Handling Slides with Bullet Points

Your manager asks you to give a company presentation at a forthcoming event and very kindly provides you with a set of PowerPoint slides for the presentation.

The only problem is the slides are rather “old school”. Lots of bullet points but not much by the way of graphics which would conjure up strong mental images, in the minds of your audience.

While having so many bullet points makes it easier to remember what it is you should be saying, the problem is that if you bring up a slide with lots of text the first thing your audience will do is read the slide. This means that anything you say is effectively “old news”. They have just read about it.

You have three options:

1. Give the presentation as is and bore your audience by effectively reading what it says of the slides.
2. Re-write the whole presentation replacing the bullet point text with appropriate images and graphics. Great if you have the time.
3. Copy the text into the speaker notes, set the animation to display one point at a time. Then when you give the presentation only display each bullet point after you have talked about it.

This has the effect of the slide endorsing what you have just said, rather than pre-announcing what you are going to say.

Why did I say “Copy the text into the speaker notes”? Well even for a topic with which you are very familiar it is very difficult to remember exactly what is on the next bullet point. So by copying the text into the speaker notes you can use the “Presenter View” facility in PowerPoint, which enables you to see the speaker notes on your laptop while your audience only sees the slide. You can then use the bullet points as your speaker notes and always ensure you make the visual aids back up what you have just said.

Remember the presenter should lead the presentation backed up by some good visual aids. By relying on your slides to remind you what to say, the slides are now leading the presentation backed up by the presenter. As a general rule you should keep your speaker notes separate from your visual aids.

Why bother giving a presentation?

For many people just the idea of having to give a presentation is a nerve wracking idea. The thought of having to stand up in front of a room full of people fills them with dread. Even for the more experienced presenter there is a lot of work and effort that has to go into creating a presentation.

You need to structure your thoughts, work out what will be relevant and of interest to your specific audience, possibly create some visuals, rehearse it a few times, write cue cards, in case the nerves take over and you forget what it was you decided to say, arrange the venue, invite people to attend and chase them up to make sure they attend on time. Even a short presentation can take many hours, days or weeks to prepare.

So why bother? Why not just send out an email and hope that people read it?

In my humble opinion there are a few reasons why presentations are worth the effort.

1. Firstly, it is very difficult to convey emotion in an email and in the main it is the passion and emotion that you put into a presentation which makes the difference. No matter how many facts and figures you quote in your presentation, it is your enthusiasm that will generate the emotional buy-in which in turn will sway an audience.

2. By giving a relevant, entertaining and interesting presentation you can hold an audience’s attention for far longer then it would take them to skim through an email. This means they will give more thought to what it is you are saying and are more likely to remember the salient points.

3. Presentations should be about more than knowledge transfer. If all you are doing in a presentation is relating facts and figures, you are wasting a great opportunity. Effective presentations should be designed to influence people. Designed and delivered in such a way as to make your audience think or do something, which they would not have done had it not been for the presentation.

4. Giving presentations is good for your career prospects. Everyone remembers the person standing at the front of the room not the people sitting at the back. Welcome any opportunity to present in front of your colleagues and managers, it will raise your status in your organisation and you will be more likely to gain promotion.

Of course, the validity of the points above depends on the effectiveness of your presentation. Standing nervously and reading the bullet points from a series of slides is never likely to have a positive outcome.

Why on earth am I saying this in a blog? When I have stated that a presentation is a far more effective method of communication, particularly when you need to influence your audience.

Well, needs must, but what I recommend is that you take time out from your daily routine to attend one of my presentation skills courses where you can experience the passion I have for creating and delivering effective presentations. You will learn how to create and deliver presentations that are targeted, memorable and will influence your audience to your way of thinking.

Public Courses are running in:

Basingstoke on 5th July 2017
Camberley on 9th August 2017
Reading on 6th September 2017

I can also arrange dedicated in-house training and/or coaching at your convenience.

