“Do I really need to attend a presentation skills training course to improve my skills?”

In reality however, no matter how good the tips and advice you read are, there’s probably a finite limit to what you can achieve in isolation. And, you’ll probably still have to go through quite a lot of trial and error to maximise that improvement on your own.

Are your presentation skills critical to your job?

For many people today, the ability to communicate well and deliver business presentations convincingly is an absolute must for career progression.  And when you need to present an idea to your colleagues to gain their support for an important project or have to make a sales presentation to potential clients, your current job might even be under threat if you are not that good at doing it!

So the answer to that question “Do I really need to attend a presentation skills training course…?” probably depends a lot on how much improvement you’d like to see in your presentation skills and in what sort of time-scale you really need to see this improvement start to take effect.

Presentation skills training options

If you decide to explore some presentation skills training courses, what options are there out there and which training company should you choose?

You’ve probably already found this site be searching Google for “presentation skills tips” or similar phrase.  (Or maybe you’ve come across us on Twitter.)  The net is a great resource as well for finding good presentation skills training services in your local country.

Presentation skills training in the UK

If you’re based in the UK then you can get help directly from Skillstudio Limited, the training company who have helped us by sponsoring this site.  Skillstudio offer:-

• Public Courses for 3 different levels of presenting experience (from absolute beginners to advanced) held throughout the UK
• 1-2-1 Coaching in presentation skills for all levels of experience and just about every possible occasion – held across the UK
• In-Company presentation skills training tailored to your groups exact requirements – held throughout the UK, Europe and beyond

There are of course many other presentation skills trainers in addition to Skillstudio in the UK and ultimately you will need to make a decision on which one best meets your needs.

Unrivalled presentation skills training

We are probably a bit biased … but we honestly believe that Skillstudio offers an unrivalled presentation skills training experience in the UK – not only because of the results we have seen consistently over the years but because of what we know you’ll receive personally by attending their training:-

• High quality, results driven; and fun training experience from a charismatic, expert trainer;
• Personalised coaching with lots of constructive feedback to build your confidence and skills;
• A lasting and dramatic improvement in your presentation skills;

• And all this, at a price that is actually very competitive.

Skillstudio have been providing high quality presentation skills training consistently, since 2001. And you can see some this consistency for yourself in the testimonials published on their website from over 1000 people, some, probably just like yourself, who decided to take a chance and attend one of their courses.

Presentation skills training outside the UK

If you’re based outside the UK its less likely that Skillstudio can help you directly unless you are looking for some in-company presentation skills training.

But there’s still a good number of excellent trainers to be found.  Some of the feedback on this site is from presentation skills trainers – so read what they are saying and then try and make contact with them. Alternatively keep Googling until you come across a site that gives you the confidence that they can deliver what they promise.

Over time, we hope to be able to recommend a few good trainers outside the UK.  So watch this space for more information!

Our experience is that this probably happens more than 9 times out of 10.

So that’s about 90% of PowerPoint presentations where the lack of PowerPoint presentation skills actually undermines the very presentations PowerPoint is supposed to enhance.

So why do people continue down this road to presentation anesthesia?  And can we divert at least some of them to a more enlightened, creative approach?

Here are seven PowerPoint presentation skills tips to help you on your way.

1. Do you really need to use PowerPoint?

If its not absolutely necessary to use PowerPoint in your presentation then …

STOP USING IT!

Next time you’ve a short presentation or talk to deliver, rather than immediately starting up PowerPoint to get the slides ready and using it again when you are delivering your presentation, think about what you want to say and how you might do that without using PowerPoint at all.

Check out our article on how to prepare a presentation to get some good tips on creating and structuring a presentation.  Then have a look at Tip 2 to see how to avoid using PowerPoint to prompt you.

2. Stop using PowerPoint as your prompt!

Once you know what you want to say, try and condense the words into a series of key phrases (prompts) that you can then refer to as you start to deliver the presentation.

Then put your prompts for the talk onto record cards (white sheets of cardboard roughly 6″ by 4″). Just like the photo on the right.

We use them all the time when training people in presentation skills.

