The Power of PowerPoint – Less is More.

Robert S. Grossman, Founder and President, Focus Creative Group.

We’ve all seen and heard it. A senior executive steps up to the podium and the first slide comes up with a list of bullet points and the speaker just reads them off the screen.

Can you say BORING?

I cannot begin to count how many times I have heard “I know you cannot read this slide, but…”

Unfortunately, PowerPoint has not improved the meeting and communications process. In fact, there are many professionals, me included, who feel PowerPoint has helped to drive the value and ROI of meetings down. This is not a slam against Microsoft, but rather how the tool is used by presenters.

As a meeting professional, you can help your client’s realize more ROI by coaching them on how to prepare a really great presentation. Here is a list of 8 Power Points for great presentations:

1. Rehearse, Rehearse, and Rehearse. So many executives wing their presentations or prepare them on the plane. This leads to reading the slides and not truly engaging the audience.

2. Presentation slides are not speaker notes! If you read the slides to your audience, you might as well give them the hand outs and send them to go play golf.

3. Keep it simple! When using bullets, no more than 3 bullets per slides and no more than 5 words per bullet.

4. Bring up one point at a time. This allows you to control what the audience is reading. If you bring up all the bullets at one time, the audience will read to the bottom of the list while you are still talking about your first point.

5. Make slides big and bold. Think driving down the freeway at 65 miles an hour and reading billboards. Each message is clear and concise.

6. Use large fonts. I personally avoid anything smaller than 32 points.

7. Use animation sparingly or when you want to emphasize a particular point.

8. Avoid the trap of having a unique slide up for every part of your speech. Use your logo or theme slide.

PowerPoint is a wonderful tool when used properly. Your value as a planner will increase significantly if you are able to coach presenters on how to deliver powerful presentations and realize greater ROI from their meetings and events.

Focus Creative Group (www.focuscreative.com) provides consulting and production solutions to help companies deliver powerful and effective communications via meetings, events, video and multimedia.
 

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