An introduction to Presentation

Optimisation from Eyeful Presentations

Beating

Death by PowerPoint in your business

This strong statement bears witness when you

consider most of the business world heaves a

collective sigh when they become faced

with an unending set of slides, whatever the

presentation topic is. In short, the prospect of

a PowerPoint presentation fills many business

people with dread.

But it doesn’t need to be that way. Many

people have now realised the value of a high

quality presentation – and have reaped the

benefits of leading a charge against

mediocrity in PowerPoint.

Read on if you genuinely want to rid the

world of shameful slide decks.

The Presentation Paradox

The vast majority of

corporate presentations

aren’t good enough.

In business today a huge amount of time is

wasted creating and then sitting through poor

presentations. In many organisations

PowerPoint is regarded as a hideous creation

and the task of creating sales and other

presentations falls to the “person in marketing

who’s a bit techie minded”. Even in those

organisations that take a more serious

approach, the end result is still rarely a good

advertisement for the organisation.

2 Life after Death by PowerPoint

Introduction – The Presentation Paradox

Let’s take the humble sales presentation as an

example. Take some time to examine just how

much money you’ve spent getting to the point

where you fire up and use a sales presentation.

There are a multitude of costs, both direct and

indirect -

The problem then lies with the single

opportunity you get to make a sales

presentation – and the perplexing gulf in

investment between all the steps to get

there and the presentation itself.

The simple truth is a poor sales presentation

demonstrates an inability (or lack of

interest) to invest properly in all the stages

of customer acquisition.

In this brief guide we’ll share some tips on

how to change this and in doing so help to

increase the effectiveness and impact of

your business presentation.

Product Development

Product research, build & testing, market

testing, product branding and others

Marketing

Advertising, direct marketing, e-mail

marketing, telemarketing, collateral, trade

shows – the list goes on

People resources

Salaries, bonus & commission, training,

recruitment and a multitude of indirect costs

Changing the way you pull together your

presentation slide deck can be a daunting

task – and certainly with a lot of people this

only adds to the reluctance to change. But

change is a necessity in all things we do in

business and presentations are no

exception.

To aid you in getting your PowerPoint up to

the level it should be, we’ve put together

the 3 headline improvements you can use

to immediately get more from your slides.

3 Life after Death by PowerPoint

How to make it better

Write down what your key message is – what is it you want your audience to

remember once you’ve finished

presenting? Now make sure all the slides in

the presentation help to deliver this

message

Do a slide sense check – look at every slide and decide what you

are trying to get across and make sure that

each slide helps you (as the presenter) to

deliver what you need

Once you know that each slide

delivers what you want – print 2

copies of each slide out – one with the words on and one with

them all deleted. Now imagine what you

would put on the blank slide in place of the

words – where this is feasible do so. The less

words the better.

Now present this to a

colleague/friend/loved one/man

from the sandwich shop – and make sure that the changes you’ve

made help you to deliver the message

Scenario 1

Living in the present -

dealing with existing

slide shows Ask us what to do with any presentation that

is in need of change and we’ll typically come

back with the same answer – start from

scratch.

Having said that, we are also realistic and

acknowledge that this isn’t always feasible

and a lot of people need to work with what

they currently have. In these instances here

are the best ways to review and amend your

existing slide set –

By doing these 4 things you can radically change a presentation, and make it better to present and better to watch

056 8528

We’ve identified 3 essential stages to

putting a presentation together from

the beginning and have incorporated

them into our Presentation Optimisation

methodology -

4 Life after Death by PowerPoint

Headline creation – THE MESSAGE

Scenario 2

Taking it back to the

beginning –

the “from new”

presentation

Every presentation should have one thing

at the very heart of it - the message.

The importance of this cannot be

underestimated. Get this right and you’re

well on your way to presentation success.

Miss this stage out and you’ll be floundering

around for the rest of the project.

So ask yourself - what you are trying to get

across to your audience? Yes, there may

well be pieces that sit round this or nuances

that add to it, but at the very start of

creating any presentation you must

understand what this message is.