Please call on 01276 502257 or email graham.young@youngmarkets.co.uk to arrange a session.

Presentation Myths and Folklore – Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2 of this series are already up on my blog. In this article I tackle five more common presentation myths:

“My slides help me to remember what I am supposed to say”

 “Communication is 55% visual, 38% vocal and only 7% the words that you use”

“Adding a picture or clip art to your slides makes them better ”

 “There is an optimum number of slides for a presentation”

“Our presentations are very technical so you won’t be able to teach us anything about how to give them”

1. “My slides help me to remember what I am supposed to say”

At first glance this may seem fairly innocuous, but I think is is one of the most common and damning mistakes a presenter can make. Relying on your slides to remind you what to talk about next perverts the whole process of giving a presentation.

When giving a presentation, the presenter should lead the presentation supported by their visual aids. When you rely on your slides you inevitably bring each slide up before you start talking about that sub-topic. This means the slides are now leading the presentation and the presenter has been relegated to the role of describing what the slides say.  The audience will read the slide quite quickly, and then, depending on the content of the slide, they will probably have a good idea of what it is your are about to say. This makes the presenter redundant.

In general, the best way to use slides is to start talking about a topic and then bring up the visual aid to support your statements.

2. “Communication is 55% visual, 38% vocal and only 7% the words that you use”

These statistics come from two separate studies carried out in the 1960’s by Alfred Merhabian, who was investigating how people communicate their emotions and attitudes. As with most statistics, these figures have been used to “prove” a wide range of different assertions about how you give a presentation and the relative importance of the three different aspects of a presentation.

What they don’t mean is that the words of your presentation are not important but as Mehrabian says, “when actions contradict words, people rely more heavily on actions to infer another’s feelings.”

For my part the important lesson to be learnt from these statistics is that all three aspects of your presentation, the words you say, how you say those words, and what the audience see while you say the words, have to be in-sync and giving a consistent message. If they are not consistent, the visual message will outweigh the aural message, which in turn outweighs the words spoken.

3. “Adding a picture or clip art to your slides makes them better ”

Over the last ten or fifteen years, there is a general trend in presentation skills training to promote the use of images and pictures in visual aids. Statements like “a picture is worth a 1,000 words” and “every picture tells a story” are fairly commonplace. This started with the introduction of clip art and has since expanded to include high resolution photographic images as computer processing power has increased to support the media.

While I won’t argue with the sentiment that a picture is worth 1,000 words, I do question whether adding a picture to the right of a set of bullet points is actually adding any value to a slide. A similar fate has tended to befall blogs. Often, at the start of a blog article is a picture which in some way relates to the content of the blog. The number of blogs about presentation myths, which I researched prior to writing this article, that have a picture of a unicorn  at the start is quite remarkable.

Of course an appropriate image is far better than a list of bullet points, which should be avoided at all costs.

 

4. “There is an optimum number of slides for a presentation”

Over the years I have heard an enormous variety in terms of the number of slides that should be used in a presentation. Anything from zero to one every 10 seconds.

The slides should be the last part of developing a presentation. Once you have worked out what you are going to say and how you are going to structure the presentation, then you can start thinking about the slides. The slides should be considered as an additional layer in your presentation which will help to make it an interesting and memorable experience for your audience. Your slides are not your presentation!

As such there is no right number.

5. “Our presentations are very technical so you won’t be able to teach us anything about how to give them”

This myth is something I come across when I am promoting my presentation skills training, but I thought it would be worth including. This view is often held by engineers, scientists and technology leaders. They believe that their technology is so specialized that anybody who has not worked in their industry, or in some cases in their company, would be unable view to help them improve their presentations.

I think this is akin to someone saying that only a sports coach who can run faster than Usain Bolt could coach Usain into running faster.

A good trainer or coach does not need a deep understanding of the topic of a presentation to help people create and deliver such a presentation. What they do need is a knowledge and understanding of both the art and science of presenting.

