Articles to sharpen your presentation skills
- 10 Steps to Selling Your Ideas
- Bullet Points Kill (Effective Communication)
- How to Addict Your Audience to Your PowerPoint
- Top Ten Things To Improve Your PowerPoint Presentation
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10 Steps to Selling Your Ideas
By Claudyne Wilder
Boston-based presentations expert Claudyne Wilder, author of "The Presentations Kit, 10 Steps to Selling Your Ideas," offers these 10 steps for delivering winning presentations. 1. Channel Your Nervousness Practice out loud and with the technology you plan to use in your presentation, suggests Wilder. "Before you get in front of a live audience," she says, "put yourself in a good mood; get to know some of the people in your audience in advance." 2. Define Your Objective Knowing what you plan to achieve will help focus your presentation. "Research your audience," says Wilder, "and present using a format that meets your objectives, such as benefit-selling, report progress or teaching skills." 3. Organize Everything Preparation and organization are essential to giving polished presentations. "Make your notes brief and readable," suggests Wilder, "and cut out unnecessary details. Review your talk in advance with someone not familiar with your subject. Then take out jargon or buzz words and be sure to spell out and explain acronyms." 4. Create and Use Visuals. It is important to select the visual media-electronic, overheads, slides and hard copy-that will best meet the objectives of your presentations. "Vary the visuals," says Wilder, "and have a back-up plan in case something is inoperable. When creating visuals, it is important to thoroughly edit them in order to ensure accuracy and eliminate typos. Finally, when making a presentation, she says, "Be sure to talk to the audience, not to the visual." 5. Energize Yourself. Energy creates energy, so when making a presentation, it's important to energize yourself, says Wilder. "Project your voice and use examples to keep your voice lively," she advises. "It's also important to make eye contact, gesture and change the pace of the presentation." 6. Motivate Your Listeners. Establishing a rapport with the audience will keep them interested and attentive. "Control the room temperature and set-up so everyone can see you and your visuals," says Wilder. "Dress appropriately for your role and appeal to all senses: visual, auditory and kinesthetic, by using pictures, exercises, sounds, questions and examples."
7. Conclude with Conviction. A confident voice and an energetic stance help convey conviction to an audience. "Plan concluding sentences and practice them out loud," advises Wilder. "And vary your conclusion with a combination of facts and opinions." 8. Manage Questions Give. guidance to an audience when you start a presentation by telling them when to ask questions: during the talk or at the end of the talk. "Talk to the whole audience when answering the question," advises Wilder. "Answer briefly and then ask if they need more information on that subject now. It's also a good idea to prepare a second conclusion for after the question-and-answer period." 9. Recommend Next Steps. Help the audience put what they have learned from your presentation to work by recommending next steps, says Wilder. "Clarify people's roles and responsibilities regarding the next steps," she adds. 10. Take the Leap. The best presenters adapt their own personal strengths to be effective. "Use your unique talents and tailor your talk to the audience. Be passionate in speaking about your subject and, when it's appropriate, use humor," says Wilder. "And always remember to just be yourself." Quoted from Wider Presentations: http://www.wilderpresentations.com/articles/winning.html
Acclaimed speaker, coach, published author of several books on presenting, and co-creator of a CD on visual design, Claudyne Wilder founded Wilder Presentations in 1984. She is a recognized authority on the art of presentations. Claudyne coaches executives and professionals to help them develop, design, and deliver presentations that get results. back to top _______________________________
Bullet Points Kill (Effective Communication)
By Cliff Atkinson
Guns don't kill communication. Bullet points kill communication. And when you use bullet points in a PowerPoint, you're shooting yourself in the foot. Why do people use bullets? Bullet points do a great job of taking lots of text and turning it into less text. Given a choice between reading a 120-page business plan or a 12-page bullet point summary, most would choose the bullet points. When it comes to presentations, the problem is that bullet points are the right answer to the wrong question. If the question is, "How do I condense 120 pages of text down to 12 pages of text?" then bullet points are the right answer. But in a visual presentation environment, that's the wrong question.
The right question is, "How can I distill my complex information into a visual form that will help me communicate more effectively?" You can begin asking the right question with a simple shift of orientation in your thinking. Landscapes: the Best Formats for Portraits
In a Microsoft Word document you work in a portrait orientation, meaning your working space is vertical. It's the customary format for keeping text in easy-to-read columns of long vertical boxes.
