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PROFESSIONAL SPEAKING SKILLS FORENTREPRENEURS, EXECUTIVES, AND ECCLESIASTICS.

WWW.JOHNFREISINGER.COM

Copyright 2010 John Freisinger for Mirth & Merriment, LLC. All Rights Reserved. May be Reprinted with Permission. Page 1

Presentation

does not mean

PowerPoint

10 Reasons Your Next PowerPoint Presentation Will Suck and

What to Do About It By John Freisinger

I am convinced that no one sits down and intentionally creates a PowerPoint presentation that sucks. I

believe that bad PowerPoint is a result of compounded mistakes that are easily correctable. Most of

these mistakes occur before you even make your first slide. There are 10 reasons that most people will

create a PowerPoint presentation that sucks. Knowing them is the first step in making sure you don’t

follow their example.

1) Assuming that you need PowerPoint for your presentation. Today most people assume that

when you are asked to give a presentation that the invitation dictates the use of PowerPoint, or

Keynote for Mac users. The words “presentation” and “PowerPoint” are not synonymous.

There are dozens of presentation techniques that have nothing to do with computer-based

presentation tools.

The oldest method of presenting an idea is

drawing. I am not suggesting that we revert to

cave painting or drawing in the dirt as

presentation methods, although those would be

memorable, but whiteboards, flipcharts, props

and digital tablets all could be employed in lieu of

a blank cave wall. These medium tend to be a bit

more interactive and allow for audience participation.

Another method, which seems to have gotten lost in our technology-obsessed culture, is the

speech. No animations, no slides, no electronic transitions, just a speaker and his notes. At the

core of any presentation is the speaker and his script but often they are overshadowed by the

tools that they employ to enhance their presentation. The truth is that great technology cannot

save a poorly conceived speech and only highlights the lack of skills in a bad speaker.

Have you considered the written word? We all have witnessed slides so heavy with text that

they have become documents, or slocuments. Why not save the audience the trouble of

attending a bad presentation and just send them the document? Your document could be a

book, a white paper, a position paper, a .pdf or even a blog entry. Your intended audience may

actually retain the information better when they read it rather than when you present in this

word-dense format.

Some topics lend themselves to audience participation. Few of us would buy a car without a

test drive. Sometimes the best way to teach someone how to do something is to let them do it.

Why go to the time and expense of creating a PowerPoint presentation when it would be more

convincing to just throw them the keys?


Don’t force your

audiences to be

polite

So your decision to create a PowerPoint presentation should be determined entirely by what the

audience wants and a thoughtful review of the best method for delivering the content. Don’t

automatically assume that a presentation means PowerPoint. Your message is more likely to

stand out if you are the one person who doesn’t immediately boot up their copy of PowerPoint.

2) Focus on creating a slideshow, not a presentation. Do you remember slides shows? Your

parents would drag you to a neighbor’s house so that you could all sit in front of a glowing

screen and see pictures from someone else’s vacation. You would sit in the dark as your host

slowly clicked through carousels of 35mm slides. Each slide would be accompanied by a stream-

of-consciousness narrative of seemingly random stories. Hours later when the lights came on

and the blood slowly began to return to your extremities you would ask your parents, “Why did

we have to go and sit through that?” To which your parents would reply, “Because it’s the

polite thing to do.”

Sadly as we grew older many of us began to believe that

this was the way in which presentations were given. With

the invention of computer-based presentation tools, such

as PowerPoint and Keynote, the task of collecting all of our

“slides” became very easy and the slideshow continued to

live on in boardrooms across the globe. And audiences

continued to listen because, “It’s the polite thing to do.”

If you find yourself grabbing slides from other presentations because they are

interesting or seem relevant to the topic then you are well on your way to creating a slideshow.

A slideshow, in my definition, is a static collection of information that is interesting or important

to the author. It is often loosely tied together with the same stream-of-consciousness narrative

as your neighbor’s vacation pictures. Each slide sparking some neuron to fire and recall some

random fact or bit of trivia.