I wish you every success with your future presentations

All the Best

Graham

http://www.businespresentation.biz

 

Presentation Myths and Folklore – Part 2

This is the second in a series of blogs which examines the truth behind a number of presentation myths. Part 1 is here.

In this article I examine:

“People remember more if they see it as well as hear it”

“What you have to say is so interesting it is worth over running for”

“If you don’t like looking people in the eye, look over their heads or at a point on the back wall”

“You need an ice breaker like a joke at the start of a presentation”

“If your mouth is dry, drink some water”

1. “People remember more if they see it as well as hear it”

While this is basically true, it depends on what it is people are seeing while they hear your words. Far too often people display text heavy slides in the belief that putting the text on the slide will help their audience remember what it is they have said. It won’t!

Displaying a slide full of text acts as a distraction to your presentation. Your audience will stop listening to you while they read your text. If you then say the same thing as the text on the slide, you will be accused of reading the slides, which is a serious faux pas and leads to the dreaded “death by PowerPoint”.

Alternatively if you say something different from what is displayed on your slide you will just confuse your audience.

In my humble opinion, bullet points should be banned from presentations. If you are not convinced please read the article “Ban the Bullets“.

That said, the visual aspects of your presentation are very important, and in many cases will take precedence over the spoken word. To make people remember your presentation you may want to use some pictures and diagrams that conjure up strong mental images or even better get your audience to do something, as recommended by Confucius in his saying “I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand”

 

2. “What you have to say is so interesting it is worth over running for”

This particular myth is one I still have a problem with. I know I should always finish a presentation with in my allotted time, but knowing it and doing it are two different things.

For many people, like myself, time flies by when you are giving a presentation. You find that you know more about your subject than you thought you did, you come up with new analogies and descriptions to clarify the points you are making and all of a sudden you are at the end of your allotted time but with lots more still to say.

Your audience show no signs of boredom, but should you go on or should you shut up and sit down? In every single case the answer has to be to shut up. It doesn’t matter how well you think your presentation is going or how important the points you have yet to make are, there can be no good reason for over running.

In the extreme example, when you are one of the later speakers in a series of presentations, and the speakers before you have overrun, meaning you are late starting your presentation, my advice would be to cut your presentation short so that you still finish on the original schedule. Although you get to say less, you will be the hero of the event. Both the audience and the event organizers will appreciate your concise delivery and you will be invited back another time.

3. “If you don’t like looking people in the eye, look over their heads or at a point on the back wall”

Eye contact is very important when you are giving a presentation but for many novice presenters establishing eye contact with your audience can be daunting. The advice that is often given is to give the presentation looking at a point on the back wall, or looking at the tops of people’s heads rather than into their eyes. I think this is terrible advice. People can tell that you are not looking at them. You need to look your audience in there eyes as you give the presentation. Start by looking at the people who are giving nice “facial echoes”. The ones that are smiling back and clearly enjoying what you are saying. Then look at the others, a different person for each phrase or sentence.

4. “You need an ice breaker like a joke at the start of a presentation”

“What makes a good ice-breaker?” is a question which is often posed on on-line forums. In my view jokes and ice-breakers are the worst ways to start a business presentation. Most business audiences are not expecting a joke and are not in the right mood to laugh at it, so it will often fall flat.

The best ways to open a presentation are discussed here.

5. “If your mouth is dry, drink some water”

Having a dry mouth is one of the normal signs of nervous tension, but if you drink the water, you will find that your mouth tends to get dryer and then you will want to drink more and more. You are better to leave it to your body’s natural reaction to a dry mouth, which is to generate more saliva than to wash any saliva that is there, by drinking the water.

Sucking a mint before your presentation will help generate the saliva you need to avoid a dry mouth, and is far more effective than drinking the water. Alternatively, you can gently bite the inside of your cheeks, which will also make you salivate.

It is of course wise to have a drink to hand in case you start coughing or to act as a temporary diversion while you gather your thoughts to answer a question.