By using these “prompt cards” instead of the PowerPoint you can eliminate one of the biggest problems with PowerPoint use today:-

Where the slides are there mostly as prompts for the presenter!

3. Ruthlessly reduce the number of PowerPoint slides

If you absolutely have to use PowerPoint during the presentation then use it as sparingly as possible.

Be ruthless in removing the unnecessary slides.

Use prompt cards for your prompts so remove any slides that might just be for your benefit.

Then review the set of slides AGAIN against your presentation and remove any more slides that you possibly can.

Be ruthless!

4. Use images in the PowerPoint slides whenever possible

Hopefully by now you’ll not be using PowerPoint slides as your prompts – so much of the text heavy bullet points will have disappeared.

But remember that ideally PowerPoint is a VISUAL aid that’s there to enhance your presentation – to help you get your message across and achieve your objectives.

Real visuals (ie Pictures) can help create feelings in the audience, can help make a complex process easier to understand etc.

So think carefully about opportunities you might have in your presentation to use pictures, graphs etc to compliment what you are saying and to help you get your message across.

5. Use headline summaries only for text slides in PowerPoint

If you must include some text in the presentation then pull out only the headline or summary information.

Keep to a maximum of 3 lines of headline text (summaries) on a slide and one slide title.  And make sure that each headline uses large fonts.  Aim to keep to 4 or 5 words maximum per heradline.

Try and include an image on the page as well to compliment the text.  But don’t use the clip art that comes shipped with PowerPoint.  Try a resource such as www.istockphoto.com or similar for photos.

6. Dont just use PowerPoint slides as your handounts

If you have to provide a set of handouts for your audience after the presentation then do so.

But it doesn’t need to be just copies of your PowerPoint slides.

Don’t constrain your presentation slides (if you’re using some) by having to include all the facts and figures that you might need to get across in your slides.

Keep the detail for the handouts and only have summary headline text on the slides.

7. Use hidden PowerPoint slides for the Q&A session

If you are likely to have questions either during or after the presentation then as part of your preparation you’ll probably spend some time brainstorming the likely questions and deciding how best to answer them.

So if you’ve the time, and only where appropriate, include one or more “hidden” slides that will help you answer some of the most difficult questions that you might get asked.

For example if you are talking about a process or a strategy in your presentation and have only covered things at a high level in your slides, then it might be useful to include a more detailed diagram of the contentious part of the process (for example) on a hidden slide that you can refer to ONLY if needed.

In summary

If you can then dont use PowerPoint at all.

If you have to use PowerPoint, then use it for the audience’s benefit and use it as sparingly as possible.

And remember it is supposed to be a VISUAL aid so use it for visual images and not just bullet points!

So why is it that with so much experience of bad PowerPoint presentations so many people still present as if they are there simply to run through someone elses badly composed PowerPoint slides?

Might it be that having seen so many bad presentations, many just think that these “terrible presentations” are simply a fact of business life and something that presenters are expected to produce and the rest of us endure!

Anyway, I dont have all the answers and it’s now late on Friday night – it’s been a long week … so a more light hearted look at PowerPoint is called for.

“Good Evening PowerPointers”

I said Good Evening PowerPointers!

(a response at last)

Thank You … at least you’re not all fully asleep yet

Dont worry …

You will be by the end because its now PowerPoint time!

Welcome to The PowerPoint Comedy Show

Firstly, my thanks to Max Atkinson for pointing out this YouTube video to me on his blog.  (I was looking for some video examples of bad PowerPoint.)

Thanks also to the Presenter / Comedian – Don McMillan (http://twitter.com/donmcmillan) for what is certainly one of the most entertaining presentations using PowerPoint badly that I have seen!

And here’s some of the points that Don was making …

1. Powerpoint slides are your prompts

When composing your powerpoint slides, remember that they are there for your benefit only.  Forget about the audience.

The PowerPoint slides are great prompts for what you have to say, so include as much of your presentation text as you want on them.  In fact, if you have any difficulty remembering what you want to say, then put every word of your speech on them – just to be on the safe side. That way, you can ensure that you wont forget anything on the day!