By contrast, a presentation is a collection of information organized and presented in such a

manner that it effectively leads the audience to the presenter’s logical and reasoned conclusion.

Presentations are meant to inform, persuade, or motivate an audience and cause them to think,

act or do something differently. Effective presentations are often tailored to meet an

audience’s needs and strive to meet this need in the most efficient manner possible.

Unless you begin your presentation by identifying 2 or 3 key points that you would like to

convey to your audience then your presentation runs the risk of becoming a slideshow. If you

begin your presentation without a well- reasoned objective you are very likely to achieve that

goal and in record time.


Respect for

time is respect for

the audience

3) Ignoring the Clock. Every presentation needs boundaries. Without boundaries

presentations can become meaningless, rambling, diatribes that do nothing but serve the

presenter’s ego. Honoring boundaries honors the audience, and audiences are a privilege.

Even when no boundaries are given there is one that should be implied, time. Most

presentations will be time bound by an agenda or the format of the event. Some events, such

as Pecha Kucha, Ignite, TED, Toastmasters, and business plan competitions have very strict

limitations on the length of the presentation and Q&A. Time slots of seven, eighteen, and forty-

five minutes are becoming more common as meeting planners are adopting these stringent

formats in an effort to keep their events on time.

Not only is it rude for a presenter to go over time, sometimes there is a penalty for doing so.

Turning off the microphone, darkening the stage, powering off the slide projector or the

queuing of a pre-recording applause track are all potential hazards that a long-winded presenter

could face. At a recent Pecha Kucha event that I attended the presenters who violated the time

restriction were booed from the stage!

Your polite co-workers or that customer who has

agreed to give you ten minutes of their time may

not be this draconian, but there can be even

greater negative consequences. Why would

someone believe that you can deliver a project on

time if you can’t deliver a presentation within

time? Respect for time boundaries are critical in

retaining the trust of your audience.

As a rule of thumb, plan on using 90 percent of the time that you are allotted. That gives you a

10 percent margin of error for things like questions, audience interaction, environmental

problems, technical difficulties, and late starts due to other presenters who are too rude to

respect time restraints.

This means for a 10-minute presentation, plan for nine minutes of material. If the average man

speaks at a rate of 125 words per minute then your script, yes I said script (see Forgetting that

Words Have Meanings on Page 9), should be about 1125 words long. Nine minutes is also a

great amount of time to cover one idea.

For each 10-minute block of time, with nine minutes of material and one minute of margin, you

should cover one idea. This is sufficient time to present the idea, support it, anchor the idea for

your audience (see Not Being SExSI Enough on Page 7), and move to a seamless transition for

the next idea. A one hour presentation would have six key ideas, presented in 54 minutes with

a margin of error of 6 minutes. For many presenters this may mean six slides, one for each idea.

Imagine the audience’s great relief when they see that you only have six slides!


Present to those

who want to

Learn

But what if you are not given a time limit? Several studies have shown that healthy adults and

teens can focus on a single task for about 20 minutes and we have the ability to refocus on tasks

that we find interesting. So I plan my presentations in 20 minute modules that can be combined

to create longer presentations as requested. Each module is designed to carry two ideas. At the

end of each 20-minute module I ask the audience if I should continue or stop.

I include two ideas in each module because I believe that television has retrained us to think in

9-minute segments, which are the average length of a television segment. My 20 minute

modules often will include 1to2 minute “commercial breaks” to allow for people to mentally

refocus before I move to a new idea.

So presenters should be respectful of the clock. Give as many 10 minute ideas in 9-minutes as

your audience will allow. If you break them into 20 minute modules you can adapt them for

almost any circumstance.

4) Missing the Fat Middle. Your audience will be comprised of individuals who all have different

levels of knowledge, expertise, learning capacity and attention spans. Even at scientific

conferences, individuals have different areas of research expertise and doctoral credentials. So

as a presenter how do you adapt for this disparity? By aiming right of center.

