How to Become a Great Presenter

So you’ve been asked to do a presentation.  How do you start? Fire up PowerPoint of course.  Everybody uses PowerPoint so it must be the best way to create and deliver presentations.  Not so, says my friend Kevin Eikenberry.  Recently Kevin wrote a blog post about how PowerPoint is killing effective communication.  You can see it here.

I agree with Kevin – especially his point about people using PowerPoint as a teleprompter.  Way too many times I’ve seen presenters putting up slides loaded with words and then reading them from the screen – sometimes with their back to the audience.

This is not the way to present with impact folks.

PowerPoint can be very helpful.  But you should use it to help reinforce what you’re saying – not to drive your presentation.  Use too many words on a slide and the audience will be reading the slides instead of focusing their attention on you.  That’s a problem.

I urge members of my career mentoring site to use images and not words on their slides.  In this way, they keep the audience’s attention focused on them – not the words on their slides.

Using images instead of bullet points has another benefit.  It forces you to prepare your talk.  When you aren’t using slides as a teleprompter, you need to practice your talk.  It’s as simple as that.

When you practice your talk, you come across as knowledgeable and informed.  And that’s the impression you want to create with your audience.

It takes more work to put together and deliver a presentation in this way, but it will pay off in the end.  Trust me on this one – it works.

Your career mentor,

Bud

PS: I write this blog to help people create the life and career success they want and deserve. Now I’m going one step further. I’ve created a membership site in which I’ve pulled together my best thoughts on success. And, as a reader of this blog, you can become a member for free. Just go to https://budbilanich.com/join to claim your free membership. You’ll be joining a vibrant and growing community of success minded professionals. I hope to see you there.