2. Have lots and lots of bullet points

• Bullet
• points
• are
• there
• for
• a
• purpose

- so use them and use lots of them especially if you want to kill off your audience before they can ask any questions!

3. Use the most outrageous colour schemes

Dont be grey add some real colour especially

those that can hardly be seen.

Its much better that way!

4. The more slides the better

Remember quality is inversly proportional to quantity.

So if you’ve nothing of any quality to say just make sure you use as many slides as possible.

5. Cram in as much information as possible

Confuse them … leave nothing out … and make sure that nobody (even yourself) can really understand the slides.

That way nobody is going to be stupid enough to ask you any questions … are they!

6. Animate everything you can

PowerPoint has lots of crazy animations that you can use to confuse your audience even more – so remember to use them.

And dont use them sparingly!

7. Choose your fonts to reflect your personality

Remember the types of fonts you use say a lot about you.

So express yourself liberally – use as many different fonts as possible!

Suffering from PowerPoint fatigue by now?

You should be!

Then why not spend a few more minutes listening to Doctor Don our PowerPoint therapist?

One final PowerPoint

Remember to tell the audience that you’ve finished

When you come to the end of your presentation and are just about to put up your 100th slide, your audience (if they are still in the room) are probably asleep.

So you need to be kind to them. And from a health and safety perspective its very important that you dont just leave the room with the audience still asleep in the darkness.

So turn up the volume as far as it will go for your final slide transition.  And remember to use the machine gun letter by letter display feature for your final bullet point .. to tell everybody that The End Has Arrived.  And if that doesn’t wake all of them up nothing will.

Then remember to put on the lights and leave quickly.

Got more examples of PowerPoint Comedy?

or just bad PowerPoint Presentations?

Then let us know in the Reply box below and I’ll try and include the best in some future articles.

What caught my attention though wasn’t the normally slick presentation that you come to expect from most of the Sky presenters.

It was the fact that I just couldnt make out what the Business Presenter was saying!  I’m quite interested in the Business News after all – especially given our livelihood is very much dependent on how quickly we can all drag ourselves and the country out of this recession!

So did I have too much to drink last night that I was still hungover and not fully alert?

Yes I did probably did have too much to drink last night – having watched Andy Murray beat Juan Martin Del Potro in a captivating tennis singles final in Montreal.

But both my hearing and my brain were working fairly normally by that time – after all it was more than 12 hours after the event!

So what was it?

More hurry less speed

The presenter was speaking too quickly.

She might have had a fixed time slot and had a lot to say – in fact she did have a lot to say. But she wasn’t able to communicate that to her audience.  (Or to me at least.)

Her voice lacked diction which meant that she tended to merge one syllable into the next. She was also speaking quickly which resulted in her merging one word into the next. And, because she didn’t want to pause at any time she also merged one sentence into the next.

The net effect was that she completed everything she wanted to say in her short time slot.

But myself, and probably many other viewers were none the wiser about what was happening in the world of business this afternoon!

So I switched over to the BBC.

Slow down when you present

Lots of people speed up when they present.  A bit like the Sky presenter really.  Much of this is down to nerves.

The problem is that if you speed up and your voice is not clear enough as a result, then the people you are presenting to are probably not going to fully understand what you are trying to say.  Not a good result really!

We’ve included a few voice exercises for presenters in an earlier article.  So, if you think this might be relevant to yourself, before you present next – try them out.

Clarity of voice and message

And try to remember that both the speed you are speaking at and your diction (how clear your words are) will potentially determine how well your audience hear what you have to say.

You might be presenting what is a well written, superbly structured and very persuasive presentation but if your audience can’t hear all the words you are speaking then there’s little chance that you are going to achieve your purpose.

A little more preparation and awareness of how you come across vocally however can make a significant difference to the impact you have on your audience.

Have your presentation skills ever let you down in the past?

Have you ever avoided giving a presentation at work?

Might you be more successful at work if you were a better and more effective presenter?

The good news is that Effective Presentation Skills can be developed by almost anyone with the right training.