But in PowerPoint you work in a landscape orientation, meaning your working space is turned on its end and is now horizontal. Not by coincidence, that's the same shape as television and movie screens. The written communication of a portrait orientation happens in a 1-to-1 mode. When you gaze at a single written document, your goal is to absorb the information into your own individual mind. However, visual communication in a landscape orientation is 1-to-many. When multiple people gaze a screen in a social context, your goal as a presenter is to extract understanding from the entire group, not just a single mind. And images, rather than bullet points, are simply the best tool for that job. Bringing it All Back Together
Besides just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, bullet points don't belong in a PowerPoint because they just don't deliver what they advertise. Bullet points on a screen make information harder to understand, not easier. The core purpose of communication is to cohere: to coalesce fragments of information back together into a single understanding. That's the most difficult task of communicating. And it's actually the origin of the word communication: to "make common", or to bring together. Bullet points can do many things, but they do not cohere information. In fact, they do the opposite--they fragment understanding into little pieces. Break any topic into a title, sub-headings and bullet points, and you're de-communicating, because you're not helping to bring a single idea together. 1 + 5 = 1
So how do you begin to spin bullet points into effective PowerPoint images? The next time you find yourself facing a title and bullet points, apply this "1 + 5 = 1" exercise. Take a sheet of paper in landscape format, and draw a line down the center. On the left side, write your 1 heading and 5 bullet points. Pause for a second, and ask yourself if you can somehow cut through all of this information, and get right to the heart of it. On the right side of the page, write down the thought that came to you. After all, the goal of a good presentation is inspiration, not information. Books, white papers and spreadsheets are great at documenting large quantities of information. Presentations are the appropriate place for inspiration. They are an opportunity for you to awaken passion in your audience about your topic and engage you and each other in further conversation.
Join the Revolution
When you pivot from portrait to landscape orientation, you're shifting from the rules of written communications to the rules of visual communications. And that happens to be the same shift revolutionizing our world from a text-based culture to an image based-culture. Every time you open PowerPoint, you have an opportunity to be a part of this visual revolution. When you use bullet points straight out of your Word document, you have yet to join the revolution. When your PowerPoint resembles a brochure, you're making a step in the right direction, although you're still not there because a brochure is a brochure, not a presentation. When your slides start to look like television or billboards, you're joining the revolution and are beginning to unlock the visual power of communication. And yes, this is a revolution you can win without a single bullet.
Quoted from : http://www.sociablemedia.com/articles_bullets_kill.htm
Cliff Atkinson is an acclaimed writer, popular keynote speaker, and a consultant to leading attorneys and Fortune 500 companies. He designed the presentations that helped persuade a jury to award a $253 million verdict to the plaintiff in the nation's first Vioxx trial in 2005, which Fortune magazine called "frighteningly powerful." Cliff’s book Beyond Bullet Points (Microsoft Press, 2005) is an Amazon.com bestseller that expands on a communications approach he has taught at many of the country's top corporations, advertising agencies, law firms, government agencies and business schools.
© 2004-2006 Cliff Atkinson back to top
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How to Addict Your Audience to Your PowerPoint
By Cliff Atkinson
If PowerPoint were classified as a drug, which one would it be? Judging by its bad reputation these days, most PowerPoints would probably be classified as narcotics, sedatives or depressants. But with only minor changes to the molecular structure of your thinking, this coma-inducing software can become a powerful force to addict your audience to the mind-expanding content of your presentation. To get started, just follow this three-step prescription: Step 1: Go Cold Turkey
The first step to depressant-free presentations is to take the dramatic step of going "cold turkey" from PowerPoint's most toxic traits: Stop using templates. Templates restrict, constrain and force information into a small part of the screen, and make the viewing experience visually boring and tedious. If templates really worked in media, you'd see them in film and television. You don't see them, so don't use them. Trim the text. Many presentations read like a brochure. But that's what brochures are for. If the screen is filled with text, your audience will read it, and not pay attention to you. Delete the text, and saturate your screen with images and color. Lose the logo. Trust that your audience will remember who you are and what company you represent. Leave your logo on the first and last slide, and let the quality of the presentation in between be your most effective and memorable branding. Just as every great book begins with a blank page, every presentation should begin with a blank screen, bursting with visual possibility. Step 2: Find the Appropriate Dosage
In a medical context, a doctor will perform a thorough exam before prescribing the appropriate medication for your physical condition and history. Likewise, your first and most important presentation procedure is to get to know your audience in advance, and to tailor your information to their needs. Unfortunately, there's no "magic presentation pill" that you can administer to every audience. Many presentations make the mistake of being "All About Me." They go like this: This is Who We Are, this is Our History, these are Our Clients, these are Our Capabilities, and this is Why You Should Choose Us. But where is your audience in all this? What about their problems? What about their concerns? What about the solutions you're supposed to offer them? If you're giving a sales presentation, go directly to your prospect's website, select their logo, right click on your mouse and Copy, open a blank PowerPoint slide and Paste. Build your presentation from there. As you create your presentation, don't overdose your audience with too much information presented too soon. You're an expert in your domain, but your audience is not, so pace the information in steps. Every key concept should have its own slide, and if it's particularly complex, should be presented one element at a time, either with a layered build or over a series of slides. Step 3: Develop Dependency
As you work out your pace and flow, keep your audience wanting more. This is good addiction, because you're feeding the healthy habit of "users" of knowledge. To get your audience into an addictive state, you can: Give them less. Withhold key information from your slides. Leave something to the imagination. When you've cut back on text, you make your audience dependent on you to explain the interesting images on the screen. They should hang on your every word, and image. If you want to give them detailed text and numbers, print them out separately as a handout. Be mysterious. Don't label or explain everything, especially not the obvious. The best PowerPoint presentations would make no sense to anyone who saw them without hearing the speaker. You want to make the presentation experience dependent on you to explain and solve the mystery. Reveal the meaning from the middle. In a healthy presentation experience, there are three parties--you, your audience, and your media. You can craft a synergy between the three that's more than the sum of the parts. Think of your entire presentation as a choreographed persuasive experience: 1. Establish a comfortable social atmosphere through initial conversations.
