Preparing a Presentation

When you are under pressure at work it can be difficult to allocate the appropriate amount of time to preparing a presentation that you have been asked to give. But as we all know “failing to plan is planning to fail” and this has never be more true when it comes to giving a presentation.

There are three main parts to preparing a presentation:

• Deciding what to say.
• Deciding how to say it.
• Preparing yourself to say it.

What to say

Let’s start with “Deciding what to say”, this is really all about your audience and what you would like them to do. What do you want your presentation to achieve? What is your objective? How will you know if you have achieved your objective? You need to be really clear on what your aim is, so take some time at the start to work out why you are giving the presentation and what you want it to achieve. If you can write this down in one or two sentences you will have a good foundation for your presentation.

Having decided your objective, then start thinking about your audience. Who are they? Why are they coming to listen to you? What do they know about the topic already? What is it that they want or need to hear? The more you can find out about your audience the more accurately you can pitch your presentation to meet their needs and desires. When addressing a mixed audience try to define two or three different segments of your audience and create two or three alternative scenarios.

Having established why and who, it is then time to start thinking and researching what it is your going to say. Having a structure to fit the points you want to make in to is very helpful. One structure I have used successfully many times is to start by outlining the problems with the current way of doing something and the describing a vision of success, a picture of how it could be if things were different. Then go one to describe how this vision could be attained, summarizing all the benefits of the approach, inviting the audience to join you in achieving this vision which you can then restate at the end of the presentation. Don’t be tempted to add in everything that you can think of, maintain a structure. Three key points backed up by evidence or anecdotes is usually sufficient for most presentations.

It is at this point that many people make the mistake of opening PowerPoint and creating lists of slides titles and bullet points. While bullet points may be a useful way to document the points you wish to make in a speech, they do not make good visual aids.

How to Say it

Having pulled all you material together and being familiar with the main point you wish to get across, you can now turn to planning how you are going to convey this information. Are you going to stand and talk? Will you have any props to help get the message across? Will you use visual aids and if so what will they be? Are you going to tell a story? How will you involve your audience? Will you ask them questions?

Rehearse your presentation by saying it out loud. Sitting at your desk clicking though a set of slides is no way to rehearse a presentation. You need to say it out loud to become familiar with your material and to become accustomed to saying the words. By rehearsing a presentation out loud you can develop the phraseology which will work best in the spoken form, rather than the more formal style of language we use when we are writing. A single rehearsal will improve your speech by up to 80%.

You don’t need to have anyone listening to you especially the first time through, although it can help to tape record or video record your presentation rehearsal so that you get a clear view of what you actually sound and look like. I often turn off the radio and rehearse a presentation in the car on the way to the location. It is a great way to rehearse and the presentation and make sure you know what you are going to say, plus it is fresh in your mind when you arrive.

Preparing to say it

Finally, you need to put yourself in the right frame of mind for giving a presentation. If you do not feel confident you need to address it. Tell yourself that being nervous is OK, in fact, if it is an important presentation it is perfectly normal to feel nervous, you just want to recognise that you are nervous and put it to one side, while you get on with the job in hand.

Use confident boosting techniques like telling your self that you are “Poised, prepared, persuasive, positive and powerful “ and that you feel, “composed, confident, convincing, commanding and compelling”.

To counteract a dry mouth, suck a mint beforehand. Use breathing techniques to ensure there is sufficient oxygen in your bloodstream or take some gentle exercise beforehand. Wear clothes that make you feel good. Remember, the facts will only take your audience so far, it is your passion for the subject and your emotion that will lift your presentation to new heights.

Make sure you arrive at the venue, nice and early, so that you have time to get set up and familiarise your self with the surroundings, before your audience arrive. Work out where you are going to put any notes, or props you intend using and think through how any equipment you are going to use will work. Check any pens have ink in them, check your laptop to ensure the screen save, or instant messaging won’t pop up in the middle of your presentation and make sure your mobile is on silent.

Don’t rely on an off the cuff presentation, just because you know about the topic doesn’t mean you can effortlessly give a quality presentation, it takes time, it takes thought and it takes practise.

3D Presentations

There are three dimensions to every presentation:

• The verbal – i.e. the words you use
• The vocal – i.e. the way you say those words
• The visual – i.e. what people see while you are saying the words

You may think that the words you choose are the most important part of your presentation but by saying the same words with different vocal intonations you can convey different meanings. If you reciteyour presentation in a monotone voice and a constant pace most of your audience will get bored and stop listening. So the vocal aspect is in many ways more important then the words you choose. Of course the words do matter as nobody has ever made a multi-million pound sale by reciting nursery rhymes, no matter how well they recited them.