But what are Effective Presentation Skills? And how do you develop them?

Just be yourself?

Great presenters often look as if they are “naturals” and relaxed when presenting.

So does that mean you “just need to relax and be yourself” the next time you are getting ready to present at work?  Or can this often be somewhat misguided advice?

The reality is that most people are already ”just being themselves” when they present.

And the sad fact for some, (especially those that have not had any training) is that they are also so far outside of their comfort zones they appear to their audience as ”unnatural” as a duck out of water!

So unless you’re already a good communicator – think first about developing your presentation skills rather than just trying to relax and be yourself.

You can develop the skills to present effectively

And with the right training and coaching, you really can develop the skills and confidence needed to deliver an effective presentation.

By building on what already works well with your personality; developing new skills and an increased confidence; and of course, removing the bad old “natural” habits that messed up your presentations in the past, you can be well on your way to looking like a ”natural” when you present.

And as a result, start to realise your potential and present effectively.

So what skills makes an effective presentation?

Here’s a list of just some of the key things that make an effective presentation …

What the presenter has to say …

• is well researched
• has a good structure
• is clear, concise and easily understood
• is pitched at the right level for the audience
• uses visual aids wisely

How the presenter delivers it …

• creates an immediate and positive impression
• engages well with the audience
• speaks clearly, confidently and with conviction
• Deals effectively with questions
• comes across as a relaxed and “natural” presenter

The impact on the audience …

• They feel the experience worth while
• They believe in what is being said
• They want to respond positively
• The presentation is remembered and acted on afterwards

What other effective presentation skills would you suggest?

You’ve probably witnessed many presentations at work.  Some good, some probably bad!

What did you like about the good ones?  What made them memorable?

Let’s know your experiences below:-

My favourite is the last one!

Have you avoided presenting at work before?  What excuse did you use?  And have you ever regretted avoiding not giving presentations at work?

Here’s their list of excuses:-

1. A straight “dont want to, thank you”. Give it to someone who enjoys doing them!
2. Agenda too full. Will table for next meeting.
3. Always find a way around it. I always claim to be very busy with other things.
4. Always sit back in the group and wait for someone else to present
5. Asked someone else to stand in for me, or write down what I am going to talk about and then just read it to the audience.
6. Bad throat, give others the opportunity, tell the other person that he’s the best at this.
7. By being busy.
8. Don’t have time or expertise.
9. Excusing myself out of the venue.
10. Feeling ill, got to leave to attend an emergency, lost my voice
11. Feeling unwell or have been unable to prepare
12. Generally provide opportunities to other colleagues.
13. Hay fever/sore throat.
14. I am not a good presenter.
15. I am not competent for the subject
16. I am not qualified enough.
17. I am quite busy
18. I can say that I have an appointment.
19. I can’t make it today, not prepared.
20. I can’t do it
21. I can’t remember what i’m going to say. which is fact, not an excuse.
22. I do not know enough about it. You would be better to deliver this.
23. I don’t apply for jobs that might require it. Only once have I actually refused – I said it was not in my job description.
24. I don’t feel confident enough to do this presentation there are other people in the team that are better at delivering the presentation.
25. I have another appointment
26. I have other commitments for the same time of presentation have no time to prepare.
27. I have some important official work and could not attend the presentations.
28. I have to say that I will be going some where else.
29. I pretend to be busy with my job
30. I take a holiday
31. I will do it next time and I am not the right person give it to somebody who has a lot of experience
32. I’m no good
33. I’m too busy
34. I’ve got other work on
35. If presentations to customers: not knowledgeable enough, not prepared, not available
36. I’m ill
37. I’m not ready or I haven’t got enough material to present
38. It would be better given by someone else.
39. Lack of time to prepare, lack of knowledge on subject
40. Leaving the chance to others
41. Maybe someone else can do it better…
42. Take annual leave or have other priorities at work.
43. The cat scratched my face and cut corner of my mouth and it hurts when I speak!

If you’ve got a better reason for avoiding presenting leave a message below.

Alternatively, have a look at some the the articles on this site – they might just give you the inspiration you need to take the plunge and present, next time you are asked.

