Three simple ways to ensure your PowerPoint message isn’t doomed from the start
by Doug Carter
“Oh, I already covered that,” said Karen as she turned toward the screen at the front of the room. The PowerPoint slide was the all-too-familiar cobalt blue background, gold headline, and eight lines of white text with the current idea highlighted while the rest were dimmed.
While Karen was fussing over her PowerPoint, she was missing the obvious fact that most of her audience hadn’t noticed that anything was wrong at all. They had already lost interest and were no longer paying attention. They were just putting in time waiting for Karen to get through her boring, mind-boggling ritual.
They didn’t lose interest because the material wasn’t relevant to them. They lost interest because the visual impact that is available in a well-done PowerPoint presentation was lost long before the workshop began. It was lost in the construction of the PowerPoint presentation itself. As is all too common, Karen created a PowerPoint presentation for herself rather than for her audience.
To ensure she covered everything she wanted to say, she created a slide for nearly every thought. The end result was a PowerPoint presentation that consisted of entirely too many slides. Nearly all of them violated the basic rules for a great visual. I’m sure you recognize the pattern - there was the title slide, then, as in an outline, each new concept or idea was listed one after the other, slide after slide after slide of text.
It took Karen longer to process her slides than it would have taken her just to tell her audience members what they needed to hear.
The result of her effort to appear technologically competent in her workshop was that she actually sabotaged her message. Her participants suffered from that glazed look of information overload. Their minds were slightly muddled. Their energy was dulled. They didn’t volunteer answers to her questions. Her constant use of text (written words) had put her participants into a trance - and they showed it.
All of this could have been avoided simply by following a few simple rules.
Rule 1 - You, the presenter, need to be the center of attention
You want your audience to connect with you, not the screen. If your relationship with the audience works, the details won’t get in the way. If the relationship doesn’t work, the details won’t help. The more your audience interacts and relates with you, the more likely they’ll also embrace your ideas. It’s about the relationship!
There are several ways for you to enhance that relationship.
• Remember that you yourself are an exhibit. What you wear and how you move sends a powerful message about the importance of your topic.
• Use an overhead to create a visual “on the spot.” An example is to write the participant’s answers to your questions. When you do this, you acknowledge the participant, thus building your connection and relatedness. The participant sees his or her ideas as being important, and you have ongoing opportunities to present additional information that relates to his or her answers.
• Getting the audience involved in interactive exercises accomplishes several things. If the exercise is well designed, your participants will discover and retain more information through their experience than by merely listening to you.
Remember, too many unexperienced ideas cause “information overload.”
Rule 2 - Use a visual only when it can make the point better than you can
Human beings are visual animals. A picture really is worth a thousand words, but what most presenters don’t realize is that a thousand words aren’t worth a picture. One visual consisting of a picture or diagram that shows the relationship of ideas will be more powerful and memorable than an entire series of slides with an ever-increasing number of words.
There are two exceptions to this rule - if you are discussing something of historical importance or you are discussing something of legal significance.
Rule 3 - The visual needs to be completely understandable within 10 seconds
If you have to explain what the PowerPoint slide means, it’s too complicated. The ideal situation is for you to advance to a slide and have everyone in the room get your point without you having to say a word. That’s a well-designed visual.
Summary
A poorly crafted PowerPoint presentation poisons your relationship with your audience. The purpose of the use of visuals is to ACCENT your message rather than to BE the message. By following these three simple visual rules, you’ll improve your presence, strengthen your audience’s perception, and increase your persuasion.
Doug Carter, with Jenni Green, is the author of Clients Forever: How Your Clients Can Build Your Business (McGraw-Hill), and is the brainchild behind seventh-generation selling. He’s taught his cutting-edge approach to more than 1 million business people around the world through customized trainings and interactive speaking programs. A sales professional and trainer for more than 25 years, he is the founder and CEO of Carter International Training and Development Company. Learn more at www.dougcarter.com or [email protected].