In any audience you will have three groups of people:

those who don’t understand and/or don’t care, those

who are willing to learn and can comprehend, and

those who may know more about the subject than you.

I imagine them as a classic Bell Curve with the majority

of the people willing and able to learn. The shallower

part of the curve is populated by those who know more

and those who probably shouldn’t be in the audience. If you

design your presentation to accommodate those in the middle but create enough flexibility to

incorporate information from those who may know more you will hit the segment of the

audience that I call the “fat middle.”

Creating a presentation that is too remedial or too cerebral alienates the largest segment of

your audience. Your job as a presenter is not to prove you are the smartest kid in the room,

invariably you will fail, or to provide corrective coursework for those who may be lagging. Either

extreme will push away the majority of your audience.

So the first step is to know your audience. At what level should you be presenting? What is

their knowledge of your subject? Never assume that someone’s education achievements

translate into broad educational competency. When I teach PhD scientists “How to Suck Less at

PowerPoint” I often have to teach it at a level that a graphic designer would find amateurish,

but the coursework for graphic designers would be well over the PhD’s level of competency or

interest. Design each course based on the audience’s level of expertise with relation to the

subject matter.


Handouts help

when the audience

leaves

Second, incorporate audience feedback as a mechanism to gauge audience competency. If the

audience that your research or the meeting planner described shows up, that is great, but

occasionally a different audience attends. You can usually gain a quick understanding of which

audience is in attendance by soliciting information from the crowd with open questions such as,

“Does this make sense?”or “Is this how you would use this information?”or “How does this

differ from the way you do things now?” These open-ended questions, if directed around the

audience, can help you adjust, or reassure you that you are on target for the rest of

presentation.

Finally, accept that you cannot reach everyone. Always focus on those who want to learn from

your presentation and seem to be actively involved. It is a waste of energy to chase the

“strays,” unless those strays are the singular target of your pitch, like your boss. Trying to

accommodate those who don’t want to learn or cannot learn will diminish the impact you will

have on the great majority of those who are in attendance to learn. Your goal is to change the

way the majority of your audience thinks, feels, or acts upon the information that you are

presenting. If the information is relevant enough the others will gain it through some other

mechanism (maybe your handouts).

5) Using your slides as your handouts. Your slides by nature are visual tools. Effective visuals

are uncluttered and expressive representations of ideas. Often these ideas need interpretation

and expansion. In a presentation that role is fulfilled by the presenter. A great presenter will

make sure that the audience has a “takeaway” that

will allow the audience to further explore the

ideas that were shared. Good slides are a very

poor takeaway.

The role of the slide is to reinforce the message

from the speaker, to help people visualize what is

being said. Slides should never be used for:

Speaker’s notes

Complex diagrams or infographics

Listings of references or footnotes

Quotations longer than 20 words

Spreadsheets and detailed tables

Mind-mapping or brainstorming

If any of these things are required as a handout for a presentation they should be constructed

outside of PowerPoint or Keynote and provided as additional information. There is perceived

value in takeaways that are not formatted as slides. Even speaker’s notes, which can be


More in means

less out for your

audience

included with the PowerPoint files, (see Not Utilizing PowerPoint 2007or 2010 on Page 11), can

easily be formatted to become a Word document, which can be expanded to pamphlet or book

format.

There are a myriad of choices outside of the slide format that help convey written information

better. Complex visuals such as diagrams, infographics, spreadsheets and tables may be much

better formatted for legal or ledger-sized paper. Most PowerPoint slides are presented in

landscape orientation, but lists are often better presented in portrait format. Mindmaps and

brainstorming charts may be better represented on a white board or interactively in Prezi or

Abobe Flash formats.

There is no rule that says the audience has to get a copy of your slides. More useful handouts

may include your company’s brochure, a white paper, a large format diagram, or a list of

citations and references. Handouts should be a source of information for the future. The reason

many slides become congested and unreadable is because the author tries to accomplish this

goal in the slide.

