Your Presentation Success Is Our Passion
Present It Right...The First Time!

By the end of 2006 you will have learned:

• 12 habits of successful presenters
• 12 keys to compelling presentation content
• 12 ways to save hours creating PowerPoint presentations
• 12 products you need
• 12 case studies of companies or individuals and how they improved their presentations
• 12 design aids for PowerPoint.

Change the order of your presentation on the spot [more]

Create an executive summary slide before your content slides [more]

Make (or have made for you) a file of professional-looking designs for use in any situation [more]

Presentations in a Hurry: 26 Formats That Persuade [more]

Too much information causes audience hostility [more]

Graphicae [more]

Get written up in my bulletin when you…

Presenters: Send me an executive summary slide.

Designers: Send me a request for one of the Presentations in a Hurry formats. Or send me an image you used from Graphicae.

CHANGE THE ORDER OF YOUR PRESENTATION ON THE SPOT

What makes a presenter special, especially when talking to a group that wants to engage instead of listen passively? For example, you are talking to someone higher up in your company, a new prospect, or managers from a company that has acquired yours. This is the type of audience that likes to ask questions almost as soon as you start. You may not be used to this—someone asks you a question and you don’t know what slide the information is on. How do you stay in charge rather than fumbling around in the slide sorter trying to find the right slide?

There are two PowerPoint features than can help you out.

If you are the visual type, print your slides six on a page and number them. Do File>Print>Handouts>Slides Per Page 6. Then, when presenting, you can quickly look down and see which slide you want. Just type in the slide number and press enter to show the slide. To go back to where you were, type in that slide’s number and press enter.

Don’t need an image to remember slide content? Then all you need to see is the slide’s title. Use Ellen Finkelstein’s method:

1. First, be sure you have small thumbnails of your slides on the left hand side of your screen.
2. View>Toolbars>Outlining to see the Outlining toolbar.
3. Click Collapse All button on the outlining toolbar to see slide numbers and titles.
4. File>Print>(Print What) Outline View to print only the slide numbers and the title of the slide.

What are the pitfalls of this system? If you do not have clear, informative titles, the slide title names won’t mean anything. Don’t put transition phrases or words like “summary” and background” in your titles. Don’t use the same title on more than one slide—what if you have three titles that only say “summary”? A great benefit of using the outline view to navigate through your slides is that you will be forced to create titles that actually state the point of the slide!

For more tips from Ellen Finkelstein, sign up for her informative PowerPoint newsletter at www.ellenfinkelstein.com.

CREATE AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY SLIDE BEFORE YOUR CONTENT SLIDES

There are two scenarios when starting to create your slides.

Scenario 1: Just start creating slides and hope they will end up organized. This method seldom works.

Scenario 2: Start with an executive summary.

Last month I explained the first step to an organized talk, filling out a Presentation Overview. The second step, before creating your slides, is to take the information on your Presentation Overview form and make a one-slide summary of your talk. I call this your executive summary. You can present it at the beginning of your talk or at the end, depending on your audience’s attention span and ability to wait until the end of the presentation to have it all summarized.

No, no, you say, I do the executive summary after I make my slides. But why is doing it first important? If you do your summary first, you will have two ways to decide what information to put on each of your slides: the Presentation Overview and the Executive Summary. If the information is not relevant to the overview and the summary, then you should probably leave it out. You will save yourself time and sound more organized, and therefore knowledgeable, in front of your audience.

Here are three executive summaries formats to get you started. Don’t use long sentences—simply convey the essence of your message. 

MAKE A FILE OF PROFESSIONAL-LOOKING DESIGNS FOR USE IN ANY SITUATION

Think about the type of slide designs you use. Do you have a file of appropriate images that you can use over and over? If not, think about what your time is worth. Isn’t it to your advantage to have a graphic specialist inside or outside your company design images you can use repeatedly? Imagine the benefits: you’ll save time, and your slide images with the appropriate content will engage your audience.

I’m not talking about bullet points. Here are some images you could probably use for your slide design file:

1. Circles
2. Arrows
3. Tables
4. Diagrams showing a particular process
5. Timelines
6. Interesting ways to show five key points on a slide, with information below each point
7. Executive summary
8. Navigation slide that hyperlinks to different parts of the presentation (just using bulleted text for the navigation does not look professional)

PRESENTATIONS IN A HURRY: 26 FORMATS THAT PERSUADE

I produced this CD that contains 26 formats for organizing a talk. Everyone should have formats that they use for their different types of presentations. Each one of my formats includes the presentation overview, executive summary slide, logically content-organized slides, and a summary slide to show after audience Q&A . Sure, I would love for you to purchase my CD, but if you don’t, make your own. Without this tool for creating PowerPoint slides, you will waste hours of time. You also risk the possibility of not creating a logical presentation that persuades your audience.

Here are the formats. I can go on and on about their benefits, but you need to see one for yourself. So just e-mail me and tell me which one you want, and I’ll send it to you.  

TOO MUCH INFORMATION CAUSES AUDIENCE HOSTILITY

Problem: Jason is speaking to upper management about the projects in his group. He has too many slides and includes too many details that his audience doesn’t want, or need, to know. The managers ask hostile questions that prevent Jason from maintaining a confident manner.
Result: After his presentation, Jason’s boss tells him that he is not making a good impression during the management update meetings.
Design solution:

• Cut the slides from 30 to 15.
• Create a format so every project is presented in the same manner.
• Make an interesting executive summary slide for each project.

Presenter solution:
Learn to end sentences saying the last word as loud as or louder than the rest. Because he had created too many slides for the amount of time allotted, Jason had the bad habit of hurrying the end of his sentences in an attempt to cover all his slides.
Learn to end a sentence looking at an audience member, not at the screen.
Major learning:

• Use only enough slides to tell the audience what they want to know, not everything you know. A presentation is not a performance appraisal—you don’t have to include everything in an attempt to convince the audience that you are doing your job.

After he made the changes, Jason’s boss said to him, “Nice job. This time they listened to you. They didn’t get stuck discussing unimportant details.”

GRAPHICAE

So you can’t pay someone to make design neat, professional-looking images for you. Take a look at Graphicae instead. You can click a button, import the image onto your PowerPoint slide, change the color, and use it. To view a demo as well as download a trial copy, go to www.graphicae.com.

My clients really like the simplicity of this product. They put the images in their design file in the colors they use. These are images they will use over and over again.

Two Key Seminars:

1. The Winning Presentations Seminar. Two days, offered publicly. There is also a version for salespeople. Bring a presentation, redo it during class, learn to deliver it with confidence, and convince your audience that you know the subject inside out.

Public Seminar dates for 2006: February 7-8, June 6-7, November 7-8.

1. Creating PowerPoint Presentations That Get Your Point Across Seminar. One day.

Individual Coaching: I help executives and managers present with confidence and persuade their audience.

Visuals Makeovers

1. One-hour analysis of your slides with ideas for changes.
2. Total redo of your slides.

Corporate Consulting: Presentation Performance Process for Your Company or Division. Save days of time putting together a talk. Guarantee: put my process in place and save at least 1/3 of the time you used to spend putting together a talk.

My clients include: The Gillette Company, Genzyme Corporation, Mercury Computer Systems, Harvard Medical School, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Avid Technology.

Presentation Points may be forwarded via e-mail, printed for circulation, and quoted free of charge. No permission is required, but please mention where you got this information.  Also, it’s perfectly acceptable to post Presentation Points on your company’s intranet. To subscribe to Presentation Points or visit my website, go to www.wilderpresentations.com.