Is the visual impact more important the tone of voice? If you believe the old proverbs like “Seeing is believing”, “I saw it with my own eyes” or Confucius saying “I hear, I forget, I see I remember…” , then you would have to assume that it is.

Personally, I find it difficult to keep up a conversation while the television is on, because I am constantly attracted to the visual stimulus of the TV, rather than the aural stimulus of the other person’s voice.

This leads me to believe that the visual is more important than the vocal, which in turn is more important than the verbal aspects of a presentation. This also tallies with the research Alfred Mehrabian carried out in the 1960’s which showed that in one on one conversations the words contributed 7% of the message, the way they were said was 38% and the visual aspects were 55% of the communication.

However, more important than any one of these dimensions, is the fact the every dimension has to be synchronised with each other. The brain is very good at spotting things which are out-of-place, or not in sync with each other. If for instance, as part of your presentation, you introduce an exciting new product you need to do so in an excited tone of voice. If you yawned as you said it the words and the tone of voice would contradict the words and it would no longer be believable.

Similarly if you display a slide which says one thing and you talk about something else, or even talk about the same thing but use different words, the audience will become confused and not know which to believe, you or your slides. There are two ways round this, either say exactly what is on your slides (very boring and not good practise) or have slides with minimal text so they can’t contradict you.

In normal everyday conversations the intonations in our voice and the associated body language all come quite naturally, we don’t really have to think about it, unless we are trying to cover something up. The same is true when you are presenting. Assuming that you believe what you are saying, you need not worry about using the right tonal expression or having the right body language, just let it come naturally. It is only when you are thinking something different, from the words that you are saying, that you need to make a conscious effort to control your body language and control your tone of voice.

My advice is to make sure you only talk about things you believe in, or believe in everything you have to talk about.

20 Tips for an Effective Presentation

1.  Always use PowerPoint. By using PowerPoint everyone will understand you better because if they missed what you said, they can still read it on the slides. For this reason it is important that you get everything you are going to say on to your slides.
2. Pictures can be misleading, and can easily be misconstrued, so stick to text on your slides.
3. To make the slides look more interesting by using a colourful but consistent background. Always include your company’s logo, on every slide, to help strengthen your brand image.
4. Use the standard PowerPoint template which includes slide # of ## in the footer, so that your audience knows where you are in your presentation.
5. If you are using charts, create them in Excel and then copy them across with all the labelling etc intact. This means that people will be able to understand the slides in detail when they look at them after your presentation.
6. Handouts are essential; always give out copies of your slides as handouts before you start.
7. If you’re nervous beforehand, drink lots of Irish coffee or a quick shot of tequila, you soon won’t notice the nerves.
8. Always start a presentation by telling people your name and who you work for, a bit of family history wouldn’t go a miss either. Just so you audience can get to know you as a person.
9. Anyone who is a bit shy and doesn’t like looking people in the eye should present staring at a point on the back wall, or looking at the tops of people’s heads.
10. You want to make sure that you are heard and understood, so speak very clearly, enunciate every single word with care. If you speak quietly it makes people listen harder, so that they are more attentive.
11. Keep your hands still, if you find them waving about put both hands in your pockets.
12. Don’t worry about remembering everything you are going to say, you can always look at your slides to remind you of the key points and any detailed data.
13. Emotions have no place in business so just stick to the facts, don’t be tempted to use emotional language as this can be misunderstood.
14. Don’t try to personalise your presentation or refer to individual audience members and their experiences, you may end up alienating the rest of the audience.
15. Only talk about things you know about e.g. yourself and your experiences. After all presentations are great opportunities to boost your own ego.
16. Humour is good in most presentations so start with a joke, the bluer the better.
17. Keep drinking the water provided, no matter how dry your throat gets.
18. When presenting to an industry audience it is OK to use lots of jargon and technical terminology, after all they should all know what the TLA’s stand for.
19. Always end a presentation by asking who has a question they would like answered.
20. If in doubt just do what everyone else does, they will all be asleep anyway.

Finally, never present on the morning of 1^st April

Fool

Interactive Presentations

Any one who follows me or has been on one of my presentation training courses will know I am a proponent of interactive presentations. The more your audience participates in your presentation the longer and better they will remember it. As Confucius once said “I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand”

With small audiences gaining that participation is relatively easy but the larger the audience gets the harder it becomes. The other day I came across a new product from a dutch company which will change this forever. It is called Shakespeak and essentially what it allows people to do is interact with your PowerPoint presentation using their mobile phone.