Remember, slides are tools to help presenters visually reinforce their message in front of an

audience. There are plenty of word processing, spreadsheet, design and layout, photo editing,

mind-mapping, and diagramming tools to help you create effective handouts for your audience.

PowerPoint does none of these well.

6) Creating an “Information Dump.” The immediate urge for most presenters when asked to

give a talk on a specific topic is to cram as many facts and figures into the presentation as

possible. The purpose of this self-esteem building strategy is to either overwhelm the audience

with facts so as to leave them with no doubt as to the speaker’s brilliance, or to provide such

complete coverage of the topic that there could be no contrary position. Both approaches are

doomed to fail because it turns out that audiences are not very good with information.

As a society, we are bombarded with information,

most of it is irrelevant. What people want from a

presentation is not information or facts, they want

relevance and perspective. Your primary job as a

presenter is to provide your audience with this

relevance and perspective. In short, to adopt your

point of view. You have had the advantage of

gathering and analyzing the information and reaching a

conclusion about what it means. Your value to the audience lies in your ability to convey and

convince the audience of your conclusion.

When presented with information people will not always reach the same conclusion, even

people with similar backgrounds such as scientists. To help people reach your conclusion you

must provide them with a logical framework. Your framework does not need to be a study in

Aristotelian logic, although both inductive and deductive reasoning are sound strategies, but it


SExSI sells and

helps them

remember

does need to have a logical flow from one idea to the next. Each idea or fact should build upon

the previous fact to support your conclusion and provide some hint as to the next step in the

logical progression.

Information provided in logical steps does not need to be all encompassing. Convincing

presentations move quickly through the steps to help the audience reach the speaker’s

conclusion. Too much information slows down the audience’s transformation to your way of

thinking. Once they have reached your conclusion they can always go back and fill in any

intellectual gaps they may have. So audiences don’t need all of the information that supports

your point, just enough to allow them to adopt your point of view and be willing to act upon it.

To avoid creating an “Information Dump,” start by asking yourself, “What conclusion do I want

the audience to leave with?” And then work backwards. What does someone have to know to

reach your conclusion? Those are the facts that you will present. I call this begin-with-the-end-

in-mind strategy “Intentionality.” If you are not creating your presentation through

intentionality it is likely you are creating an information dump.

7) Not being SExSI enough. Your audience’s memory is very short. Most of what you will say

will be forgotten within 24 hours of your presentation. This means that the endless hours that

you spent anguishing over the right font, the perfect animation and the ideal template

background are wasted time. Ideally you want the

information from your presentation to be

remembered and repeated. But how? By making

sure your information is SExSI.

SExSI is an acronym for Stories, Examples, Slogans,

and Interaction. These four tools are mnemonic

devices that will help your audience remember

you’re the information long after you have turned off

your projector.

Mnemonics are techniques to make information easier to memorize and retain so that they will

have a higher likelihood of being remembered. Many of us have used them to memorize

information for tests in school. Effective presenters use these devices to help anchor

information for the audience. The simplest of these devices to use is the story.

Stories are a universal vehicle for conveying information and meaning. Authors, movie makers

and politicians have utilized this tool to great effectiveness and you can too. A well-crafted

story not only makes information more memorable but it makes it more interesting and

personal. People relate to stories and remember details more readily within the confines of a

narrative.

Stories do not have to be directly related to the subject matter. Management lessons learned

while climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, morals woven into children’s fairy tales, and life lessons


discovered within sports stories are all examples of stories used to anchor key points. The story

often makes the information memorable.

Examples and analogies can also be an effective tool, especially when used to relay a complex

idea. In the movie Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum’s character Dr. Ian Malcolm uses the example of

a drop of water flowing down the back of the hand to explain the Chaos Theory. Moviegoers

didn’t need to understand all of the research and data supporting the Chaos Theory the simply

walked away with the relevant message that tiny variations within an environment can cause

massive changes. Here was a complex theory given relevance in a 30-second analogy that can

be remembered and repeated.

