How to avoid a ‘crashing’ end to your PowerPoint presentation

How many times have you seen a presenter come to a big, impactful finish, only to undo the effect by running past their final PowerPoint slide? In doing so they ‘crash out’ of Slideshow mode to reveal their desktop, complete with sentimental screensaver and an iTunes library that invariably kicks off with Abba’s Greatest Hits? No amount of fumbling is ever going to completely bring back the feeling they created – for just a fleeting moment – nor the Call to Action they delivered with such panache.

Happily, there is a very simple solution to avoiding ‘crashing your PowerPoint’. Make yourself an ‘end slide’ – this could simply be a copy of your ‘intro slide’ or it could be more specific to the close of your presentation, showing a ‘big message’, an abiding image or your contact details and website address.

Place this at the very end of your presentation, followed by a duplicate. That way, you can click onto a definite end slide that marks the end of your presentation. And if you happen to fumble and click too far you display the duplicate and no harm is done. If you want to be really safe - belt and braces, as they say - you could have two duplicates at the end. It may seem like a small point but, as I always say, ‘Firsts & Lasts’ are the most important parts of any presentation and you really do want to send your audience away with your big message, undimmed by any clumsy slide control.

Once you get the hang of putting high focus on how you open and close, you may want to move to another level and deliver your intro and your outro with a blank screen. To see the advantages of doing that, click here: Open and close your businesspresentation with more impact – by switching off.

New Year’s resolutions for business presenters – should you drop the PowerPoint?

It’s the time for new beginnings and fresh approaches, so anyone with a business presentation high on their New Year agenda may well be considering some changes in how they address their audiences.

“Should I abandon PowerPoint”? is the question I am most frequently asked by those seeking a radical re-think. “No” is my emphatic answer for most scenarios. What I do recommend to many people, however, is that they view PowerPoint in a rather different way.

You need first to see PowerPoint as a tool that is there simply to help you get your message across to your audience. Too many presenters regard their PowerPoint slides as ‘the presentation’ and the slides end up driving them rather than supporting them. “You are the show”, I tell them!

Having re-framed PowerPoint in your mind as a tool, it now needs to be seen as just one of a number of different options within your toolbox. You should really use whatever tool is going to do the job most effectively: that may well be PowerPoint, but it could also be a simple picture on a board, a flipchart, a group exercise, some music or old-fashioned technology such as an overhead projector.

For all my talk of ‘tools’, PowerPoint is really just a ‘Visual Aid’ and the best way to decide where you need Visual Aids – if indeed you need them at all – is to do an initial run through of your presentation without any aids at all. This puts the focus in the right place – on you and what you are saying – and it points to where you need aids. The moment you struggle to explain something or perhaps take too long to describe a feature is the moment you need a Visual Aid. Then you can decide what type of Visual Aid would do the job most effectively in this instance and you can make this decision objectively, without PowerPoint becoming the automatic default.

“So should I give up the bullet points”? is the next question I am often asked. “Not necessarily” is my usual response. Bullet points can actually be very effective in capturing and reinforcing the essence of what you are saying, while also framing related points together in a natural group. Two points are key to doing this effectively:

·      Restrict your bullets to a list of five; ideally make it three

·      Keep them all to one-liners

The moment a bullet point spills over into a second line it loses the majority of its potential impact and audience members are now having to choose whether to listen to you or read bullet points.

To see how this all works I invite you to watch any Steve Jobs presentation. He always uses PowerPoint (or his own Keynote version) but he only ever puts anything on the screen if it is actively helping him – and thereby his audience – at that particular moment. Most of the time it’s about him and his products, along with appropriate props and demonstrations.

One firm recommendation I can make – and something you might like adopt as a New Year’s resolution – is as follows:

Drop the bullet points – and indeed the PowerPoint – from your opening and closing passages. A blank screen as you open enables you to establish a personal connection with your audience members before their attention gets sucked into the screen. Then, as you close it’s time to deliver your Call to Action – the moment at which you need to look them straight in the eye and ask them for something. Generally speaking, that is so much more effective coming from you – speaking straight from the heart – rather than via a bunch of bullet points.

 

Final question: “How do make that happen from a technical point of view”? Try pressing the B key. For many, one of PowerPoint’s most useful features remains hidden in plain sight.

Happy New Year!

Three questions to ask yourself about the ‘Visual Aids’ in your business presentation

Before embarking on a business presentation the presenter should always review their content, asking themselves three fundamental questions about their Visual Aids. PowerPoint should certainly be included within the scrutiny; indeed that is probably where the questions need to be most probing.

1. Are my Visual Aids visual?

Without getting bogged down here in a debate about pictures vs. words, can your audience actually see the detail of your Visual Aids? How many times have you heard presenters declare: “I know you can’t really see this but….”.  Clearly it’s not visual, so it’s not aiding anyone; it may even be doing more harm than good.

Some of the business presenters I have coached remain oblivious to this point, so I end up asking them to come and join me towards the back of the room, where I ask: “Can you see anything on that screen”? 

To be sure that your Visual Aid is truly visual you therefore need to see it on the screen on which you will eventually be presenting and you need to view it from the back of the room. You may be surprised at how a Visual Aid that looked clear on your computer or the page from which you scanned it becomes quite indistinct once displayed on a big screen. 

Particular danger areas include:

• Grey print on a white background, which can become washed out.
• Maps and property plans with a level of detail that was designed to be read close up.
• Graphs with thin lines – which probably need bolding – and discreet, over-detailed or even sideways-positioned legends and axis markers.

As I say, I am not going to get into a pictures vs. words debate here, but you need to bear in mind that any bullet point loses most of its impact once it tips over into two lines. Look at the pictures below – a slide written for a business pitch; it is fine for a document, but useless for presentation. Then the same slide, edited down to work effectively as a Visual Aid.

