In a visual age, the right picture can be worth a thousand words. But overdoing Microsoft® PowerPoint can glaze an audience's eyeballs. Here's how to maximize its power for your presentations:
- Plan without slides. Think through your message, and plan the presentation as if there aren't any slides. "Know where you are headed," says Laurent Duperval, president of Duperval Consulting in Montreal, Canada. "That seems like a basic idea but many business presentations amount to little more than improvisation. The presenter is entirely dependent on PowerPoint to deliver his/her presentation." And the audience notices.
- Keep graphics simple. "If your audience is spending their time trying to decipher the graphic rather than interpret the message, your point may be lost," says Carolann Kowalski, an officer in Edmunds.com's Toastmasters chapter (and the company's Knowledge Manager by day). "All they will remember are things like 'that color-crazy line graphic picture.'"
- Avoid clutter. "If using PowerPoint, limit the text on each slide; use large fonts; think of bullet points as headlines; and use graphics to illustrate points," says Kevin L. Sullivan, chief marketing officer at Fisher & Phillips LLP, a law firm in Atlanta. (In presentations to lawyers, he uses Dilbert strips that poke fun at long, boring PowerPoint presentations.)
- One at a time. "Reveal one line or graphic per point," says David Hudson, the president of Edmunds.com's Toastmasters chapter (and the company's Senior Release Management Engineer by day). "This will help the audience follow along. This is especially helpful with complex data." If you have a main point you want to emphasize, experts say to put it on the screen by itself, and let people read it. When that point is done, turn the slide off again, and go to a black screen.
- Get colorful. "Don't forget the colors," says Nicole Wells, a speech instructor and an adjunct faculty member at New York University's Stern School of Business. "Graphs and charts are a fantastic way to present complex ideas, so you don't always need bullet points."
- Try video. More presenters are embedding video into PowerPoint. "I think this can be effective when you want to split up long presentations and to illustrate a point (perhaps from someone other than the presenter's point of view)," Kowalski says. "However it should be relevant and add to the message of the presentation. Otherwise it can feel awkward and create an unnecessary stall in the presentation."
One final tip: Don't make PowerPoint your notes. "A PowerPoint presentation should amplify your message, but if you are using the PowerPoint as your notes for the presentation, you probably have too much information on them," Well says. Instead, use the Notes pane that appears below the slide to create short prompts for yourself during your presentation.