Examples and analogies that involve the audience are the most memorable. Physical

representations, such as the water drop on the back of a hand, are very powerful but so are

examples from common experiences, well-known literature, movies, TV shows or historical

events. As long as the example is relevant to the audience and can reasonably be linked to the

idea, analogies can make ideas relevant and memorable.

Slogans, or taglines, are phrases that are specifically designed to ensure that an idea is

remembered. Professional advertisers learned long ago that it was easier for people to

remember, “GE. We bring good things to life,” than “GE is a company that manufactures

products such as jet engines, light bulbs, washers and dryers, electrical generators….” Slogans,

or taglines, stay with us much longer than the details about an idea.

Slogans are most effective when they are less than 10 words and have some internal symmetry

such as alliteration (using the several word that have the same consonant at the beginning),

syllabics (the same number of syllables in each word), or rhyme. Other variants might include

the intentional misuse of language, such as “Got Milk?” or “Think Different,” or newly created

words, such as “The quicker picker-upper” and “Fahrvergnugen.” All are grammatically

incorrect but verbally memorable.

Slogans and taglines should be used sparingly but consistently. If you are a “rhymer” then most

of your taglines should rhyme. Not every idea needs a tagline. Audiences can quickly reach a

point of saturation with taglines and slogans, so add stories, analogies and examples liberally.

Interaction with the audience is an essential key to maintaining their attention. It can take on

many forms from direct audience participation, such as role playing and hands-on

demonstrations, to more passive engagement like question and answer segments and periodic

group discussions. The key is to create expectation of participation. If the audience knows that

they will be called on to participate they are much more likely to stay engaged in your

presentation so that they are not embarrassed when it is their turn to contribute.

Interaction can also reinforce ideas for kinesthetic learners. Many teachers use the Listen-

Watch-Do technique when teaching new material. Students are asked to listen to the

instructions, watch as the task is being performed and then do the task themselves. This may


sound remedial but most of us still learn in this way. Think about the last time you went online

to look up instructions on how to do something and you ended up watching a video of someone

else completing the task. Many of us have kinesthetic, or tactile, learning modalities and so will

your audience.

Even the common practice of Q&A can be an effective interaction technique when used

correctly. Most presenters will save the questions from the audience until the end of the

presentation. This creates two problems. The first is that of the bad question. I know that we

are taught that there are no bad questions but a poorly timed question can distract from the

overall idea. We have all suffered through the “opinion thinly veiled as a question” or the

“question so abstract as to be unintelligible.” If those are the last things your audience hears

how will they remember your brilliant ideas? Make sure that the last thing your audience hears

is your summation, not some else’s ramblings.

The second reason that you should not end with questions is that questions help to focus your

presentation and make it more applicable to the audience. If questions can be interwoven into

the presentation then the presenter can make the mid-course corrections necessary to keep the

discussion relevant to the audience. There is no point in building a logical series of proofs to

support your idea if no one understands your first assertion.

Questions let you know that the audience is keeping up and it is ok to move on. Build the

interactivity of questions into your presentation and let the audience know it is alright to ask

questions. Then solicit those questions frequently.

8) Forgetting that words have meanings.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,

“it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”

“Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll

Even Humpty Dumpty knew the value of a properly used word and a well-turned phrase. But

well chosen words and pithy phrases are rarely the result of spontaneous creation. They are

practiced and rehearsed to a point where they seem effortless. In order to do this they often

must be scripted. Yes, scripted, written down, and practiced.

Scripting helps solve many of the problems that plague PowerPoint presenters. Lack of focused

intention, using your slides as notes, text heavy slides, boring slides, lack of cohesion between

slides, running out of time, and assuming that you need PowerPoint in the first place can all be

solved by scripting your presentation. Knowing what you are going to say before you even boot

up the presentation software can make creating the visual aids and delivering your presentation

much easier.