So how can you still deliver a reasonably successful presentation if you’ve got just about ZERO preparation time?

Presentation structure is key

In a situation like this, you need to have some form of standard structures in your head that you can call upon at very short notice.

One example structure with three areas that you can use quickly (if its relevent) is:-

1. what’s the issue?
2. how is it affecting things?
3. and what is being done about it?

Using the Power of Three is a useful tool as well here – so 3 main points and then if needed break down each of the points into 3.

Chronological structures

Another structure you can use for impromptu presentations is:-

1. Past
2. Present
3. Future

Another similar structure is based on:-

1. What was it like before
2. What was the event
3. Whats the result now

Three W’s structure

1. What
2. Which
3. Who

eg Buying a car What sort should I buy? Which brand should I purchase? Who should I buy it from?

More conventional structure

• Introduction
• Main Body
  • Point 1 – with 3 sub points in support
  • Point 2 – with 3 sub points in support
  • Point 3 – with 3 sub points in support
• Conclusion and call to action if relevant

Conclusions

As with most things, the more you practise something the better you can become at it.  And impromptu speaking is no exception!

Give yourself some topics to speak on and then allow say 2-3 minutes of preparation time for each one. Then try presenting on each of about 5 minutes.  Learn as you go on. Get someone to watch you and then give you some feedback on how it went.   Alternatively, try and record yourself on video then watch the video and see how you might improve the next time.

• you’ll be able to remember it better,
• you’ll also be less nervous when you come to present it,
• and your audience will be able to understand it better.

The best way to create a clear, succinct and well designed presentation is to take a structured approach to planning and writing it.  And this is one of the key steps to achieving excellent presentation skills.

Establish the purpose of the presentation

There are lots of different types of presentations.

You might be trying to sell something, you might be trying to persuade your audience about a certain way of thinking – to influence them. Or you might just be trying to inform them about something.

So the first thing you need to do is to work out the purpose of your presentation. What are you doing there. What do you want to achieve from your presentation.

So having got a good idea of your purpose, its important to write that down – so its clear in your mind.  So that whatever you do you are able to refer back to the purpose, you know what you want to achieve out of the presentation.

Build an audience profile

The next thing you want to do is think about your audience.

This is something that is going to affect your content that you are going to put into the presentation. So its worth spending time trying to analyse your audience before you actually present.

Its useful to put together an audience profile – covering the type of people who will be at your presentation.

• Where are they coming from
• what level of expertise do they have
• Are there any decision makers in the audience
• What is their attitude towards the topic that you are presenting on
• Do they have any preconceived ideas or expectations about what you will be presenting on
• etc etc

So brainstorm as much as you can about about your audience. Because the more that you can understand about them beforehand the more that you’ll be able toadapt your material to make it relevant to them.

Establish the key message of your presentation

The next thing to think about is your key message. Every presentation should have one key message which everything else ultimately links to.

The key message should have a very strong benefit for the audience to listen to you. So one way of identifying it is to brainstorm the main benefits to the audience that come from your presentation.

Ask yourself what’s in it for them.

Once you’ve been able to answer this question – you should also have identified your key message.  Once you’ve established what this is  – write it down.

Develop and structure the content of your presentation

You now need to start developing the ideas for the presentation content.  Putting that content into a strong clear structure is very important to help you stay on track and also to help the audience to follow the presentation clearly.

Think in terms of THREEs.

1. Beginning
2. Middle
3. End

Split your middle section into three sections as well.  In each section have 3 further points you want to make and expand on to reinforce things.

And ensure that as you create the content for your presentation you remember:-

1. Your purpose – what you want to achieve from it
2. The key message – what is in it for the audience

If you dont have a strong structure, you’ll find that’s when you start to wander off topic, your mind can go blank or you’ll head off at a tangent. And then you lose your audience!

Edit your presentation content

Once you’ve got a draft, its then important to edit that.  You need to consider the type of language you’re using, to help you keep the audience’s interest.

Identify ways of grabbing their attention. Ways of actually helping the audience to listen to you. Dont use long winded sentences. Or words that may not be relevant to the audience, or that they might not even understand.