 

So there go another few presentation myths. In the next article in the series I will look at:

“My slides help me to remember what I am supposed to say”

 “Communication is 55% visual, 38% vocal and only 7% the words that you use”

“Adding a picture or clip art to you slides makes then better ”

 “There is an optimum number of slides for a presentation”

“Our presentations are very technical so you won’t be able to teach us anything about how to give them”

If you have any favourite myths about giving a presentation, please let me know by adding a comment below.

All the Best

Graham

Presentation Folklore and Myths – Part 1

Ask most people how to give a good presentation and the response is likely to include a few common myths that are often regurgitated. Rather than help you to give a great presentation these snippets of presentation folklore will often be a hindrance and not a help.

This is the first in a series of articles that will highlight the myths and point you in the right direction to make sure your next presentation is effective.

Common myths include:

“Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.”

“You shouldn’t wave you hands around when you talk”

“To reduce the nervous tension imagine that your audience is in the nude, or sitting on a toilet”

“Your slides make a good handout”

“Always ask if anyone has any questions at the end to make sure that they have understood you.”

 Unfortunately, while these things are said with the best of intentions, they are often open to being misunderstood.

1. Tell them, tell them, tell them

The advice to “tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them” is one of the most misconstrued pieces of advice for a presentation. I’ve also heard this referred to as “Tell then how you are going to bore them. Bore them. Tell them how you bored them”.

You definitely do not want to tell people everything three times!

The first part of this statement “the tell them what you are going to tell them” does not mean put up an agenda slide, by doing so you run the risk of people thinking they know what you are going to say and assuming it will be a boring presentation which is not of interest to them.

A better approach is to start your presentation by making the audience want to listen. To engage your audience’s curiosity about the topic on which you are presenting. Not just tell them what you are going to talk about.

The last part of the statement, “tell them what you told them” means end with a summary. This is okay if you the objective of your presentation is purely information transfer but if you are trying to motivate or persuade your audience you need to end with a call to action, which tells them what you think they should do next.

The majority of presentations in business are not just about transferring information, they are about influencing, motivating and persuading people to do something. As such a summary of the information is a particularly weak ending. Your call to action is the reason you are giving your presentation so make that call to action the last thing you say before you sit down.

2. Keep your hands still

When I was younger I went on a presentation course and was told not to wave my hands about. I was told to keep them at my side or if I found that too difficult to hold them behind my back. I think this was very bad advice. Some people, me included, naturally talk with their hands. The hand gestures emphasising and re-iterating the spoken word.  Hand gestures can convey enthusiasm and energy and make the presentation far more lively and interesting.

As long as your hand gestures are natural, don’t waste your effort trying to control them, let them emphasize the points you are making.

3. “To reduce the nervous tension imagine that your audience is in the nude, or sitting on a toilet”

This is a tactic for combating your nerves which has no place in modern business presentations. I agree with the sentiment that your audience are just people like you or me, no more and no less and as such are nothing to be scared of. But I think there are far more successful ways of reducing any nervous anxiety. I have written about this recently in my article Handling Presentation Nerves.

4. “Your slides make a good handout”

Slides and handouts are two different things which fulfill different purposes. If your slides make a good handout which can be easily understood and digested without your presence then they are not good slides.  Everyone is likely to be reading your slides and not listening to you.

Slides are also known as visual aids, and the clue here is in their name. Visual aids are meant to be pictures which help your audience to understand the message that you are saying. They should create strong mental images that help people to understand and remember what is you said. Handouts need to have far more information in them to replicate the spoken part of your presentation when you are no longer there.

My advice is to prepare a separate document as a handout and then hand it out after you have finished your presentation. See my article on Visual Aids

 5. “End with a Question and Answer Session”

Ending with “Has anyone got any questions?” is definitely the wrong ending for any type of presentation. You want to leave the audience with your summary or call to action ringing in their ears, not with them thinking about your answer to the last question that was asked, or even worse an embarrassing silence because nobody has any questions.

