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

	PRESENTERS: DOES YOUR AUDIENCE WANT YOUR HANDOUTS?
	PRESENTERS: WHY SHOULD YOU "PRIME" YOURSELF FOR A PRESENTATION?
	DESIGNERS: 3 WAYS TO SAVE YOURSELF TIME WITH POWERPOINT
	MONTHLY CHALLENGE

DOES YOUR AUDIENCE WANT YOUR HANDOUTS?

So many times people tell me, "The audience needs these handouts. What will they do when I'm not there?" The presenter is assuming, first of all, that the slides were clear and organized enough that the audience will want to look at them again. And second, that the handouts are organized to make information easy to find in the presenter's absence. People are preparing and handing out stacks of paper under assumptions that they never check out. They never ask themselves:

1. What percent of people really look at the materials after the talk?
2. When people start to look at the handouts, do they continue or give up based on how the information is organized?

Here two short questionnaires, one to ask your audience during your presentation and the other to send them a week or two after your talk.

HANDOUT QUESTIONNAIRE DURING THE PRESENTATION

Please take a moment to fill out this questionnaire. Thank you!

Will you look at my handouts after my talk?
1. ___ Yes
2. ___ No
3. ___ Maybe

For what reasons will you look at my handouts?
1. ___ To go over a point that I want to explain to someone else
2. ___ To make sure I understand what you said
3. ___ To look up a certain fact or number
4. Other _________________________________

If you had a choice, how do you like the handouts organized?
1. ___ A one-page executive summary without all the PowerPoint slides
2. ___ Give me the slides one per page
3. ___ Give me the slides two per page
4. ___ Give me the slides three to six per page
5. ___ Forget the paper copy, just send me the presentation via e-mail

Have you ever received handouts with a table of contents and page numbers?
1. ___ Yes
2. ___ No

If yes, are you more likely to look at handouts with a table of contents?
1. ___ Yes
2. ___ No

HANDOUT QUESTIONNAIRE TWO WEEKS AFTER THE PRESSENTATION

Please take a moment to fill out this questionnaire. Thank you!

Have you looked at my handouts since my talk?
1. ___ Yes
2. ___ No

For what reasons did you look at my handouts?
1. ___ To find a point that I want to explain to someone else
2. ___ To use the information in a talk or meeting
3. ___ To look up a certain fact or number
4. Other _________________________________

Was the information:
1. ___ Easy to find
2. ___ Difficult to find
3. ___ Difficult to find, but I kept looking
4. ___ Difficult to find, so I quit looking

Would it have been easier if you had a table of contents with page numbers?
1. ___ Yes
2. ___ No

Did the slide titles make it easy for you to find the information?
1. ___ Yes
2. ___ No

Most of you have read about having a positive attitude, keeping yourself in a good mood, and imagining the best outcome for your talk. But you probably don't take this advice that seriously. You don't really think that talking to others about how worried you are about the talk, that you may not do well, that the audience won't like it, will make any significant difference in the outcome of your talk. Think again. You "set up" before a talk can influence its outcome.

According to research in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, your frame of mind before an event can make an enormous difference in the outcome.

Here's a study Gladwell mentions in his book:

Two Dutch researchers did a study in which they had groups of students answer forty-two fairly demanding questions from the board game Trivial Pursuit. Half were asked to take five minutes beforehand to think about what is would mean to be a professor and write down everything that came to mind. Those students got 55.6 percent of the questions right. The other half of the students were asked to first sit and think about soccer hooligans. They ended up getting 42.6 percent of the Trivial Pursuit questions right. The 'professor' group didn't know more than the 'soccer' group. There were simply in a 'smart' frame of mind...The difference between 55.6 and 42.6 percent, it should be pointed out, is enormous.

Gladwell calls putting yourself in a smart frame of mind "Primed for Action." So think about how you prime yourself for a talk. Always prime yourself for success.

3 WAYS TO SAVE YOURSELF TIME WITH POWERPOINT

1. Get someone to design a good background with a slide color scheme. That way you will not spend hours trying to figure out what colors to use.
2. Go to Insert>New Slide and use one of the layouts rather than making up your own layouts using the text box. Don't spend a lot of time just to end up with unprofessional-looking slides. If you need information to go with a picture on a slide, right click on the slide, go to Slide Layout, and choose one of those layouts. You will then have a placeholder where you can enter your information.
3. Set up conventions for your slides and put them where you can see them. For example, you might post next to your computer a printed list that looks like this:
   • Don't use periods unless it's a direct quote
   • Don't change the line spacing on each slide
   • Title Case: Capitalize the first letter of all words in titles
   • Capitalize only the first word in each phrase
     

CREATE A FILE OF SLIDE LAYOUTS YOU CAN USE AGAIN AND AGAIN

Don't recreate your next presentation from scratch! Start an archive of empty slide shells you can use again and again. Pick slides that work for you and put them in a file. Make sure they all have the same font, look, color scheme, etc. Make your titles and placeholders consistent with your conventions. The time you spend doing this will save you hours of design time later. For your next presentation, all you'll have to change is the words.

Slide 1 shows how you can use the same design idea over and over, putting in new benefits as the product or customer changes and other benefits become more important.

Slide 2 shows a slide you can use when discussing a project. Insert the information and you're done!

Slide 3 shows how to set up an executive summary for your company. You can also set up an executive summary with different headings for your projects. For example, the titles for a project might be: Objective, Key benefits, Resources needed, Timeframe.

DESIGNERS
Make sure you have the slide designs and backgrounds that look professional and that you can easily use again and again.