In PowerPoint you can set up either a multiple choice closed question or an open question, then when you arrive at that part of your presentation, everyone can phone in their answers, using SMS, an internet link or Twitter. The responses are then shown on the next slide, as a chart or a list of text.

There is no need for any expensive polling equipment, as everyone has a mobile these days, all you need is a laptop with an internet connection running PowerPoint.

The service is very easy to use and enables you to find out exactly what your audience are thinking there and then. You no longer have to rely on their body language or facial expressions to work out if they are interested in what you are saying, you can ask them. In educational sessions, you can check if they are understanding what you are teaching, by dropping in the occasional question. New product launches could be made more interactive by asking how people might use the new product. Sales presentations could prompt for current problems that need to be addressed. Rather than leaving people feeling uncertain you could prompt them to send in any questions they might have, so that you can answer them there and then.

Answers to open questions can be up to 160 characters long so there is ample space to pose a question or express a sentiment.

So get your thinking caps on about what questions you could be asking your audiences, make you presentations more interactive, more memorable and more effective. You can even try Shakespeak for free, just download it from their website.

By the way, I have no association with this product or the company, I just think it is a great new tool.

Ban the Bullets

Around the world, in every office, conference room and meeting room, every minute, of every day people are standing up giving presentations with a list of bullet points displayed on the screen behind them. Now just because millions of people do it does it make it right? The short answer is NO !

Using bullet points in your presentations is:

• Lazy
• Ineffective
• Futile

They rarely help the overall communications process which the presentation is trying to achieve.

While it is true that the human memory is better at retaining visual information rather than aural information, using bullet points distracts the listener from what the presenter is saying while they read the bullets. Then when the presenter repeats what the audience has just read, it is old news. And we all know how boring it is to hear old news repeated!

If, in an attempt to be more interesting, the presenter rephrases the bullet points in his oration this just ends up confusing the audience as they hear one thing but see something different.

So using bullet points in your presentation is a “lose-lose” situation.

Why do so many people use bullet points? I believe they are a bi-product of the presentation’s development. When you are developing your thoughts for a presentation is very useful to write down short bullet points and to be able to re-order, add and delete points as you think through your presentation. The result being a sheet or sheets of paper covered with a long list of bullet points. The problem comes when people transcribe these bullets into the presentation software.

This usually happens for one of to reasons:

A)     The presenter doesn’t know any better.

B)     The presenter feels that he/she needs the reminders to help them present the information and keep the presentation on track.

In the latter case, I would suggest that the bullet points are transcribed on to the speaker’s notes, not the slides. That way the speaker can be reminded of what to say, without broadcasting it in advance to his audience.

Using the slides to remind you what to say turns the whole process of giving a presentation on its head. Rather than the presenter leading the presentation with the visual aids supporting what he says, it makes the slides lead the presentation with the presenter demoted to the role of describing what the slides say. In the worst cases the presenter becomes completely redundant as the audience can read the slides and understand the points themselves. The “presenter” would have been better off sending everyone an email, far more efficient.

Hopefully, I have now convinced you that bullet points are not good for your presentations. This raises the next question; what else should you put on our visual aids, or should we do away with the slides altogether?

Personally, I believe slides can help get your message across and help to make it more memorable. After all it was Confucius who once said, “I hear I forget, I see I remember”. What should go on the slides though? Well the clue is in the name, “visual aids”. Your slides should conjure up strong mental images which reinforce what you are saying.

The best example of this I have come across was in a presentation about global warming. The speaker was making the point that what happens in relation to global warming is all down us as individuals. To illustrate the point that one person can make a difference he put up a slide with three images: “American policemen beating up a black person”,”Martin Luther King” and “President Barack Obama”, what a change in one generation!

So I appeal to your better judgement, Ban the Bullets, be more creative and make your presentations work.

If you agree with me the bullet points should be banned from professional presentations, please add you name in the comments box below or take my poll

Presentation Perfection

I came across a quotation the other day from Antoine de Saint Exupery, a French aviator and writer, he said:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

This seems like the ideal quotation to apply to your presentations. The best presentations, or for that matter, demonstrations are the ones that say what needs to be said and no more.

There are three types of presentation, informative, influential and entertaining. In business, purely entertaining presentations are rare, except for after dinner speeches. So let us look at the other two types, informative and influential.