Now I’m not saying you should never ask if anyone has any questions, I always like to encourage audience participation throughout a presentation, but a Q&A session is not the best way to finish a presentation. The end of your presentation should be a call to action that encourages your audience to fulfill the objective of your presentation.

 

That’s all the myths I’m busting this time but in future articles I’ll tackle a few more prominent presentation myths and folklore including:

“People remember more if they see it as well as hear it”

“That what you have to say is so interesting it is worth over running for”

“If you don’t like looking people in the eye, look over their heads or at a point on the back wall”

“You need an ice breaker like a joke at the start of a presentation”

“If your mouth is dry, drink some water”

Follow my blog to get an email when the next installment is published.

All the Best

Graham Young

Anchoring Ideas in Your Presentation

How to get the points you make in a presentation to stick.

All too often the points people make in their presentations are forgotten. They waft away like flotsam on the ocean waves. Seen but never remembered. To make them memorable you need to anchor them. Give your audience something to hold on to, make them more permanent and make them more memorable.

How do you anchor an important point or message?

There are a number of different ways to anchor a point, luckily the majority all start with the letter A (as in Anchor). You can use any of the following to anchor a point:

• Anecdote
• Analogy
• Acronym
• Article
• Activity
• Alliteration
• Aid (Visual)

or

• A Quotation

Let’s take each of these in turn so that I can explain in more detail.

Anecdote

A relevant anecdote or story is a great way to enliven a point and makes it far more memorable. People listen to stories using a different part of their brain than when listening to facts and figures. It can also help put the point you are making into perspective. Customer case studies and personal examples are a great way to gain buy in to your presentation and the points that you are making.

Analogy

When explaining a complex or abstract concept it can be useful to come up with a simple analogy. One that I use when discussing good presentation structure is the analogy that a good presentation is like a well designed motorway, (see here for the explanation http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Is-An-Effective-Business-Presentation-Like-A-Motorway-(Or-A-Freeway-Or-Autobahn)?&id=1010032 )

Acronym

When you have a number of related points to make thinking up an acronym will make them more memorable. I use the acronym OSRAM, which stands for the 5 most important aspects of a presentation, Objective, Speaker, Room, Audience and Message. OSRAM is also the brand name for a make of light bulb, so by using OSRAM you can light up the room with your presentation.

Article

More commonly refer to as a prop; an article can be a great visual aid. Something the audience can see and feel. On my presentation training, I invariably have a light bulb as a prop to help reinforce my OSRAM acronym.

Activity

Confucius once said, “I hear – I forget, I see – I remember, I do – I understand”. By having an activity which the audience can participate in, that is relevant to your point, your audience will not only remember it for longer, they will also gain a better understanding. When a practical activity is impractical due to the size of your audience or nature of your talk, come up with an activity they can do in their heads. Make your audience think, rather than just sitting listening.

Alliteration

Alliterations work in a similar way to acronyms. The make it easier for people to remember. For example the key to a good presentation is preparation, practice and performance.

Aid (Visual)

Okay so I’m starting to cheat on the rule that Anchors always starting with an “A”. However a good visual aid will help make your point and make it more memorable. Now, I’m not referring to a slide full of bullet point text here, rather a high quality image which will implant a strong mental image, relevant to your topic, in the minds of your audience.

A Quotation

Finally, a quotation can be used to anchor what you are saying. It adds weight to your argument because it is no longer just you who is saying it but some other respected individual has said the same thing.

No doubt there are other ways in which you can anchor the points that you make. Let me know of any you have used.

The most important thing to take away is that if you want your presentation to remain in the conscious thoughts of your audience, you need to anchor the points that you make, otherwise the will quickly drift away over the horizon, to be lost for ever.

Video Presentations

I was recently asked if I could run some training for group of people who were intending creating some short 1 minute videos of their service offerings to go on their website. They had tried it once before a few years ago and weren’t very happy with the results.

