Creating Effective Presentations

By Tina Deatherage

Vice President of Sales & Marketing for ShowLogic and CED member since 2007

A long time ago, making a presentation meant starting a dialog. You interacted with your audience and based on their verbal and nonverbal cues, the conversation followed a natural path that took into account both what you had to offer and what the audience was interested in. But, somewhere along the line, things changed and the support materials designed to aid our presentations turned into handcuffs.

Today, presenters and their support staff spend more time finding the right files and developing the slide deck than on the content itself. People write their presentations in the technology, read their charts and lose their audience. In many cases there is so much content, presenters never get to their key points because they run out of time.

A study conducted in 2007 by Dave Paradi, the co-author of “Guide to PowerPoint” stated that the top three issues associated with current presentations are: reading the slides, full sentences and micro text. The study concluded that presenters needed to use more visuals and allow for more conversation.

So how do you avoid being handcuffed to technology? It starts with the basics of communication. Communication happens when one person sends a message and another person receives that message. Regardless of whether it is an interpersonal conversation, group or public setting communication is interactive.

People attend presentations to receive information. The technology is there to support what you are discussing not to present it. In fact, the best presenters are those who understand what their audience is looking for and how to communicate their message effectively.

The process I used to teach public speaking still applies today. First, determine the objective of the presentation. Are you trying to persuade someone to invest, sell a prospective client on your products/ services or educate your team on how your concept can become a reality.

Second, create an outline of the presentation focusing on what the audience needs to know to get to a decision. Is it the benefits to the customer, the return on their investment, or perhaps how your idea solves a current problem in the marketplace?

Third, write the key points that support that topic. Determine whether or not you need additional support such as a visual aid to enhance the message. It is important to point out, bullets points are not a visual aid unless you are showing a relevant list. Also, if you need to explain something in more detail, use a handout. Your thoughts, ideas and content are what really matter to the audience not reading your charts.

Before computers, people used the above method and it worked. Whiteboards, overheads, handouts and charts were used to support difficult topics. Today is no different; it is just that we have become dependent on the technology to do the work for us. Using the right presentation platform you can have an effective dialog and avoid some of the pitfalls Paradi outlined.

Try to find something that differentiates you from others. Everyone uses PowerPoint, but there are so many other tools that exist out in the market to help you convey your message effectively. For instance, a nonlinear tool will allow you to adapt your message to your audience giving you the flexibility to move from topic to topic without having to know the slide number. The presenter is in control of the story, not the technology.

In addition, your presentation tool should be easy to use and provide you with a single interface for supporting your key points. There is nothing more frustrating than having the technology fail on you or having to jump from one application to the next to show your supporting materials. This is a sure way to lose your audience.

Some tools provide you with a database for keeping track of all your digital assets including old
PowerPoint files, Acrobat documents, images and animations. This can be handy since you can easily create new presentations in no time at all and your content is right at your fingertips. You should not have to convert your files or embed them into the presentation. This takes unnecessary amounts of time:  time that you could be using to rehearse your presentation or, better yet, grow your business.

Presentations are one of the most important business communication tools that exist today. People make decisions on relationships and connections with other people not with technology. So before you create your next presentation, take a moment to think about your audience and choose a technology that does not handcuff you.