Help me change the PowerPoint culture…

Sylvie VerleyePresentation Coach

…and surprise your audience

with a memorable presentation !

People remember in terms of

3

The heart of your presentation is ideally 3 key messages, 3

things you want the audience to remember !

But how does our memory work ?

Our brain is a big storage place of mental pictures : childhood memories, holidays, …Our whole world is mainly images. So why not use that in presentations ? It is far easier to remember a simple picture or a simple sentence than a complicated slide…

This is the kind of slide I quite often see in companies…

– And when you make such a slide:

• It won’t help you to grab and hold the attention of the audience• Your focus and the focus of your audience is primarily with the slide• Maybe you read from your computer to avoid reading from the

screen but…

– …Don’t worry your audience is reading as you are now

• And while they are reading, they are not listening to you • Maybe you just said something very important but they have not

heard because they can read much faster than you can speak• And while you are talking about the first bullit point, they are reading

the last one

• Results on profiling in the zone before/after (display on the movie)• Results on market share (display on the movie)

Maybe this is more your style…

PowerPoints nowadays are ‘compromise’ documents:A compromise because the presentation serves two goals : they are used as slides during the presentation and sent as handout after the presentation. The solution :Use the NOTES ! Don’t use your notes merely as speaker notes but look at them as a kind of word document. You make a very simple, visual slide. That can be a picture, a graphic, a table, but always easy and simple. You put everything you say about this slide in the notes. Either in paragraphs or bullit points. Don’t print the slides but the notes…and this is your handout.

But it won’t work

This font is Too small

This is too much

Font must beminimal 24

Here is the problem

I beg you to experiment with this

This is a simple slide, no ?

Yes but boring and not memorable Bullits are great as a summary But to make your point you need visuals Visuals stick in your mind They help you remember the message Only then you use PowerPoint as a true

visual aid

Taking oil further

This is a true

visual aid

This is memorab

le

And this may help you understand

HBDIHermann Brain Dominance Instrument

Everyone has a brain dominance. Left or right side of the brain, upper or lower half, or a mixture of all that but most often 2 quadrants will be dominant. To put it simplistic : A is the ‘facts & figures’ quadrant, B stands for structure, C is emotion and D is creativity. But no matter what your brain dominance is as a presenter, your audience is a mixture of all these colours and you will have to make sure all these colours are present in your presentation. If you don’t do that, you might loose some people in the audience…

Use facts & figures ! This is the theoretic evidence of the

point you want to make.

Though remember…

The A-quadrant

92 %…simple figures like this work better…

…than a whole table with figures while only one or a handful are important. Put the whole table in the notes !

Maand Q leveringen > 24h % < 24h > 36h % < 36h

jan/07 32 97,10% 0 100,00%

feb/07 27 97,60% 0 100,00%

mrt/07 24 98,20% 0 100,00%

apr/07 17 98,60% 0 100,00%

mei/07 13 98,50% 0 100,00%

jun/07 91 94,20% 0 100,00%

jul/07 11 99,10% 0 100,00%aug/07 51 91,50% 1 99,80%Gem. / / 96,85% / 99,98%

If you want to show an evolution, use a graphic that enables you to really show an evolution, not just a table with lots of figures.

This is taken from the site of Garr Reynolds

Use the notes as this is the only way to make your slide simple. All the details, in fact the whole explanation you TELL while you show the simple slide moves to the notes. Yo make your presentation memorable as they LISTEN to you during the presentation looking at a simple slide. And you give them the notes after the presentation so they can read again what you have explained later on. You choose as a presenter how detailed these notes are, real paragraphs or just simple bullits with the main points.

Using Key messages will help you structure your presentation.

An agenda can do this as well, though a presentation is not a book !

Key messages are stronger and memorable.

The B-quadrant

The C-quadrant

Use examples or comparisons ! This is the emotional evidence of the

point you want to make.

A participant in a training recently used this picture in a presentation to explain a new machine. It was a machine meant for the pharmaceutical industry and he used the picture of an espresso machine to get the message across how simple the machine worked. To have coffee all you have to do is use a pad, press a button and there is your coffee.

For the pharmaceutical machine all you had to do was put in a sample, push a button, and there was the result.

The nice thing about it is that this simple picture made the presentation memorable. Because one year after this presentation people who had attended that presentation still remembered ‘Andy’s coffee machine’…

The D-quadrant

Use your creativity !This will surprise your audience

and helps you to maintain attention.

Instead of a slide like the following…

Inhoud deontologisch code

– Inleiding (wat is een code?, op wie van toepassing, enz.)

– Het waardenkader:• De klant staat centraal• Eerlijkheid en correctheid• Respect en collegialiteit• Bekwaamheid en beroepstrots• Verantwoordelijkheidszin en Integriteit

– Uitvoering (Is ze afdwingbaar? waar kan je terecht? Met vragen, enz.)

You will attract the attention much better showing a slide like the next one…

And the conclusion of this whole slideshow is…

A presentation is not about the PowerPoint you make, it is all about you who talks to the audience in an

authentic way !

…And to know what authenticity means, just wait for my next SlideShare Presentation…

Thanks for reading and forwarding this !