Finally, bear in mind that you can fall foul of having too many pictures, every bit as much as you can having too many words. How many times have you been presented with a slide filled with multiple illustrations, making you think ‘where am I meant to be looking?’, with the result that you lose the thread of what is being said.

2. Who are my Visual Aids aiding?

All focus with any presentation should be on the needs of the audience. So are your Visual Aids helping the audience to understand what you are saying more clearly?  If they are simply helping you to remember what to say, they are not Visual Aids, they are prompts – and these should not be on display!

3. Are my Visual Aids actually aiding anyone?

The most effective way to select Visual Aids is to start with none whatsoever – and that means no PowerPoint. Run through what you are planning to say to this particular audience and you will achieve a natural flow, in your own style – you will not find yourself being driven by whatever Visual Aids you have compiled. At certain points you will probably find yourself struggling to describe something or taking longer than you should to do so – in which case you probably need a Visual Aid. You only really want a Visual Aid on display if it is actively helping your audience – and thereby you – at this particular moment. You might be surprised at how few you really need.

There is plenty of research to prove just how important the visual sense is to communication and in particular to ensuring that messages are retained. But too many so-called Visual Aids are neither visual nor an aid to anyone.

Keep well away from your computer when planning a PowerPoint presentation

For anyone who starts the process of creating a presentation by staring into a blank PowerPoint template, I encourage you to adopt a whole new approach and think like a film director!

There are at least three benefits to getting into a ‘Hollywood frame of mind’. The first is one I have discussed before – filmmakers work around a principle called ‘High Concept’ whereby a single phrase sums up what the whole movie is about. Giant Shark terrorises holiday resort was the High Concept that helped a little film called Jaws kickstart the phenomenon of the summertime blockbuster. More recently, High Concepts have even been adopted as the film titles – think Snakes on a Plane and Cowboys & Aliens. It’s all about making the message memorable, motivating and word of mouth-friendly – which is generally exactly what you want in a business presentation.

It is the other two benefits I want to discuss this time. One is that film makers think visually when storytelling, constantly creating and referring to storyboards.  The other is that they don’t get their cameras out until they have decided what they want to film! So the lesson is to plan what you want and need to say, together with any visual support and then consider how PowerPoint can help you achieve your objectives – if, indeed, PowerPoint is the best solution. It might be better achieved by props, boards, exercises or a simple sketch pad.

A management consultant I was coaching some years ago illustrated the benefits of this thinking – and the perils of reaching for the computer too soon – more clearly than I have ever seen. He entered the room loud and proud, but shrivelled somewhat once the door was closed. “I have a problem”, he confessed, “I’m 48 years old and I am getting worse at presenting; and I don’t know why”. The moment he started presenting I could see exactly what the problem was. His main focus was on ensuring that he matched his spoken words with those on the screen, what was coming up next and whether he had covered everything laid out in his slides, whether or not it was strictly required. He was being driven by his slides rather than supported by them!

I could see without even starting to discuss it that he was dissatisfied with his performance, so I asked him to do it again – without the slides. He gulped at the thought, but I knew it was not an unreasonable request as he was an expert on the subject matter. As soon as he started he was more fluent than before and it wasn’t long before he was relaxing and becoming engaging, convincing and clear in everything he said. 

So did we decide to abandon all those slides? Not entirely, because the process was also very effective in highlighting where some visual support was actually needed. Whenever he struggled to describe something or needed to convey a lot of information quickly, that was where we needed a visual aid – probably using PowerPoint. And there is nothing actually wrong with bullet points, provided they support you and don’t start competing with you for the audience’s attention.

So next time you start planning a presentation, try a pencil and a storyboard template before you go anywhere near your computer. Even better, just start talking; the moment you begin to struggle is probably the place that a visual aid can help you. The clue is in the word aid.

Open and close your business presentation with more impact – by switching off

I am going to offer a little tip that can enhance the impact you make as you open and close a business presentation.

As I have discussed before (here) ‘Firsts & Lasts’ are the most important part of any presentation because, as Rule 13 of the Rules of Magic states, ‘Firsts & Lasts are remembered’. Moreover, the way you open is crucial to engaging your audience up front; and making anything happen as a result of your presentation usually depends on a successful ‘Call to Action’ at the close.

So what’s the little tip? Switch off the PowerPoint for your opening remarks; or don’t even switch it on until you have made them. This enables you to establish yourself as a person – with all those people in the audience – before a great deal of their attention gets sucked into the screen by your PowerPoint presentation. They can look you up and down, tune into your voice and run through all the 'first impression checks’ that our brains undertake automatically. With a combination of luck and design they will hopefully decide that they like you. Then you are all set to deliver your big messages – with some support from PowerPoint if appropriate.

You can repeat this trick at the end, just prior to delivering your big ‘Call to Action’.  Think about it – you are almost certainly asking your audience to do something or believe something; you may even be seeking to inspire them. That has to be better coming direct from you – straight form the heart and with full on eye contact – rather than via a list of bullet points on a screen.

It’s actually an old show business trick. Something like a big variety show would traditionally build to a big crescendo that was literally all singing/all dancing, with the stage full of people and the band playing at maximum volume. After much applause the curtains would close for a final time and then the star of the show would come out from behind them to say one more, very personal and heartfelt goodbye to his or her audience.  

So how do you turn off the PowerPoint without powering down the projector? Again, I have discussed this (here) before. There is a little tool built into PowerPoint that many people don’t know about but is invaluable to presenters as it brings attention back to you, while also clearing away distractions. Simply press the B key and it blanks the screen; press it again and it brings the presentation back.