Do you often have to make presentations to a crowd or even to an individual during a sales meeting? And do you mostly use PowerPoint slides during your presentations? But, did you know there are a few right and wrong ways to use PowerPoint slides? Here are few tips to help you make your next presentation successful:
- Don’t place everything including the kitchen sink on one slide. Too many people use 8 pt. type and have written a novel on one page. Your audience will be too busy reading your slides and won’t be paying attention to your presentation. Keep your slides down to a title, maybe a subtitle, and 3-4 bullets maximum. Your goal is to have your slides reference what you are discussing. So, you need to know your presentation cold and not refer to your PowerPoint slides as your cheat sheet. If you need help remembering your presentation points, by all means, use index cards that you hold in your hands.
- Use a maximum of 2 slides per every 5 minutes for a 30 minute presentation. And, that includes your title slide, agenda slide, and a closing slide. So, that’s about 12 slides per 30 minutes. So, how do you engage your audience to keep them interested in the topic being presented?
- If you have an Internet connection, you can easily switch back and forth from your PowerPoint presentation to a page on your Website or blog. Consider showing a short video, if that refers to your presentation. Give your audience a way to interact with your presentations rather than have you do all of the talking and they do all of the listening. Webinars have figured this out by offering audience participation with comments and questions.
- Don’t use too many pictures, charts or other illustrations in your PowerPoint presentations. Only use them if they really help explain a concept. Too much clutter just makes your audience concentrate on your pretty pictures and not on the content of your presentation. In other words, keep your slides, neat, clean, tidy, and to the point.
- Even though PowerPoint has a lot of bells and whistles your job is not to convince the audience you have expertise in manipulating the PowerPoint software. Your job is to make a sale, persuade someone in your company about a certain topic, or communicate some new technology. So, keep your template simple. Don’t use too many font sizes or font styles. Use all of the typical graphic design guidelines you would use for a brochure or other printed literature.
Here’s to your next presentation.
