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I recently had the opportunity to deliver a powerpoint presentation to an architectural review board at work. As an architect, delivering effective powerpoint presentations seem to be one of the critical skills that I need to utilize in my day to day. In this post, I will share with you my best secrets for effectively preparing and delivering powerful powerpoint presentations.
Preparation Tips:
1. Find a Nice Powerpoint Template: This is an important step to delivering powerful powerpoint presentations. You need to find a nice Powerpoint template. I’ve seen senior executives use a vanilla powerpoint template with only black text on a plain white background. No matter how effective the content, I could NOT take the delivery seriously because the powerpoint itself was something my little kid sister could put together (using powerpoint for the first time). Hence, I really encourage you to find a nice template.
The best places to find great powerpoint templates are: a) at the Human Resources or Corporate Intranet. These usually have pretty good templates to use. The nice thing about this is it usually has the corporate logo embedded into it so you could just save it and just change the content. Note: If it is not a very impressive Powerpoint template, I encourage you to search for more online and customize it (by adding your Company’s logo). You’d be surprised at how much impact this simple step could do. As a reference, I like to look at the templates available at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx
2. Create individual powerpoint slides for each “idea” that you would like to potentially use. Each powerpoint slide (.ppt) should have only one slide to communicate one idea. The idea is that as you document new ideas throughout your work schedule, you create one single .ppt file for each idea. The advantage of this is it allows you to quickly create and assemble new powerpoint presentations (virtually on demand). Just make sure to keep all the individual slides in the same directory on your computer file system so that you can reference them quickly when you need to build a new powerpoint presentation. I learned this from J.D. Meier at his SourcesOfInsight.com blog site. Okay, maybe you need more than 1 slide worth of real estate to really get your idea covered properly. The key is that you name the .ppt file with the title of the slide. This way it is very reusable. Note: The .ppt template that you use should be fairly neutral so that you can quickly paste this slide when you actually prepare a powerpoint presentation for a specific audience / meeting.
2. Keep each slide brief: Try to keep the number of words per slide to a minimum. Nobody is ever going to read the whole slide. If you have too many words, nobody is going to read it. If you need to include a lot of text, put it into the appendix. This way, you get to keep the content fairly comprehensive while at the same time making it bearable to get through the main areas of the powerpoint.
3. Assemble a Powerpoint Presentation Per Meeting On Demand: Now that you have the individual slides of “content” readily accessible at your disposal, you are now positioned to quickly prepare a powerpoint presentation for each meeting where you need to present. When the time comes, simply paste the slides into a new Powerpoint presentation. Next, add the Agenda with an apporpriate title for the presentation and end with a Q&A slide.
Delivering an Effective and Powerful Powerpoint Presentation
Now that you have your content all setup, the next critical step is to make an effective delivery for your presentation. Now, this is a very important step. You could have the most informative content in the Powerpoint presentation itself. But if you can’t “deliver it” effectively, it ain’t worth squat. So here are my tips for delivering an effective presentation:
1. Print off the presentation with slides (2 per page) for each audience member.
2. Make sure the laptop / computer that you are using to project your powerpoint has the Screen Saver disabled. This is distracting if during the presentation your computer screen goes into a screensaver mode.
3. Have a pointer (may be a ruler or a laser pointer). This is effective during the presentation to focus the audience on exactly which point you are making.
4. Dress for success – While a formal suit maybe a little overkill in most business casual work environments, I would suggest that a blazer would be a nice conservative touch. A blazer projects an image of respect to your audience (if you normally don’t wear blazers). Yet, its not over the top in terms of making an impression. So, dress a little nicer than normal. It will have impact.
5. Make sure your presentation has 3 logical sections: a) Agenda – to tell them what you’re going to tell them b) tell them (ie the meat of the presentation and c) tell them what you just told them (ie recap) and d) Ask for questions / answers
6. Challenge the Potential Hecklers / Problem Audience Members That Ask A Lot of Questions - If you have a hard nosed audience with a few individuals that like to ask a lot of questions, stop at the end of each slide and ask that specific individual(s) if they have any questions. This is the process of getting buy in to your presentation and you ideas. The rationale of why I think this works is because it puts that individual on the spot and challenges him/her to spit out a question or make a challenge if they have one. If you do this early in the presentation (during the easier slides), it sets the tone and pace for the rest of the powerpoint. In my experience, I find that these individuals will more often than not stop asking questions or challenging you during the rest of the presentation
7. If you do receive questions midway through and you have a slide that covers that topic later and feel that it may take too much time to answer the question right then and there, advise the person that you will get to the question later. Tell them, “hold on, you’re stealing the thunder out of the rest of my presentation”. The individual will feel good about asking the question since they forecasted it, but it saves you from having to entertain that question right then and there and lets you think through how you will be answering that question later. This is good because you are showing respect but you committed to covering the whole presentation.
8. Stand Up During Your Presenation! - Its absolutey important to get up from your seat and stand up beside the screen where the projecter is projecting to. This is important because it puts you in a position of authority. While you stand, your audience is sitting. Subliminally, it communicates authority much like how your professors projected authority over you when you attended a lecture. It puts your audience in the role of “pupil” while you are delivering. As such, it is critically important for you to STAND UP during the presentation to project authority.
9. If you get stumped by a tough question – So what do you do when you get a tough question that you can’t answer? You thank the individual for the excellent question and politely defer and say “That’s an excellent question. I’ll take this offline and get back to you on this”.
That’s it, those are my keys to success for effectively delivering effective and powerful presentations. Good luck.
or people working in the corporate environment. I like the book’s chapter on how to get promoted:
