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Here are some simple presentation tips to supercharge your next presentation.

1. Don’t start with “Hello my name is XXX and today we are going to discuss….”. They already know why they they are there. Start with an impact statement. No preamble – just go for it “Delivery date is June 2nd – less than XX days to go but here is how we will do it”, or “The XYZ product has as many pros and cons as other products but our pros are better and our cons arent as bad – heres how”. That’s what people will remember.
2. Don’t have a table of contents – they will read it in 5 seconds and hit the snooze button.
3. Use a laser pointer if needs and a remote control to move the slides. Walk the room and keep people awake. If you are on a stage walk the stage.
4. Give them a gift. It need not cost you too much. I used an off the shelf pen I bought in a local stationery store that had 5 different colurs. People like gifts.
5. Don’t talk to the slides. Memorise your content, practise it multiple times. Have a folder open next to your laptop/PC with notes to add spice to the presentation.
6. Pictures – no not on the powerpoint. Print off a graphics, picture or powerful graph that people can touch and pass around.
7. Don’t ask for questions – peole don’t ask any they wait for someone else. Do a show of hands. “Hands up if you would like a follow on presentation with more detail / less detail / expand on a topic?”, “Hands up if this was what you thought the presentation was what you were looking for?”, “Hands up if you want me to e-mail you the slides?”. Ask them questions then!.
8. Keep it short. If there is no hands on activity they will all be brain dead in 40 minutes. Stop. If your allocation is an hour try and mix in some practical.work.

We’ve all been there.  You need to create a business presentation in a short period of time and you are not prepared.  Well here a few simple tips on how to at least wing it.

PowerPoint Template

Have a PowerPoint template that you use each time for your presentations.  Don’t use the standard Microsoft Office ones as they have been used by half the world.  Here is what you should do.

• Open up PowerPoint.
• Make modifications to the standard very basic template so that it looks like you want it to look.  Here are some tips.  Create a smart coloured heading.  Reduce the standard font sizes.  Put your business name in the footer.
• Put a subtle shading in the background using Slide Master.  Then stop.  The content is what wins and this is just a presentation for a quick review.  There are lots of other subtle things that you can do with time to a template that I will cover in a later post.

Standard Sections

When you are happy with your look and feel fill in some standard sections.  All presentations should have the following sections.  Title, Agenda, Questions prompt and Backup Data slides.  Create these and use them again and again and it will mean 3-4 less slides for you to create.

Simple Sections

Do not over elaborate in your sections.  If you are caught for time then put in simple bullets and talk to the bullets.  The best presentations are when people talk to the content and not from the content.  People really hate reading PowerPoint slides.  I am assuming that you know what you are talking about so this is where you will shine not in talking out lines of information

Backup Data

Keep a consistent set of backup data.  You will use it again and again. Work on this as your core database of information.

Here is a very simple example that took me 10 minutes to put together.