1. The beauty of technology these days is that everything works at the flip of a switch. So there’s no need to turn up much in advance of your start time – if any technical problems do emerge it’s certainly not your fault, and in any case there’s bound to be some techie nerd on hand who can fiddle about with stuff behind you while you busk some sort of jokey introduction.
2. Never store your presentation under an obvious filename. Then you can spend your first five minutes messing about with the desktop manager, trying to locate the right file while we all get a look at the other stuff you keep on your laptop.
3. Look only at the slides, your notes - or best of all, the floor. (If you forget what you were going to say, you’re bound to find another copy of it written there.)
4. Assume that everyone in the room has good long-distance vision for small print (or has remembered to bring their glasses). If in doubt, assume your audience are illiterate and read out every word on every slide.
5. Hand round hard copy of your slides before, or preferably during, the presentation and keep referring to things on pages that aren’t currently showing on screen – that way you’ll get maximum background rustling of paper from everyone in the audience.
6. Never use a remote control to change your slides. Then you’ll be able to hide as much of your body as possible behind a lectern or podium placed well to one side, and can more easily ensure that your laptop lid is blocking as much of your face as possible. (If that’s not an option, make sure you hold your notes right in front of your face. Actually, if you can get yourself hidden completely and just be a disembodied voice, that’s best of all.)
7. If you need to talk about something specific on a slide, be sure to turn your back on the audience as you
point it out.
8. Find a reason to have to flick through your slides to get to something you want to talk about in a different order from the one you’ve planned. It’ll do away with any surprise if your audience has already seen your last slide before you get to the end, and moving backwards through slides they thought you’d already dealt with will make it impossible for anyone to work out how much longer you’re likely to drag on for.
9. When you answer questions afterwards, stand right in the beam of the projector so that the text of your most recent slide plays attractively across your body.
10. Remember that PowerPoint is suitable for every subject, every occasion and every type of audience without exception.
---------------------------------------------------------------- On the other hand…
if you are truly not guilty of any of the above,
the chances are you’re better
at delivering presentations than you think.
But then again, if you could do with
a few more positive tips and techniques than these,
why not seek help
from a professional presentation skills coach?
Today brings you the first instalment of Play4Real's handy guide on how NOT to go about a lot of things we all need to get right if we want to succeed in business.
It's pretty certain that you'll recognise other people in some of what you read.
It could just be that you'll recognise yourself.
And if that's the case - and you'd like to know more about how Play4Real could help you (or the colleagues, peers or clients you recognise) to match impact with intention, get in touch and I'll be happy to chat about exactly what we can do to make that happen.
All the best,
Lin Sagovsky
Key Player
101 ways
to make balls-ups in business...
without
even thinking! by Lin Sagovsky An absolutely free
and indispensable compendium
for you to collect!
Look out for Part 7 with the next 10 tips in the series arriving in your Inbox soon!
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