Influential presentations usually have a single goal, to get you audience to do something or feel something differently at the end than they did at the outset. To change their behaviour. If all that was required was to tell them to do it and they would capitulate then there is no need for the presentation, just the final call to action.

Where there is some reluctance to change the presentation needs to overcome this inertia by stating the case for change. Another article I read recently “How facts backfire”, discusses how if someone has a view on a subject and you set out very clear, indisputable facts that they were wrong, you might think that they would change their mind. Well research shows that many of us don’t! In fact, we often became even more strongly set in our beliefs.

Here are a few quotes from the article:

• Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds.
• And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information.
• But instead, it appears that misinformed people often have some of the strongest political opinions.

My thanks to David Gurteen for highlighting this article, in his January newsletter, and to The Boston Globe for publishing it.

So, facts are not enough to overcome this inertia, you need to gain an emotional buy in to that change which is strong enough to overcome each individual’s pre-held beliefs.

Once you have written your presentation go back through it and ask yourself the question “Do I need this bit? Does it directly help to sustain the call to action at the end?” and of course the better you understand the pre-held beliefs of your audience the more likely you are to be able to address those beliefs and overcome them.

For purely informational presentations, where you are educating your audience but are not concerned by what the do with this new found knowledge, then you will have no call to action at the end of the presentation. In this case perfection, is achieved by only telling them what they need/want to know and nothing else. Don’t teach them things they already know or dive in to too much unnecessary detail. This means you need to have a good understanding of what you audience already know, and the level of knowledge they would like to reach.

Which brings us back to one of the prime principles of a good presentation: “Know thy audience”.

 All the best with your presentations.

Graham Young

Informative or Educational Presentations

In an earlier entry in this blog entitles “Sales Presentation Training”, I made the slightly controversial statement that “I would venture to suggest that if it is irrelevant what people do with the knowledge you impart through your presentation your presentation itself becomes irrelevant and there is no point in giving it.”

I now recognise that this statement was misplaced. In the article I was putting forward the argument that a business presentation is invariably trying to sell something, whether it is a product/service/solution or possibly just and idea or new way of working. As a result, the best structure for a business presentation is that of a sales presentation, where you establish the need, by outlining a pain or problem, create a vision of success that your audience can buy into and then describe how you can achieve that vision and the benefits that it accrues.

Many business presentations do fit this structure and identifying the problem to be solved at the outset, is often a very good approach. However, my views are starting to mellow, and I now recognise that it is possible to justify giving a presentation, even though you are ambivalent as to what your audience do with the information you provide. In these cases the objective of the presentation is merely to inform or educate and you leave the decision of what to do with this new knowledge purely in the hands of your audience. The choice as to whether you educate your audience through a presentation rather than any other media is based on the effectiveness of the media.

So given that you want to create and deliver a purely educational presentation the question then is how should you structure it. My starting point is the same as it is for a selling presentation. You need to start by thinking about what you would like your audience to be able to do or feel after your presentation is finished and how this differs from before it. This statement suggests you already know what they can or do do now. If you don’t it may be best to try to find out in advance of your presentation or you run the risk of “teaching your grandmother to suck eggs”.

There are two ways to tackle the next part, either to choose a structure and then fill it in, or brainstorm anything and everything to do with the subject, and see what structures emerge, by collating the results of the brainstorming session.

Which ever way you choose to do it, you must have a structure, it is imperative. A loose collection of facts and opinions is of little use.

There are many structures you can use but most of the best have 3 legs or sections.

For instance you could structure the presentation in chronological order, This is how we used to do it, this is how it is done now, and this is what we propose for the future.

You can use problem /solution/benefit models, describe the problem, describe how it could be solved and then state the benefits of doing so. This is close to the classic sales presentation model.

With the” tell-show-do” structure you tell your audience how to do something, show them it and then let them have a go, this is a very participative form of presentation, which may not always be suitable for larger audiences.

If the audience needs to make a decision, then describe the alternative scenarios and the pros and cons of each. The phrases “on one hand…” followed by “on the other hand…”,  “or there is the middle course…” often works well in this situation.

If none of the above work for you, choose 3 key points, consider each of these point s as the peak of a pyramid and amass around each pyramid the supporting evidence and consequences of adopting that key point. If you find that much of the supporting evidence is relevant to 2 or more pyramids, you may decided to combine those pyramids and create a new pyramid for a different key point. Aim for 3 pyramids and definitely no more than 5.