Scripting can mean carefully writing and editing every word that you will speak. Modern

politicians use this to great effect. Each word is carefully chosen for its meaning and nuance. In


“Winging it” is

a shortcut to

failure

some situations, like a report to your corporate Board of Directors, this may be highly advisable.

But it can also mean writing and editing an expanded outline.

An expanded outline consists of a carefully worded opening, and closing with key phrases and

transitions written out to support the logical flow of the presentation. This is a common

practice for presentations that are longer than 10 minutes and can be a time saver if you are

developing a new presentation or a presentation for a new audience since the final product may

be adapted to the audience’s specific needs. This however is not an invitation to ignore the

importance of scripting as much of your speech as possible.

One immediate benefit of scripting can be the economy of words. Upon reflection we can

create phrases and sentences that more clearly express our ideas, often using fewer words. The

discipline of scripting gives us the opportunity to reflect upon what we will say and how we will

say it. How often have you finished a presentation and thought to yourself, “Oh, I wish I had

said…?”

With some forethought you can also more succinctly present ideas. In the heat of a

presentation, we often flounder for words, relying on long-winded sentences to express our

ideas. There is a correlation between the number of words we use and the impact the idea has

on an audience. The fewer words the greater the impact.

Scripting can also help you reduce the number of sloppy and

non-words that may currently litter your presentations. Do

your audiences make a game out of counting the number of

ahs and ums you utter during a presentation? Have you

ever used the words gonna, wanna, stuff, thingeys, or you

know in a sentence? These verbal crutches and sloppy

words are the result of your brain’s inability to keep up with

your mouth. Many “um-prone” speakers are amazed at how

quickly they eliminate the non-word once they have scripted, and

therefore know what they will to say next.

The fourth benefit of scripting can be found in the addition of your personality to a

presentation. When you don’t have to worry about the words you are going to say next you can

focus on other things that matter to an audience, like being yourself. If you have ever been

accused of looking stiff or unnatural when you are presenting, the confidence of knowing what

you are going to say next will loosen up your delivery and allow you to focus more on the

reactions of the audience instead of your own nervousness.

The final benefit of scripting is that it gives you a text that you can experiment with and edit.

Since words mean things and different words mean different things to different people you will

need a script to help you test how your words impact others. This means practicing in front of a

live audience who can give you educated feedback. Your cat does not count.


PowerPoint

wants to help

you, let it

Try out those phrases that you carefully crafted. How did your test audience feel? What did

they hear? What would they rather hear? I often solicit feedback by saying, “I know what I said

(because I have scripted it out), what did you hear?” Test audiences will help you tune your

message. They do not have to be formal but they should be human.

So if you are not beginning your presentation by scripting out what you intend to say, power

down the PowerPoint and take the time to write out at least an extended outline. If you have

the time, get some human feedback. You will find that with an outline those key phrases, ideas

for visually appealing slides and great transitions between ideas will come flowing out.

9) Not Utilizing PowerPoint 2007 or 2010. If you are still using Office XP or earlier versions of

PowerPoint, your presentation is suffering. Microsoft finally got around to solving some of the

biggest issues with PowerPoint in their Office 2007 release, namely bad templates and no notes

viewer.

With PowerPoint 2007 we received a great new feature, Presenter View. When your laptop is

connected to a projector or secondary monitor, you can now switch into Presenter View mode

and your audience will be able to view your slides while you can view the slide the audience is

seeing, your notes and the upcoming slides, all in one window. By resizing the various windows

you can maximize the Notes field on your slides and

use them to easily review any text you have

including your script or an outline of your script.

If you have taken the time to script out your

presentation you can use the Notes field to include

keywords or phrases that you would like to use in

conjunction with your slide. All the audience ever

sees is the slide.

