In Presentations "Less is More".