Now refine your information, cut out weaker supporting arguments, augment with stronger ones with statistical or anecdotal evidence. Keep in mind who your audience are and review your presentation by asking the question,” will my audience care about this point?” as you go through it point by point.

Once the body of the presentation is complete there are 3 other things to do.

1. Think up an attention grabbing opening. Something your audience is not expecting, a rhetorical question, or a well know quotation all work well.
2. Decide on your call to action, or concluding assertion which summarises what you want people to do or to think after your presentation. This should be the last thing you say before you sit down, if you continue to talk after your final call to action or assertion it will lose its effectiveness.
3. Create some good visual aids which illustrate the points that you are making, if you are using PowerPoint or similar, do not be tempted to write text bullets on your slides, which remind you what to say. Any such notes as these should be confined to your speaker notes not presented to your audience. Instead try to think of some mentally stimulating images which emphasise the points you are making.

Finally don’t forget to rehearse your presentation out loud, so that when you give it you do so with passion, enthusiasm and conviction.

 You can get more tips on effective presentations from my presentation training website.

Presentation or Facilitation

Presentation or Facilitation what’s the difference and when should you use these different styles of communication.

These are two different ways to lead people to new knowledge and new ways of thinking, in both cases you are leading the communication and need a clear idea of what you want to happen and where the conversation should be leading.

Let’s start by looking at the difference between giving a presentation and facilitating a meeting or discussion. 

When you are giving a presentation you will already have a clear idea of what you want your audience to do with the information you are presenting. You should have a clear and measurable objective so that you know if your presentation was a success. As a presenter you will probably  know more about the specific subject on which you are presenting than most of your audience, your role is to impart that knowledge and motivate your audience into taking a pre-defined action or series of actions, which will fulfil your objective for the presentation. Your overriding objective must be to gain agreement between the audience and your idea.

To be successful when giving a presentation a good presenter should be:

• Confident
• Knowledgeable (of subject, presentation structure and audience)
• Enthusiastic
• Humourous (possibly)
• Able to speak clearly and passionately
• Prepared and practised
• empathetic with audience

When facilitating, rather than imposing your own ideas on to the group, the objective is to encourage the group to find their own solutions. In this role it is not your knowledge and opinions that matter but rather the knowledge and opinions of the rest of the group. The aim of facilitation should be to create understanding rather than purely generating agreement. 

A good facilitator should be:

• humble
• generous
• patient
• understanding
• accepting
• inclusive
• an encourager
• an enabler
• affirming of everyone’s knowledge
• sensitive to the needs of others
• willing to learn from mistakes
• dynamic, a motivator
• a good listener
• good at summarising others’ ideas
• confident

Many presentations focus on providing solutions to a stated problem, with the presenter having already solved the problem in their own mind prior to the presentation. In facilitation the objective is to remain independent, rather than trying to gain approval for a predefined solution, and there by encourage discussion which leads the participants to find their own solution.

Why as a subject matter expert  would you want to run a facilitated session when you already have a good idea of how to solve a particular problem?

As an acknowledged expert you may feel it would be easier to give a presentation and tell people what the solution should be, however using facilitation techniques invariably increases the participation in the session and when done well the group will believe that they actually created the solution. This gives them the feeling of ownership, not just of the problem but of the solution as well. Which in turn makes it far more likely that they will follow through to implement the course of action that has been decided upon.

This is in line with my second rule for making a presentation memorable ( The “Just Do It” rule), which says if you want people to remember your presentation they need to be actively involved in the presentation. If your audience just sit and listen, nodding their heads occasionally, they will soon forget everything you have said.

Added to that,no matter how experienced an expert you might be, there are often extra dimensions to a problem or solution which are thrown up through an organised and well facilitated session.

So next time you have to give a presentation, as long as the content is not too technical, think about how you could turn it into a facilitated session where the audience do the work. You may still need a short presentation to set the ground work, get people thinking in the right direction and pose the open-ended question to stimulate discussion, but then with some guidance your audience may reach their own conclusions and surprise you by their commitment to their solution

The One Minute Presentation

With the rise of networking meetings the need to be able to give an effective presentation in only 60 seconds has become increasingly important. These short speeches, sometimes called  “elevator pitches” compress all the rules of presenting in to one short burst.

Think about the objective of your talk. Is it to sell your products and services? I think not. Networking groups do not usually like the high pressure sales pitch and no matter how simple your product or service is I doubt that you could do it justice in 60 seconds.