If you realise you’re doing something for

the presentation that doesn’t underpin

your message, you don’t need it.

4 Life after Death by PowerPoint

Telling the story – THE CONTENT

Scenario 2

Once you have your key message (and note

that you’ve still not opened PowerPoint yet!),

you now need to create a story to deliver

that message to your audience.

Just like the big Hollywood studios, we

“storyboard” our story as part of the

presentation planning process. This allows us

to view, refine and adjust the presentation

content, flow and structure to ensure it stays

in message and delivers the intended result.

However you build your story, build it you

must! Most presentations resemble a dogs

dinner with slides that have obviously been

pulled together on the fly.

That’s not a story - that’s just lazy..!

Create a story you are sure will deliver your

message and then, maybe then you are

ready to open the first blank slide in

PowerPoint…

The last of the points is where many people

start and, with the risk of repeating

ourselves, this is a huge mistake. Only once

you have a message and a story to deliver

it can you look at the visual aspect.

Finally reaching this stage is not a license to

write War and Peace! Remember one

simple rule – simple is best. Never explain

something simple with something that is

more complicated.

The use of pictures (cue cliché – a picture

paints a thousand words…) is good but

also refer back to step 1 – your message.

Don’t just go pretty for the sake of it.

Ultimately think of what you want to

convey and how best this could be

demonstrated – for example if you are

trying to describe an emotion no written

words will do it – use a relevant image and

then you can describe it. Your audience

will get what you say so much better than

reading the words “I was angry/upset/

delirious”.

Used effectively these 3 steps are incredibly

powerful. By building on the foundation of

a strong and defined message, you’re

giving yourself the best chance to create a

presentation that will not only get your

audience to sit up and listen but also

remember for weeks to come.

Visual Clarity – THE DESIGN

4 Life after Death by PowerPoint

Scenario 3

OK so you’ve got 30 minutes until you have to submit/deliver your presentation. How can

you make it better in that very small window?

Here’s how –

Decide the one single reason why you are giving the presentation. Sounds simple but it

isn’t always - do this and remember it.

Cull 20% of your slides. Typically people add

slides and words when they’re doing last minute amends, it’s human nature to do so

but don’t. Have a hard look through and trim it down so that you say more and let your

audience read less.

Panic time –

the 30 minute refresh

As part of your slide cull – ask yourself one question with each slide “does it help get my

message across” going back to the first point if any slide doesn’t help re-enforce your

message bin it. This also counts for any slide that you’ve put in because it looks good/is

funny/is a great video, if it’s that good and doesn’t underpin your message people will

remember the funny slide and not the message.

These 3 don’t sound much – and 30 minutes isn’t a long time but we’ve given this advice

to many, many people. It has helped not only to focus the presentation but to also focus

the presenter – and in doing so has enabled a much better experience for their audience.

One point mentioned in passing but worth reiterating is that the job of the presenter is

unavoidable (sorry!). We’ve talked about the slide set itself here but always remember a

good presenter is worth ten well pressed slide decks.

As well as making sure your presentation itself is up to scratch – spend time making sure

your presenters are top quality too.

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4 The Presentation Paradox

So what now? These 3 sets of tips should give a pretty good

lead into how to deal with presentations

whatever timescale you are looking at. Whilst

we wouldn’t necessarily advise to use only 30

minutes – it is better than no minutes and

hopefully if you do that you’ll see what a

difference it can make.

One point we can’t stress enough is the

paradox of the company who doesn’t value

their sales presentation.

So much hard work by a lot of people and

taking a lot of financial investment goes into

getting that person stood in front of a

potential customer. The lack of investment in

that final stage is a very weak link in an

otherwise strong chain. The cost of making it

better is far outweighed by the return that

people see.

www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk

Make some simple changes to the way you

put together your corporate presentations

and you could well see a remarkable

change in your business.

For more information, visit Eyeful via the

web at

0845 056 8528