So edit the material and adapt the language that you are going to use.

Summing up

Using mind-maps (like the one below – which summarises the main points on this page) is a great way to structure your ideas and enhance your presentation skills. Dont just power up PowerPoint and start writing the bullet points!

All these elements are going to help you planning the presentation.

You’re going to end up with a presentation that has a clear message, that’s relevant to the audience and is probably much easier for you to deliver.

Unfortunately however, at the start of a presentation, nerves can often be at their strongest and this can leave you rushing your words, speaking at a relative whisper or even being tongue tied. Learning some simple voice exercises however, can help you get overcome these obstacles.

How to project your voice & enhance presentation skills

Take a deep breath (from your abdomen) and count (out aloud) to 10 or as far as you can go without running out of breath.

Go on … do it now (assuming nobody else is in the room with you!)

1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10…11…12…14…15 ………

Now do it again and exaggerate the vowel sounds in the numbers as you count them to get your mouth moving.

Now put the radio (or TV) on and count once more over the background noise, without exaggerating the vowels AND without shouting.

You need to get used to breathing fully with your belly (abdomen) and using that breath to project your voice – so practise this a bit more.

Slow down the beginning of your presentation

When you are rehearsing your presentation – try this exercise with the first 30 seconds or so of the presentation:-

Read out the first few sentences AND drag out the vowel sounds of each of the words as you speak. It’ll feel like you’re speaking in slow motion.

Now read it out again normally and you’ll be more likely to separate words, use the vowels and slow your delivery.

Go on, give it a try!

Add energy and clarity to your voice

Now look at the three tongue twisters below and read each one out aloud.

• Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers
• She Sells Sea Shells on the Sea Shore
• Where’s the Peck of Pickled Peppers Peter Piper Picked?

When you were reading each of these tongue twisters out, did you manage to hear every word you spoke clearly?  If not, do the exercise again – and again until each and every word is being spoken clearly and distinctly.

Now turn on the TV/radio again and try the tongue twisters again and this time over the sound of the radio / TV or background music and remember NOT to shout.

When you next deliver a presentation

Just make sure that you have run through these simple voice exercises before you next have to present – and you will be more likely to come across with more confidence and clarity and be heard by all of the audience. Its all part of enhancing your presentation skills.

The ability to Engage with the presentation audience is a key skill that many presenters simply don’t possess. You might have a great presentation ready to deliver but if you cant really connect with the audience – engage with them – then you are unlikely to have a successful outcome.

But how do you engage with the audience? And is it a skill that can be developed?

The power of eye contact

When you’ve presented in the past, have you ever thought that your audience was like a sea of blank faces staring back at you? If  you have, then it’s probably because you were treating the audience as one body – as a mass of people, rather than individuals.

To start to treat the audience as individuals you need to look at them – individually.

This means you need to make eye contact with individuals in the audience.

People are often hesitant about using eye contact – they feel it may intimidate their audience. But it actually has the opposite effect – it draws people in and engages them more fully.

Some help making eye contact

To help develop confident, controlled use of eye contact, practise this exercise.

You will need to stand in the middle of a room – ideally without anyone else there – as they will probably put you off or think you’re a little strange!!

Start to tell a story – something like what you have done today from when you got up in the morning, travelled to work, went to lunch etc.

As you recite your story – focus on different objects in the room for about three seconds at a time. For example, you can look at the door, then a picture on the wall, then the light, a chair, a plant etc. Try and spend about 3 seconds of eye contact on each in turn.

What you are now doing is giving eye contact around the room in a controlled and purposeful way. This is what you need to do with your audience – to keep everyone interested and involved.

Practise making eye contact

By practising this exercise it will soon become a habit that you can then start to utilise in earnest and thus share your eye contact around your presentation audience.

You will look more in control and you will also start to see a response from the audience.

So try the exercise at home a few times first … and then at your next presentation at work, start to share the eye contact with the audience.

Just remember to look at their eyes as you look around the room – and NOT the door, the picture on the wall, the light, etc that you did in the exercise!!