2. Present information through the use of intriguing images and graphics.
3. Unpack the concepts on the slide, in your own words that are tailored to the audience.
4. Engage the audience with the story about their situation, and dialogue with them.
5. Deliver the climax of the persuasive case in the very last slide, leaving them engaged and eager for more conversation.
Once you've managed to addict your audience to your PowerPoint, you can look forward to a much more stimulating experience for you, and leave them coming back for more.
Quoted from : http://www.sociablemedia.com/articles_addict.htm
Cliff Atkinson is an acclaimed writer, popular keynote speaker, and a consultant to leading attorneys and Fortune 500 companies. He designed the presentations that helped persuade a jury to award a $253 million verdict to the plaintiff in the nation's first Vioxx trial in 2005, which Fortune magazine called "frighteningly powerful." Cliff’s book Beyond Bullet Points (Microsoft Press, 2005) is an Amazon.com bestseller that expands on a communications approach he has taught at many of the country's top corporations, advertising agencies, law firms, government agencies and business schools.
© 2004-2006 Cliff Atkinson back to top _______________________________
Top Ten Things To Improve Your PowerPoint Presentation
by Dave Paradi
Decide on the Goal of the Presentation
Most business presentations are either informative – trying to inform the audience of some information – or persuasive – trying to persuade the audience to take some action. Decide what the audience should know or do at the end of the presentation. Use a Presentation Structure
Once you have a goal, you need to determine where the audience is right now and have a plan to move them from where they are at the start of your presentation to where you want them to be at the end of the presentation. This will include analysis of the knowledge level and bias of the audience as well as the level of credibility you have with them. Select Colors that Have High Contrast
When you are designing your slide look, pick colors that have high contrast so that the text and graphics can be easily seen when shown. Popular color choices include dark backgrounds such as navy blue or dark purple with a light text color such as white or yellow. This makes the text float on top of the background.
Pick Fonts that are Large Enough
My rule is that you should never use a font below 24 point size, with the preference being 28 to 32 point size. For titles or headings, use 36 to 44 point size fonts. If the font is too small, no one will be able to read the words and the message will be Use Bullet Points
Instead of full sentences, use bullet points to deliver the key ideas on your slides. When using bullet points, make sure not to put too much information on a slide. The 6 by 6 guideline is a good one to keep in mind – each bullet should have no more than 6 words and each slide should have no more than 6 bullet points. Build Bullet Text Points
When using bullet points, build them one by one on the slide using the build animation effect. This way, you can speak to each point individually and the audience will know which idea you are expanding upon. Avoid Movement of Slide Elements
While moving text or graphics around the slide may look like fun, it is very distracting to the audience. Avoid the build animation effects where movement is outside the boundaries of the text or graphic. The preferred build effect is the Appear effect where the text just appears in the correct spot on the slide. Select Graphics Carefully
Only use graphics – clip art or photographs – if they will add to the message of that slide. There are many wonderful graphics available today, but most fo them are not going to add to your message, they will detract from the message. Always ask yourself if this graphic adds to the points you are making before you put it on the slide. Use the Proper Chart
Charts – graphs and tables – can be a great way to present information if they are used properly. When selecting the type of chart, consider whether the data you are trying to show is time sequenced or not and how many data sets you will need to show. For complex ideas, splitting a graph up into smaller amounts of data tied together in an overall graph may be the best way to go. Practice, Practice, Practice
The best way to be comfortable when delivering your presentation is to actually feel prepared! There is no substitute for practice. All of the good speakers you have ever seen have practiced the art of presenting many times. Practice with your computer and projection equipment if possible to get a feel for it. Practice everything you plan to say, but do not memorize it because a memorized speech sounds "canned" and not like a conversation, the way a good presentation does. Quoted from : http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/articles/top_ten_things_improve_ppt_presn.htm
Dave Paradi’s Think Outside the Slide™ approach helps presenters get results by showing them how to quickly create effective PowerPoint presentations. He is the co-author of “Guide to PowerPoint”, part of the Prentice Hall Series in Advanced Business Communication. He offers a free PowerPoint e-course, newsletter and articles on his web site at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.
© 2003 Dave Paradi back to top | 
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