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!