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Few of us have been fortunate; most of us have been victims of “death by PowerPoint”. Long, technically heavy, dry & business serious presentations has taken off ever since 1997 when it really took off with significant changes in Microsoft PowerPoint 97 and became widely available. Lots of people have presumed that business related presentation has to be content heavy and dry to display knowledge and seriousness. This often leaves the audience in a semi-catatonic state of mind, not listening or following, often resulting in the audience eager to make a run for the exit! This post is going to discuss some key ideas to keep in mind when you are presenting a new product, business proposal, research finding or sales pitch. It’s going to engage your audience, communicate your message and make you look good! We’re also going to have a look at some examples to see what mistakes not to make!

We’re going to break this down into key points:

Your presentation objectives.
Information; research, collecting & organising.
Aesthetics; theme, font & color.
Layout; slides, content & multimedia.
Supplementary materials; hand outs, pamphlets & notes.

Objectives

What are the objectives & parameters of your presentation?

Whether it be team meetings, annual meetings, sales, consulting or new product overview your presentation objectives need to be clearly defined. Presentations should be tailored to your target audience. For what purpose are they here and what information are they seeking? This is the very first step in building an enjoyable, engaging and most importantly informative presentation.

You must be aware of the parameters for the presentations such as how broad or specific the topic needs to be and other factors such as time, size of audience and characteristics of your audience i.e. mums and dads, shareholders, executives, team colleagues, department colleagues or customers.

Information

The type of information research, gathering and organising will largely depend on your presentation objectives and audience needs.

This is the stage where all the information required to make your presentation informative to the audience and in line with your objectives are collected and analysed. Organising the information is not vital yet, that will be required in the Layout stage of presentation building.

Research and collect any data that is relevant to your topic the visual layout of the data itself will be handled later. To emphasize it is extremely important to collect all relevant information, ensure their accuracy and be thorough.

Aesthetics

Here is where we begin looking at the aesthetics of the slides; themes, color, font type & font size. I highly recommend not using fancy font, repetitive bold, italics, underlining or strike through. This complicates and reduces the readability and impact of the content itself. Don’t change font types in each slide and keep font size consistent i.e. headings, key points and sub points. Font color should also remain consistent throughout the slides, color can be used but sparingly and for emphasis. Other visual cues including fade away and sound effects should never ever ever be used! The only visual cue that can work effectively is content pop-up. This is where the slide appears with the heading only and as you list key points in your talk you can use the remote to make those dot points appear on the slide, no sound effects, fade-in or “fly” in, just appear.

Aesthetics are an important factor to consider in presentations, however content and its understandability always take priority. In saying that, good aesthetics should not be noticed since it is supplementing the material at hand.

Layout

How are you going to present your data, findings, product, performance or sales pitch?

These dynamics will determine the way you layout the information. It’s important to keep in mind that even the slides are supplementary to your talk. Slides should not have significant meaning or useability without you. So what does this actually mean? It means that the content on the slides are kept to the essentials. Presenters in the past have a plethora amount of information and data causing information overload in each slide. This creates a difficulty for the audience in processing, reading, understanding and building questions for you in Q & A time. Presenters who overload slides with information need to trim the “fat”. “Fat” here is the less significant but relevant data for the topic at hand i.e. there is an internal meeting on stock A performance and volatility. Instead of showing daily prices over the past 12 months which 1) shows price trend 2) shows price volatility, why not compress the data points to weekly or monthly price points with candlesticks (more on that here)

Some sub topics in presentations are technical heavy. And whether you your audience is there for the technical content should have been decided in the objectives section. If it was no then cut out whatever “fat” possible from the slides. If it was a yes then spread the technical information over a number of slides by breaking the information into more consumable pieces or do some creative thinking in presentation method e.g. cluster histograms, line or distribution charts.

Layouts for chart organisations and processes should be kept as concise as possible. As a rule of thumb keep one process to one slide to maximum of two highly related or integrated processes. This will keep keep the readability and focus high for the audience and will simplify your discussion points for the slide. If it is a highly complex and long process or chart, again, break it down. Start with a simplified bird’s eye view and then zero in on certain sections in subsequent slides.

Keep word counts to a minimum, use short and direct sentences. You can use your verbal material to expand and clarify any points you need. Where possible and appropriate use imagery that is in line with your discussion point, i.e. main qualitative KPI (Key Performance Indicator) maybe be team work, then use a sporting team image or it may be strengthening business relations with customers/vendors then an image of a handshake could be utilised. The utilisation of images is to provide visual stimulation and evoke curiosity amongst your audience. Your verbal material will be supplemented by the visuals.

If you are still having issues with the layout try story boarding, it will effectively help you plan the “story”and how you’re going to tell it to the audience. I will post about story boarding specifics in a separate post at a later date, alternatively you can email me at terence.tam1 @ gmail. com and request it early!

Supplementary materials

Since the slides are kept to essentials and some slides may not even have content but images only, it is and should be pointless to provide slide handouts. Instead provide supplementary materials to your audience that are relevant to the slides. These materials can range from complete company financial statements, product brochures, advertisement concepts, departmental KPI criteria report, sales performance or single page mission statements.

An audience take-away document can be made and handed-out after the presentation for those who want to review or pass on the keynotes. These types of material can be thorough since the audience do not have a time constraint to review the material.