Additionally the upcoming slides are tiled across the bottom of the window with their

corresponding slide number. With a quick glance you can easily identify upcoming slides. To

skip forward to them simply type in the number of the upcoming slide and hit “Enter.” You will

skip to that slide.

No more clicking through slides to get to the one you need. Skipping forward is available on

previous version of PowerPoint but I was always guessing the number of the slide that I wanted

to skip to and I was usually incorrect. Now you can jump slides and the only person that knows

is the presenter. Your audience will never wonder what was on the slides you quickly skipped

over.

The Presentation View window also includes a presentation timer and a clock so you can keep to

the schedule. All the windows can be resized so you can adapt them to your particular

preference and the text in the Notes window can be enlarged for those of us with older eyes.

When used with today’s large screen laptops this feature turns your screen into a teleprompter.


How long will it

take to do it

wrong?

The second reason that you need to adopted PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 is that Microsoft has

finally made it hard to use a bad template. The standard templates in older version of

PowerPoint were eye-straining, insults to basic layout and design rules. The colors were either

too muted or too garish. The fonts were often unreadable. The available clip art was

hackneyed. And the font layouts were too small. All that changed in 2007.

Backgrounds and templates were better designed. It was harder to screw up their basic design

aesthetics. The suggested fonts were more readable and larger. Most importantly PowerPoint

2007 now included photo-editing tools that made it very easy to include photos instead of clip

art. Videos were easier to insert and play.

Microsoft even included some new slide transitions that were more film-like. My Apple Keynote

friends brag that they have had these tools for years, but this is a big step forward for Microsoft.

So if you are not currently using Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 or 2010, upgrade. Your audiences

will thank you.

10) Not taking the time to do it right. There is a reason that you were asked to present to a

selected audience. It could be your knowledge, your viewpoint, your style or maybe just your

availability. Whatever the reason for the presentation remember that audiences are a privilege

that you earn, treat them that way.

People can tell when you have just thrown together

some slides. They can sense when you are not giving

your best effort. Audiences will forgive almost any

mistake if they know you are trying your hardest.

Presentations take time to develop. Presentations

that include visual tools such as PowerPoint take

even longer. Understand what a commitment of

time you are making when agreeing to give a

presentation and plan the time that you will need.

If you can avoid it, stay away from creating presentations that you will only use once. Since you

are committing to taking the time to create a great presentation, find ways to reuse the content.

Is there another audience that needs to hear this message? Is there another analogy that can

be used to broaden your presentation’s appeal? Can you build on this presentation for your

next audience?


In conclusion, most PowerPoint errors are made before the projector ever lights up. This may

seem like a lot of things to incorporate into your next presentation but if you make the

commitment to take the time to do it right you will find yourself working in this order:

1. Create an outline to ensure you have created a logical flow

2. Expand the outline to include a scripted opening and closing, key phrases, and well-

chosen words.

3. Write out ways that you can get your key ideas across and remembered. Keep it SExSI.

4. Spend some time creating the take-aways.

5. Practice your script in front of an audience that can give you feedback.

6. Create the visual aids to support your streamlined presentation.

The one area where you can cut corners is the visual aids. This may sound like heresy but if you

don’t have enough time don’t create slides. If slides are a “must have” make sure you have

enough time to go through all the steps.

PowerPoint is a powerful tool but it is not your presentation, you are. If you are ready for the

presentation the tools will be useful to you. If you are not your presentation will be like trying

to bail water with a sledgehammer. (Note the use of an analogy. Let me know if it is an effective

one because I could use the feedback.)

And let me know how these tips work for you. Ideas are meant to be shared and your ideas on

PowerPoint are as valid as mine. Contact me directly at [email protected] or comment

on my blog posts at www.johnfreisinger.com. Together we can free the world of PowerPoint

Presentations that Suck.

This article was created by John Freisinger, who encourages you to freely reprint or repost his

articles provided that his name and contact information are included. Please let us know how

you plan on using this article by contacting John through his easy online form at

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