This got me thinking about the similarities and the differences between standing up in front of a group of people and sitting down being videoed.

Using my standard OSRAM acronym for the main 5 aspects of a presentation, this is a summary of what I have concluded.

Objective

As anyone who has been on one of my courses or read my earlier blog entries will know I strongly believe that every presentation needs to have a good clear measurable objective accompanied by a call to action to enforce that objective.

Videos are no different. You need to have a clear idea of what you want people to do after they have watched the video, and how they should feel about you.

Speaker

Having a confident air is always the aim of a good presenter. Preparation and practise is vital to acquiring such confidence. This is even truer when it comes to making a video.

In a personal presentation your audience are likely to be quite sympathetic if you show any signs of being nervous, but will be less forgiving when watching a video. Any hesitations, errs & umms, poor pronunciation or grammatical errors will be far more noticeable on a video that in a live presentation. This is possibly because we are used to watching professional presenters on television. However, if you do make a mistake while filming don’t worry about it, just do it again, no-one will ever know.

There is always a first impression that the camera catches before you start speaking. Make sure you are relaxed and confident with a nice welcoming smile.

One of the main differences between presenting to an audience and presenting to camera is that you audience can see you very clearly. Every smile, every twitch or movement of the eyes will be seen and decoded. This means it is even more important to believe what you are saying and show them the honesty and passion behind your message. Being in the right state of mind to deliver a relaxed focussed message is crucial to get your audience to engage.

Room

My standard three rules for the room where you are presenting are:

1. Get there early
2. Make it tidy
3. Think through the equipment you are using

The first of these is fairly irrelevant when making a video as your audience will watch it when they are ready. But the second and third rules are just as important.

When recording the video, make sure you are not wearing any fabric with detailed patterns on it, or close lines or tight stripes, as this can cause a fluttering effect on the recorded image that can be distracting in the final edit.

An uncluttered background works best for most videos.

There are two basic formats when presenting on video. One way is to look directly at the camera. The alternative is to speak to an invisible interviewer who is sitting next to the camera. Personally, I prefer the looking into the camera style. The trick here is not to stare. Imagine that the camera is actually the person to whom you are giving the presentation and that you are sitting having a chat.

This conversational style approach will be far more effective and welcoming than if you give a formal presentation. Each person who watches the video will engage with you one to one.

Audience

When you are recording a video you don’t have an audience but when some one watches the video they are your audience. That may seem rather trite and obvious but essentially what you have is a disconnect between you the presenter and your audience. Try to minimise this disconnect so that when someone watched the video they think you are talking directly to them.

As mentioned above the best way to do this is imagine that the camera is your audience member.

For example, if the target for your video is people who are about to retire and are interested in their pension options, imagine that the camera is a couple in their sixties, imagine how they are dressed, what they look like, what they are interested in, what worries and concerns they may have and then talk to them about how you can help them to maximise their retirement opportunities.

When you are creating a video to be shown on your website you need to decide who your audience is. Unlike a live presentation where you can research your audience to find out what they are interested in and how much they already know, with a website video anyone could watch it. The biggest mistake is to try to be to generic to cater for everyone. This leads to a very average presentation which is unlikely to engage anyone. You are far better deciding up front who your target audience is and crafting a message which will appeal to them. Be ruthless, pin point the messages that will appeal to you ideal client and forget about the rest.

Message

Unlike many business presentations that can last for 40 minutes or more, a successful video is likely to be less than two minutes long. This means you have to be very succinct and to the point. As soon as you start to ramble people will stop watching.

However this does not mean you have to talk constantly in front of the camera. As with live presentations a variation in speed and tone helps to keep an audience engaged and pausing before an important point will help to enforce that point.

