PowerPoint Slide Makeover - Presenting performance against an acceptable range

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. When showing financial and operational performance against targets, it is common to use a table of figures. This makeover shows how to transform one of the measurements into a graph that effectively communicates to the audience that planned performance is within an acceptable range.

This slide was submitted by a participant in one of my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

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To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Getting the audience excited before your presentation

This is the description for the session I will present at the Annual Conference of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) next month in New Orleans:“Too many HR presentations look like the text of a manual was copied onto the slides. How can you create persuasive visuals when you aren’t a graphic designer? This session will show you a five-step process for creating persuasive visual slides that allow you to present in a conversational manner.”

Why do I share it with you? Because it illustrates how we can get the audience excited about our message before our presentation even starts. If you are presenting before colleagues or managers internally, in front of prospects and clients, or at conferences as I do, you want the audience to walk into the room positively anticipating what you will say. You can achieve this with a well-written description of your presentation that is included in a program, agenda or brochure.

I have learned a lot about writing descriptions of my work from the world of direct mail copywriting. These are the people who write the brochures, letters and e-mails that convince people to buy a wide variety of products or services, such as newsletters, health-care products or consumer goods. Here are a couple of tips that I’ve picked up that can help you.

First, you need to get into the mindset of the typical attendee at the presentation. What are the topics of greatest interest to them? What ideas would they be looking to take back and implement in their job or life? Note that this is very different than the typical approach of considering what we, as presenters, want to tell them. Second, make a specific promise of what an attendee will get from your session if they attend. A common technique is to use a numeric promise, such as five key lessons or six steps in a process. This helps convince people that attending your session will give them a measurable outcome.

Once you have written a great session description, you will find that your presentation is already well planned. This process forces us to narrow down all the ideas we could share and focus on what the audience needs to hear. Now we will deliver a focused message to an audience that is ready to hear it. I’d say that’s a winning formula for any presentation.

Can you condense your presentation into six words?

Six words?!? Am I joking? No.

I was intrigued by a recent contest being run by SpeakerNetNews (BTW, if you are in the speaking business and aren’t subscribing to this weekly e-mail newsletter, you are missing out big time – go to www.SpeakerNetNews.com and subscribe right now). They were inspired by a web site that collects six word stories and asked subscribers to submit a six word presentation. That’s right, only six words!

I took this as a challenge. If I was really clear on what my message was, I should be able to boil it down to six words. It took a few tries, but I condensed my presentation down to “Explain persuasive visuals, don’t read slides.” Let’s look at each word or phrase and what it means. First is the word “explain”. This means that what you say will add to what is shown visually. Next is “persuasive visuals”, which is a visual that has a headline, a visual in context, and focuses the audience on the key point that will be explained (tie back to the “explain” word). The last phrase, “don’t read slides”, is advising presenters to avoid the single most annoying thing that they can do, according to the audiences I have surveyed.

I thought I did quite well, and it seems like the judges agreed. My entry was one of the entries chosen to be voted on by subscribers at http://www.speakernetnews.com/six-word-speech-contest.html. If you are a subscriber, old or new, go and vote for your favourite in the different categories that they have. The results get announced after voting closes on May 25th.

How does this apply to your presentations? I think this is a great exercise. How clear are you on the purpose of your presentation? Could you boil it down to six words? If not, you may need to spend some time focusing on the real message you want to deliver. Clarity of purpose is probably the single thing you can do to improve your presentation the most. Once you are clear, you can direct every word or visual towards that purpose. Without clarity, you don’t exactly know where you are going and neither does your audience.

Try condensing your presentation down to six words and see how it forces you to clarify the purpose of your presentation.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover - Presenting a list

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. A common bullet point list is transformed by focusing on how to give the audience context and help them understand the information. It is not necessary to eliminate all text, but restructuring it often increases the effectiveness.

This slide was submitted by a participant in one of my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Handout that is not a slide printout

Recently I delivered a one hour concurrent session at a conference. Obviously I can’t deliver the same amount of information in one hour that I can in my customized full-day workshops for organizations. When I do a shorter presentation, I also consider whether I need to take a different approach to my handout.

Normally in my half-day or full-day workshops, my handout is a printout of most of my slides so that the audience doesn’t have to write down every point I am making and has the space to take notes on how they will implement the ideas I am sharing. Many people take these notes and keep them beside their desk for quick reference whenever creating a presentation because they have enough detail to act as a memory jogger about what I discussed.

With a one hour presentation, I take a different approach. I don’t view it as a training session, but more of an overview of ideas with a few details. It is not a scenario where people will be taking detailed implementation notes, but they will rather be taking notes of ideas they want to explore further in their own context. With a larger group in these shorter presentations, a substantial handout would also end up wasting a lot of paper since the organizer would likely end up printing more copies than the number of attendees.

In the conference presentation I did two weeks ago, I supplied a two page handout. On the first page, I summarized the five steps of the KWICK method that I would be discussing in the presentation. I left space for the participants to take notes on what they got from each section in the presentation. On the second page, I gave the audience resources for more information that they could pursue as it applied to them: web sites, books and videos. Whenever possible, I also include a visual of the book cover or web site home page so they know what to be looking for when going to these resources.

In your next presentation, determine what type of handout you should be using. Many financial presentations actually benefit from having a more detailed handout with all the analysis in it. The slides only convey the conclusions from the analysis, and are not cluttered with tables and charts. The presenter focuses on what the analysis and numbers mean to the audience without confusing them with an overload of numbers. If the audience wants to explore an area further, the presenter can turn off the slides temporarily and delve into the detailed handout with the audience.

The default handout when using PowerPoint has been a printout of the slides. I hope with the examples and ideas in today’s tip, you can now consider the best handout approach for each presentation.