If possible it is always useful in making auditory recordings of your presentation prior or during the actual presentation itself. This will allow the take-away supplementary material to compliment to the recordings and vice versa. I recommend making auditory pre-recordings of your presentation because it is more technically manageable with a time buffer to make edits and are readily available to distribute to the audience at the end via email or CD.

Remember, the slides are there to supplement your talk. So keep the slides to the essentials and use imagery where possible & appropriate to keep the audience visually engaged. Announce that supplementary materials will be provided and extensive materials handed out at the end. This will stop the audience from frantically taking notes down and falling behind with your presentation.

Adding fire pits to your business presentations is fun and unique way to engage your audience and keep their undivided attention. Everyone who has any public speaking experience knows how difficult it can be to break through to you audience and get them to lower their guard enough to deliver your message effectively. Although there are a number of key factors that you are in control of such as body language and eye contact that you can use to keep your audience engaged, there are also some other things that you can use to your advantage. Fire pits provide an interesting way to capture your audience’s attention and imagination during a business presentation.

In recent years, medical experts have discovered that the physical setting that a person is immersed in has a huge impact on their ability to learn and retain information. This is because the cognitive processes that drive memory and attention are directly influenced by the parts of the visual cortex that are dedicated to what is known as contextual process. Contextual processing is how the mind processes the physical setting that a person is in, and it is hardwired to focus on certain types of objects, such as faces and the fire in fire pits. The mind perceives fire in a unique way that relaxes the body while peeking a person’s interest in what is going on around him or her.

In fact, people have been giving presentations of one sort in front of fire pits for thousands of years. From Native Americans and other indigenous groups to stories told around a campfire, there is something about a fire in a pit that makes an audience settle down and take whatever a speaker has to say very seriously. As a result, people have been using fire pits to impart important cultural traditions or discuss defense strategies for thousands of years.

Everyone has been in a position where he or she has had to sit through endless business presentations that were given by boring speakers who were clearly just phoning it in. You owe it to your audience to give them a business presentation worth listening to, and using fire pits in your presentation is a great way to show your audience that you take yourself seriously. While it may take your audience a minute to get used to the idea, you will find that they will be taking about your presentation and the fire pits for long after your performance.

“With presentation skills, the work is in the preparation, the fun is in the presentation.” Colleen Kettenhofen

To improve presentation skills, allow plenty of time, if at all possible, to find out exactly who will be in your audience. Consider obtaining some of their names, phone numbers and email addresses so you can do a “survey” or interview to find out more about their needs, challenges and expectations before the day you present. Are they colleagues or clients you’ve personally invited? What will be the attitude of your participants? In other words, do they want to be there or is attendance mandatory? Are you going to be presenting any “bad news” or information they may not want to hear?

In my seminars, people often tell me that two of their biggest presentation skills challenges are “how to handle a hostile audience,” and “how to present bad news.” If you start by knowing who will be in attendance, what their expectations are, as well as their objections, you can then begin to prepare your presentation. Other than rehearsing, nothing will improve presentation skills more than knowing details about your audience.

Incidentally, studies show that by rehearsing and truly being prepared, you can reduce nervousness by 75%. If you take the word “rehearse,” and delete the “se,” what word do you have? “Rehear.” When you rehearse, you are actually rehearing yourself. In addition, 95% of the success of your presentation is determined before you present. So knowing something about your audience, and then rehearsing the information, will greatly improve presentation skills.

Your main source of information will be the individual who invited you to speak. When you ask questions, it also gives the impression that you’re conscientious and meticulous in planning and preparation. Also, find out if there are any issues sensitive to the group or topics to be avoided. What about any cultural differences or language barriers?

Before I give a keynote speech or lead a breakout session at a conference, I inquire about getting a list of all attendees, their phone numbers and email addresses. I like to “interview” at least 3 people who will be attending. Often times they’ll come up with other pertinent issues that the contact person may not have known about or simply forgot to mention.

If your presentation is to a client, or potential new client, keep apprised of their company news, goals and objectives. What is an average work day like for the participants in your audience? What are their greatest challenges? And if applicable, how does your product or service help solve their problem?

Presentation skills = defining your purpose. Ask yourself, “What is my purpose in being here?” And, “Why are they here?” Everyone is always tuned in to “Radio Station WIIFM,” which stands for, “What’s in it for me?!” So, how does what you’re talking about address their problem, the “what’s in it for me?”

In addition to interviewing individuals ahead of your presentation, do “meets and greets” if time permits. Get to know people one-on-one right before your talk. It will calm your nerves and you’ll no longer see them as total strangers. Also, it shows you’re taking an interest in them. Often by talking one-on-one beforehand, you discover a wealth of new information you may want to bring up in your presentation.

In improving your presentation skills by knowing your audience ahead of time, here are some questions to ask yourself:

o What is the attitude of the audience? Do they want to be there? o What are their approximate ages? o What is the percentage of males to females? o What are their levels of education? o What is their technical expertise? o What about their geographic locations in terms of home base? o What about their cultural make up?

Remember, 95% of your presentation skills success is determined before your presentation. What do you know about your audience? How can you incorporate that information into the tailoring of your presentation? The work is in the preparation, the fun is in the performance.

Copyright 2006 Colleen Kettenhofen