I suggest that the objective for your talk is to spark an interest so that anyone who is interested can find you and talk about it in more detail later. It may also be to make people remember you and what you do, so that if and when they hear someone else asking for help in that area they will remember you and pass on your details.

Are you good at remembering people names? Most people are not good at remembering your name unless they are already interested in you and think it might be important to remember your name. So starting your 60 seconds with your name and your company’s name is a complete waste of time.

What you should do is put a spin on what you do to make it more unexpected, more interesting and therefore more memorable. I run presentation skills training, so I might start by saying “I teach business people how to talk, for those of you who already know how to talk, I’ll teach you how to make people listen.”  For an accountant rather than saying “I’m a chartered accountant with 35 years experience in handling the accounts for small businesses” you might start with “I count beans”, for a florist “I soften wills and strengthen hearts”  for a copywriter “I put your thoughts and emotions into other people’s heads”.  I’m sure you understand the idea, you want some intrigue in your introduction.

Having established what you do, the best way to make it memorable is to tell a story. One with which your fellow networking friends can associate. Tell them about a funny incident or a particular success you have had recently.

I always remember a story by a guy who works in data recovery. He told me one of their clients called him from his hotel room in New York. The client had just arrived in town to give a major presentation the following morning. Unfortunately, while out sightseeing he had dropped his laptop and it had been run over by a Yellow Cab. The laptop was ruined and it held the only copy of his presentation.  Luckily, he remember putting my contacts number on his phone a few weeks before.  He called, my contact then called the local agent, who sent someone out to the hotel, recovered the data and enabled the presentation to go ahead as planned the next morning.

Finally, end the presentation with your name and your call to action. There is a much greater chance that they will remember your name, once they are interested in what you do. And of course, no business presentation is complete without a call to action which tells the audience what you would like them to do.  For me that call to action is “Give me a day – I’ll change how you give a presentation, for ever”

Dire State of Presentation Skills

In 2009 Young Markets has been running a survey on the way people give presentations. Given all the publicity and material available on the internet about how to give an Effective presentation,  the message doesn’t appear to be getting through.

An astounding 73% of people rely on their slides to remind them what to say next with 83% revealing a whole side of bullet points at one time.

The vast majority of people are still using their slides as handouts, either before or after their talk.

With presentations techniques such as these being so common it is no wonder that the vast majority of audiences suffer from “death by PowerPoint” and that presentations are boring people to death.

If you are one of the majority of people who rely on your bullet point slides during a presentation, you are probably thinking what is so wrong with that. After all, it is what most people do. I’ll let you in to a secret; that is exactly what I used to do as well. But now I have seen the error of my ways, I now realise how boring it makes it for your audience.

I am not one of the anti-PowerPoint brigade or even anti-Prezi  who believes you should give a presentation without any slides. I believe that slides add value to a presentation and can help to make a presentation memorable and motivational, but only if they are used in the right way.

So what is so bad about relying on your slides to remind you of the key points, what is so bad about having a number of bullet points on the screen and what is so bad about using copies of your slides as handouts?

Essentially, it all boils down to one thing. Using slides in this way will let your audience get ahead of you. The slides will tell them what you are going to talk about next.  And as everyone knows there is no point listening to someone when you already know what they are about to say.

Speaker notes, visual aids and handouts are three completely separate things with completely different objectives. Your speaker notes are to remind you what to say. Your visual aids should be designed to accompany your words and create strong mental images for people to remember.  And your  handouts need to be stand alone documents  that cover not just the slides but what you said as well. By planning to use the slides as speaker notes you tell the audience what you are about to say. By using the slides as handouts you tend to overfill the slides so they still make complete sense even without your words. Both of these things will ruin a presentation.

Most of the time, the bullet points on a slide make excellent speaker notes, so use them as that and think up new visuals for the slides that you will share with your audience. The write down your talk and put it along side the slides in a PDF document which you can have as a handout, to give to people after your presentation.

If you are confronted with a pre-written corporate presentation that you have to use, which has lots of bullet points in it, then my advice is to use bullet point reveal facilities of the presentation software to display the bullets one at a time, and then talk about each topic and bring the bullet point up after you have talked about it. This has the affect of reinforcing what you have just said, rather than pre-announcing it and making your words superfluous.

Just because the majority of other people do it, doesn’t make it right. Stop, relying on your slides, stop displaying bullet point text and stop giving copies of your slides as handouts. Your audiences will thank you for it.

To find out more about how to structure and give an Effective Business Presentation visit my presentation training website  or book a place on one of my presentation courses.