I do workshops, seminars and keynotes all the time and have been for over 25 years. There are good presenters and there are bad presenters — it really comes down to a few key tips to guide any great speaker:
1. Use A Solid, Plain Background
Keep it simple and open (I like plain white). Also, everyone loves to have their logo on every page – I don’t ascribe to this tenet. If you are afraid of someone absconding with critical information, have copyright info at the beginning and end. If you’re worried, add it to the printed form. But for screen projection – Less is More.
2. No Bullets
If you are using bullets on a slide, you are saying TOO much. Your slide is a thought, an impact, or an idea that people will remember. What you add verbally is the filler, the bullets, the knowledge. The minute I see bullets I want to walk out – because I know that the presenter has no idea what they’re doing.
3. Ten Words or Less
I prefer 10 or less, but 15 is fine. Again, less is more. People don’t want ‘War & Peace’, they want ideas, they want knowledge, they want to be entertained. If you fill the page with words, they are reading and not listening to you.
4. Use Images
Use images to add flourish and vibrancy to what you are saying. If they are boring business photos or bad art (which comes with PowerPoint – and they’re awful) — stop before you kill again. Don’t put an image on every slide – let the typography of the information reinforce your verbal statement.
5. Colors & Fonts
Keep it to 2-3 consistent colors. Since my branding has green, I use it with a graphite gray and a subdued autumn orange. That’s it. Keep to 1 font only – if you begin to mix, I will walk out. Mixing of fonts communicates to the audience that you don’t know what you’re doing.
6. Know Your Material
Feel free to glance up and see what slide you are on, but don’t read the slide verbatim (the only caveat to this rule are quotations). The act of glancing at the slide allows your audience to follow your gaze to the slide, get the gist of the image/message, and then re-focus on you. These actions develop a great synergy between the presenter and the audience.
7. No Lecterns or Pedestals
You need to reach out and touch your audience. Placing lecterns, tables, and stages between you and the audience separates you from them. Step out into the audience, get to their level, and move around. That will make your presentation much more powerful.
8. Act Naturally
Animate yourself. Too many presenters try to act too cool. Move your hands, smile, raise your voice – presenting is ACTING. And the audience wants a performance. Make a powerful point. They want BROADWAY!
9. Greet Attendees Prior To The Presentation
Arrive really early – 1-2 hours and setup your entire presentation, LCD projector, laptop and make sure they work flawlessly. Then when the attendees arrive, mingle with them. Introduce yourself, learn their name, and learn a little about them. This is a trick I use to then incorporate their experiences into my presentation: “Take Tom from Tacoma, he’s a used car salesman with a speech impediment . . .”
10. Pay Attention To Your Audience
Regularly temperature check for attentiveness. If you begin seeing yawns, pick it up a bit – start calling names for examples. Get the room moving – constantly ask for questions – use ‘WHO’ questions to raise the audience excitement: “Everyone’s been fired at one time or another. I need a good story from the audience — WHO would like to go first?” Your delivery should moderate to the audience – pick it up or slow it down.
Watch the master (Steve Jobs) at work:
What other tips make you a Presentation GOD?
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We differ over the use of bullets, but that is unimportant. I can justify them, you hate them. That’s fine. But I think you’ve missed one important point, and it’s for the speaker. It’s a multiple point:
* Pitch
* Pace
* Pause
You can have the best slides in the world, but a monotone delivery with no drama, no personality, no emphasis, no antici… pation, that kills the entire show. It;s part of your point 8, but we need to see it writ large
Jobs is a Master of delivery… it also helps that the product is pretty cool!
I agree with almost everything you said but I do agree with Tim that bullets are okay. I have not created lots of presentations but I have seen lots of poor presentations. I have actually been at presentations where the speaker “apologized” because there was so many words on a slide that the slide was unreadable. Yet the next time this executive presented again, once again he apologized for the words being too small to read. Why did he even bother to create a slide he knew was too wordy to be read? Short and to the point (like bullet points) are the way to go.
I think, Mark, the answer with bullets, is to make them short, snappy and most of all intriguing. Rich may not agree with me here. I simply find a bullet that makes the audience think just before I speak to it is useful. But we have seen, too often:
* This bullet point is a wonderfully complete rendition of everything I’m about to say on the subject, Even better than that I shall read it verbatim and bore you witless, primarily because I’d rather be hiking right now. And anyway, I’m a really boring speaker.
Even worse than that, the speaker has the whole list of 187 bullets up on the slide on four point type, dark grey on a light grey background! Every bullet os long, and there’s usually an apostrophe in the wrong place, too.
I use bullets to set the scene solidly and hard. A favourite of mine is:
* Your marketing database must shrink.
Now I know what I’m going to say, but no-one else does. I handle it based on how well I’ve managed to work the audience already. I ask questions before saying a thing about the bullet.
“How big is your database, sir?”
“When was the last time you cleaned the incorrect data from it?”
“When did you contact the list last?”
“How do you handle complaints about spam?”
You get the picture. There’s a whole set of scenarios we can develop, the audience and I. The other bullets on the slide will bring us back on track, if we need to be brought back. “Gosh, we don’t even need this one, You’ve all answered it already!” That works well. And it lets them know that I’m able to talk WITH them about the topic, not simple speak AT them. I can shorten or lengthen the talk at will, and meet their needs while meeting mine.
Rich, you must walk out of a lot of presentations! (2 fonts and I am outa here!)
Excellent article anyway. Tim, I like your comments about Pitch, Pace, Pause. Many great presentations do not utilize PowerPoint (gasp! really?!) and are compelling due to the Speaker, rather than the support materials.
Agree with Susan, you must not see many other presentations Rich. I think the most important point is that the speaker must have full and recent knowledge of what they are presenting – basic but often not the case. Engaging an audience is now more difficult than ever (ever taught in a room full of students with smart phones and tablets?). I do agree that you are putting on a “show” and the more exciting and interactive the better. People want to be wowed which is why Steve Jobs succeeds every time Apple’s products are stellar. Full disclosure – I’m a Apple fan girl.
I recently have started doing presentations without Powerpoint and just use a flip chart to hit home on the images or few words that I want the audience to focus on. I interject my personal experiences and I ask the audience to not only participate by raising hands, I ask them to write down a few scenarios so they will have something that they can take with them that is based on their own thoughts. I also ask them to finish certain sentences…all of this helps because everyone in the audience falls into different learning modalities. I’ve gotten a much more positive response with this style.
I like that a lot, Mary Ann. I can’t use the technique because I can neither write clearly enough nor draw well. I admire anyone who can. Go you!
This is not one of Jobs best presentations. Lots of non-words and the presentation is full of bullets. It’s pretty straight forward and anyone could do it. He’s just making announcememnts and explaining features. Poor example of the points the author is making in his article. It doesn’t take a great presenter to keep this audience engaged. It’s Apple and Steve Jobs – ‘nuf said.
One of my former students passed this article on to me. I appreciate the comments going back and forth. I try very hard to get my MBA students to improve their presentation skills, but it’s almost a losing battle. Even though I say they don’t have to use PowerPoint, they still do. PowerPoint, when used well, is great. But, most speakers use it poorly. Thanks for the input.
Bullets aren’t really for your audience, bullets are for the presenter to help keep organization and structure. When you “know your stuff”, they’re the triggers to keep you on track or remember to tell a story at a specific time.
For me, whether using bullets or not, the words on screen should “compel” the audience to listen to what you’ve got to say (why did he put that word up there).