Effective PowerPoint presentations mean YOU are the star of the show, not your slides. Here are some tips from IWCC’s Effective Presentation Skills workshop.

PowerPoint slides are intended to enhance your message – not be the message! Visuals have been a powerful means of communication for thousands of years – from simple drawings on cave walls to today’s elaborate PowerPoint presentations. We know that audiences understand and remember 40% more when a presenter uses clear, well-designed visuals at the right time.

Let’s say that one more time…clear, well-designed visuals at the right time. As a presenter, that leaves you with two decisions to make:

1. How do you design visuals to enhance your message?
2. When do you use visuals to engage and help understanding?

Let’s look at #1.

In IWCC’s Effective Presentation Skills workshops, we address the most common mistakes presenters make in designing their slides. Here’s how to fix three of them.

The Mistake…ALL CAPS

Good presenters use Upper and Lower case letters. People can read lower case text 14%-19% faster than all-capital text because the Upper and Lower case letters give each word a unique shape. When you use ALL CAPS, every word has the same shape – they are all rectangles of various lengths. Therefore your eye has to work harder to recognize and understand the word. Here’s a test…On your way home tonight, look at highway and street signs. You will notice that the easier ones to read are in Upper and Lower case letters.

The Mistake…Font Abuse

To prepare effective PowerPoint presentations, use no more than two fonts on your slides. And, keep those fonts consistent throughout your presentation!  Imagine reading your newspaper and the same article uses four different fonts. Now that’s font abuse! Don’t let font abuse distract your audience from your message.

The Mistake…Font Size

When it comes to fonts, size matters! For the text, use a minimum font size of 28 – higher if the room is large. Make headings (or headlines) 4-6 points larger than the text on your slides. Because larger fonts take up more space, you only have room for the key words - and that’s a good thing!

For even more insight into slide design, check out IWCC’s webinar Creating your Own PowerPoint: Tips for designing slides that engage your audience.

If you want to leave your audience yawning instead of listening, try this traditional ho-hum opening for your next presentation…

“Hello, my name is Mr. Bo Ring and I am here to talk to you about the intricacies of the new Labour Code. Please hold all your questions to the end.”

Prepare yourself for blank stares, nodding heads and the sound of snoring after that opening!

Think about sitting at your computer surfing the web. How long do you give a web site to grab your attention?  Participants in IWCC’s Presentation Skills workshops tell us 3-5 seconds – that’s it. And, you have about that long to grab the attention of your audience when you open a presentation.

IWCC suggests you spice up your opening with a relevant icebreaker.

To create an immediate connection with your audience and set yourself up for success, you have to break the ice and lower the relationship tension that exists between you and the audience at the beginning of a presentation.

Consider these two suggestions for “breaking the ice” to start your next presentation distinctively.

State a fact
State a fact or statistic that relates to your topic.  For instance, here’s a fact you could use to open a presentation on dealing with B2B Communications:

“Ever wonder why people don’t respond to your e-mails right away?  According to recent research, two million e-mails are sent every second of every day.  That’s a lot to compete with ...”

Run a poll
Engage people’s brains by asking them to participate in a poll. Make it quick and relevant. For instance to open a presentation on dealing with speaker nerves you could say:

“People seem to fall into three categories when it comes to speaker nerves: 1. no nerves at all; 2. some nerves at the beginning of the presentation; and 3. hands sweating, knees knocking debilitating nerves. I’d like to run a quick poll. Raise your hands if you have:

• No nerves at all when you present?
• What about some nerves especially at the beginning?
• Finally, who has those hands sweating, knees knocking debilitating nerves?”

Two MUST Do's
To deliver that ice breaker with the best impact remember these two tips:

1. Begin with your ice breaker. Don’t even introduce yourself until you have their attention.
2. Start with a blank screen behind you. Don’t compete with a PowerPoint slide that introduces your presentation – the slide will win.

Remember, until you grab their attention, they won’t listen to what you have to say!

You must know where you want to go…how else will you know if/when you get there?
Like professional athletes, good presenters have a clear vision of success. To design a successful presentation, you too must begin by clarifying your objective – your desired destination. Good presentation skills training will help you describe this destination as an “outcome”.  Once you know your destination, you can decide what path you will take to get there. If however you don’t know where you want to go…any path will do.

How to Clarify Your Presentation Objective
In IWCC’s Presentation Skills workshops, we ask a specific question to help participants clarify their presentation objective – to define the desired “outcome”. We ask: “How do you want your audience to be different at the end of your presentation?”  If you can’t define the desired change, then how will you know it happened?  Worse still, how will you know what content you need to include or leave out?