I never recommend using scripts which are read word for word when presenting. Cue cards or presenter view in PowerPoint is my preferred mechanism if you need a reminder as to what you are talking about. Cue cards will not look professional on a video so as it is only going to be a short presentation I would suggest just remembering it. If you do need reminders you could use an autocue or maybe just a large sheet of paper held up behind the camera with a few bullet points.

It really depends on how sophisticated the available equipment is, when you film your video. But if you are using idiot boards try reading them without taking your eyes off the camera, otherwise your audience will know that you were reading them.

All the Best

Graham Young

http://www.businesspresentation.biz

Less Text – More Imagery

The rules for creating  the oral part of a great speech have remained constant for thousands of years. Great orators have always just stood and talked, enthralling their audiences with their wit and eloquence. However , there is one aspect of presenting which has undergone massive changes over the last few years. That is the use and content of the visual aids. This has radically changed most business presentations over the last few years.

Over the last ten years there has been a trend to reduce the amount of text on slides and increase the amount of high quality imagery. No doubt the growing capacity of even the smallest laptop to store and display high-resolution visuals and the availability of such images on the internet has been at least partly responsible.

Research has shown that an audience’s ability to remember what a speaker has said is greatly increased if pictures are used to illustrate the points being made. Even good old Confucius said “I hear  I forget, I see I remember”. Now in the early days of PowerPoint people misinterpreted this to mean that if they displayed a slide full of bullet points their message would be better understood and remembered for longer.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. These days if you put up a slides full of bullet points your are more likely to hear yawns from the audience, and get accused of causing death by PowerPoint. The trouble is that many people just don’t know what else to do.

In this article what I am going to do is show you how to evolve your slides from paragraphs of text, to bullet points and then on to picture based slides which will have far more impact on your audience, and get them to remember what you were talking about for far longer.

An Example

Say you were giving a presentation about the three key components to a healthy lifestyle. In the old days you may have created a slide like this:

Then people started using the PowerPoint templates and with the addition of some clip art it look more like this:

As the importance of graphics becomes clearer you may have created a slide like this:

This one uses a custom template design, but although the images are now, photographs rather than clip art, most of the text is still there.

Finally, the modern approach might be to split it on to three slides, thus obeying the rule “one point – one slide”, with very little text on the slide. The onus is now on the presenter to fill in the additional information which is no longer on display.

The pictures now take up the whole screen, so the corporate template with its headings and logos has disappeared, but the audience get the full effect of the pictures. And as the old saying goes A picture is worth a thousand words.

Hopefully you would agree that seeing the three separate slides being brought up as the presenter talks about the importance of good quality food, regular exercise and good sleep, would be more effective that the initial all text slide.

My question to you is:  How old are your slides? Are you still using bullet points?

I would like to gain an overall impression of how advanced people’s slide design is, as such I have a very short survey which I would like you to complete. You can find it here on Survey Monkey.

The design of visual aids has changed, if your presentations have not kept pace with modern thinking, your prospects and customers may think that your business is old fashioned too.

By Graham Young

Young Markets

www.businesspresentation.biz

To Move or Not to Move – When Presenting

Looking at various article and blogs there would at first sight appear to be a dilemma in the minds of presentation experts as to whether it is good practise to move around when giving a presentation. Some people state that the speaker should stand up straight and still, feet slightly apart, with most of your weight on the balls of your feet and hands at your side. While others suggest that you should step out from behind the lectern and move around the stage area while you talk.

So which is it to be?

Let us start with the basic premise that the speaker is the most important visual aspect of the presentation. Audiences want to see who is talking; they want to see some positive body language reinforcing what is being said. They rarely like the “voice for the gods” effect created by a speaker who is not clearly visible.

So, for my part, I totally agree with the idea of moving out from behind the lectern. Let your audience see you. Lecterns basically just get in the way. They create a barrier between you and your audience and create the feeling that you are talking down to your audience, rather than talking with them, which is a far better approach to gaining your audience’s engagement.

Movement attracts attention. It stimulates our visual senses and people pay far more attention to something that is moving than something that is standing still. So logically, if you want to be centre of attention, which as a presenter you should, then moving around will attract more attention to you as a speaker.

However, if there is too much movement that law of attraction can have the opposite affect. People are so attracted by your movement that is all that they concentrate on, the movement, not what you are talking about.

Many novice speakers move because of nervous tension, rather like a tiger pacing up and down the edge of its enclosure. The movement helps to relieve some of the speaker’s tension, but will end up distracting an audience from what is being said. Hence the advice from many presentation coaches to stand still, when giving a presentation.  Regular to-ing and fro-ing also tends to break the “little repetitive things irritate” rule of presenting.

So if you are going to move, move with a purpose. Make the movement fit with what you are saying. Some research suggests that if there are, for example, three aspects to your presentation you should stand in three different locations on the stage (or front of the room) for each different point. E.g. stand stage right when you are talking about what happened in the past, move to centre stage when you talk about what is happening now, and then stand stage left when you talk about the future. The audience then associate your journey across the stage with the journey you are describing. If later on in the presentation you want to refer back to “how it used to be” walk over to stage right, to compound what you are saying.

In general, if you can move closer to your audience, it will help to reinforce, an important point of your presentation.

But of course there is one definite rule, do not cross the beam of your projector. Set the room up so that you can move around without creating a shadow on your slides.

Overall, the answer has to be “To Move” but to move with a purpose, other than just letting off steam.

By Graham Young

Young Markets

www.businesspresentation.biz

Do you “FoF” before you demo?

Imagine, you are about to give another demo of your company’s excellent technology solution. You have re-initialised the demo setup, so that all the changes you made in the last demo have gone. You have hooked up the projector, adjusted the keystone so that it displays properly on the screen, and set all the chairs out so everyone can see your demo.

Everyone files in and sites down eagerly awaiting your demo. After a short introduction from your host you’re ready and off you go, showing the best of your technology off first. Fingers flying across the keyboard, well practised benefit phrases accompanying every feature that you show.

Your audience are sitting there mouths open, eyes shut, snoring gently.

What has gone wrong? The last time you did this demo the audience were in raptures, they couldn’t get enough of it, what’s wrong with this lot? Don’t they understand how wonderful this solution is? “What an ignorant audience”, you think.

Sound familiar?

So what has gone wrong? 

Did you remember to “FoF”?

“FoF”? I hear you say. What the …. is “FoF”?

“FoF” stands for “Find out First”, and is an essential part of every demonstration. Giving a demo without “FoF” is like a doctor giving you a prescription before he examines you, or an estate agent (realtor) taking you to view a property, without asking what type, style, size and price you have in mind.

Before any demonstration, you need to “Find out First”, i.e find out:

• what your audience are interested  in?
• what problems they are experiencing with their current system?
• why the are looking to acquire a new system?

 In short, you need to know what they want or need to see, otherwise you may be showing them things they don’t want or don’t appreciate.

Okay, you think, next time I’ll check first.

So at start of the next demo you ask “What would you like to see?”

But the problem is most audiences will respond with:

 “I don’t know.  It’s your system,  just show us how it works.”

So you are no further forward.

One of the best ways to find out is using the SPIN questioning technique as taught by Huthwaite’s. This is a questioning technique which starts by asking questions about the current situation, then expands on this to identify problems which the respondent may or may not already be aware of. Further questions surrounding these problems probe to find the implicit and explicit needs that these problems are symptomatic of and finally you end up asking the  need (or Payoff) questions to confirm exactly what is needed by the prospect and how much it would be worth. 

Armed with the answers to these questions, you will have a much better understanding of your prospects needs and wants. Not only will you know what they are likely to be interested in, you will know what their most pressing problem is and hence you will know what to show first in your demo.   

So next time, instead of rolling out the same old canned demo, which you have done may times before, remember to “FoF”, and create a new demo which solves the problems of this particular audience.