Here is a simple formula to help you clarify your presentation objective.  Complete this sentence:

“After listening to my presentation, I want my audience to…”

Finish the sentence by defining what you want your audience to specifically:  do, feel, understand, learn or know.

For example...

“After my presentation, I want my audience to approve our recommended implementation plan for Phase two of the Project, so that we can complete the project on time and on budget.”

“After my presentation, I want my audience to understand why we are implementing e-statements, so that they can explain the change to their staff.”

You will also need to decide how you will measure how well you achieved your objective ... How will you know if they approve your implementation plan?  What evidence will you have that they understand the move to e-statements? More on these questions in an upcoming BLOG.

One last tip ... don’t forget to share this clear objective with your audience when you open your presentation. They need to know the expected outcome too – what you want them to do, feel, learn, understand or know.

Stop wondering and start planning...
Designing a successful presentation is all about planning. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. It’s that simple! Think about the last presentation you delivered. Were you taken aback by any unexpected surprises – no LCD projector? A hostile audience? Less time than promised?

Plan for success
Good presentation skills training provides you with useful tools to help you quickly and confidently plan your presentation. In IWCC’s presentation skills workshops, we provide participants with a Six-Step process for getting ready to present.  The first step in the process is “Analyze the Situation”.

The “Analyze the Situation” step covers 5 critical areas that every presenter would be wise to study – and it takes less time than you might think...

1. The sponsor (who asked you to deliver this presentation and why?)
2. The audience (who will be attending and what is their attitude?)
3. The mechanics (the room, equipment, etc.)    
4. The timing (when, how long, chance of being cut short?)
5. The interactive expectations (formal/informal/flexibility?)

The thousands of presenters IWCC trains every year are most concerned about item #2 ... the audience. We all think about our audience, but do we always go deep enough to impact the success of our presentation?

Dig Deep to Avoid Surprises
Let’s investigate the audience category in detail so you can see what we mean by “dig deep”. Here are some of the questions we ask participants to answer about their audience:

-Who will attend your presentation?

• Other people from your organization - why?
• From another organization - why?
• Management?
• What will their roles be – if any?

-How much do they already know about your topic?

• Do I need to go into much/some/no detail?
• Do I need to clear up misperceptions?
• Do I need to address uncertainties?

-What kind of information will help this group relate to my topic?

• What visuals might appeal to this group?
• What examples or analogies would help the topic come alive for this group?
• What stories can I tell that they would relate to?

-How diverse will your listeners be?

• Any areas of specialization among the group?

-Will any members of your audience be from other countries? Will English be their first language?

• How will you help them understand your message?

-What is their attitude likely to be and how will I address it?

• Resistant?
• Supportive?
• Indifferent?

-Will they be attending the presentation voluntarily? Or is it a “command performance”?

• Are they prisoners?

-What can you do in advance to ensure that your audience will support your point of view?

• Do you have any allies in the group that you can leverage?
• Can you create any allies before the presentation?

The other four items on IWCC’s checklist ask the same type of pertinent, dig-deep questions to help you get ready to present.

Increase Your Odds of Success
In our presentation skills workshops, most participants share with us that they sometimes use a mental checklist to plan their presentations. However, most admit they usually start developing their presentations by pulling PowerPoint slides together. By starting with slides, you have a plan for disaster.

Will a checklist like IWCC’s guarantee you success when you deliver your presentation? Of course not… nothing will! But, in-depth planning can sure increase your odds.

And, by the way, if you are presenting to Senior Management/Executives, knowing your audience is even more vital to your success. Presenting to this unique group has its own challenges.  Let’s face it, when presenting to executives, the rules are different, the expectations are greater and the stakes are higher.  So stop saying; “I wonder if” and “I wonder who” and “I hope they don’t ask”. Stop wondering - start planning.

Watch for our next BLOG in this series on July 29 ... “How will you know if your presentation was a success?”

IWCC Training is excited to announce a new BLOG series which will address the eight most significant challenges you face as a presenter. Take this opportunity to benefit from the insights we have gained from the thousands of people we work with every year in our eight different presentation skills workshops.

Please join us - you will be sure to take away some valuable tips about managing the fears, challenges and expectations that today's professionals face when they design and deliver presentations.

Look for the first BLOG in IWCC's presentation series on July 15.