effective presentation tips | Presentation Xpert

Matching Medium to Message: Using Presentation Technologies to Wow Audiences

Long gone are the days where the only option to give a presentation involved you standing before an audience with laptop and projector, presenting with PowerPoint. With the emergence of new technologies, hardware and applications, presenters now have a choice for which tool they can use to deliver their presentation — whether it is online, in person or on a tablet.

In this webinar, author Simon Morton of Eyeful Presentations show us how to look at our technology options such as presenting on a tablet, PowerPoint and Prezi and then decide which one fits our message and gives us the “Wow” we’re looking to communicate. Using real-world business scenarios, Simon and Andrew shared their nsights into how to choose the right technology for different situations, whether it is a sales and marketing presentation, an internal presentation or to an executive team.

Using Eyeful Presentation’s critically-acclaimed methodology that is featured in his book, The Presentation Lab: Learn The Formula Behind Powerful Presentations , we learn how to:

Understand and analyze the evolving presentation lands cape
Approach typical business scenarios with different technologies, matching the medium to the message
Understand the power and effectiveness of each technology and where it fits in your presentation strategy
Be prepared for formal, informal or interactive presentations

About our presenters:

Simon Morton’s early career as an executive for an international technology company exposed him to more PowerPoint presentations than was good for him. With his firm, Eyeful Presentations, based in the UK and with 6 international offices, Simon has been ridding the world of ‘Death by PowerPoint’ for over 10 years. In his book, The Presentation Lab: Learn The Formula Behind Powerful Presentations, Simon shares the methodology and approach that has driven Eyeful’s success and that of its world-class clients.

Joining Simon is Alex Warwick, Senior Designer of Eyeful Presentations. Alex has worked at Eyeful for 3 and a half years. During this time we have seen him training numerous Eyeful customer’s around PowerPoint Technical training, travelling to Dublin and Cork and various UK locations. Alex was one of two lead creatives on the designs in The Presentation Lab book. Alex finds creative inspiration anywhere and has a real passion PowerPoint.

The “20 Minute Template” – The Non-Designer’s Guide to Branded PowerPoint Design

In the age of life-like video games and multimillion-dollar advertising budgets, subpar design has never been so obvious. Did you know that there is a growing trend to assign design-related tasks such as resizing picture or creating PowerPoints to non-designers? Does your heart beat faster when you first open up that new blank presentation? How can you communicate our expertise, knowledge and professionalism, not only explicitly, but implicitly in your design?

Even if paying for the full design treatment is out of your reach, an attractive, branded slide deck is not. In this webinar, Slide Rabbit’s Bethany Auck will share her fast tips for creating a professional look for any presentation. You will learn how to incorporate branding simply so that every slide looks clean and custom designed. See below for a Quick-start guide outlining everything you learned and a cheat sheet of for improving your slide content.

About Our Speaker

Bethany has been working in the presentation design industry for nine years. She cut her teeth at small litigation consultancy where she consulted on major trials helping her clients build persuasive narratives and poignant demonstratives. Bethany founded SlideRabbit in 2012 to bring high-quality design to all industries at low cost levels.

Download the webinar handout

PXpert – Auck – Webinar Handout – 22515

10 Places to Find Reliable Data for Presentations and Infographics

To find reliable data for presentations and infographics, you need to branch out beyond your everyday Google searches. The best data comes directly from the original source of the information, and your average Google searches typically only produce second-hand sources.

For quality data that you can confidently reference in your presentations, infographics, and other content pieces such as Ebooks and podcasts, check out the 10 resources below.

1. The Guardian Data Blog (official site)

Data journalism and data visualization from the Guardian

Tip: If you want to take your data savviness to the next level, sign up for the Presenting Data Master Class offered by The Guardian.

2. The United States Census Bureau (official site)

Quick, easy access to facts about people, business, and geography

Tip: If you prefer to review data in a visual form, you’re in luck; The U.S. Census Bureau has a Data Visualization Library.

3. Kaiser Family Foundation Global Health Facts (official site)

Non-partisan source of facts, analysis and journalism for policymakers, the media, the health policy community and the public

Tip: Visit the graphics and interactive section of this site for videos, quizzes, and interactive infographics.

4. World Health Organization (official site)

WHO’s portal providing access to data and analyses for monitoring the global health situation

Tip: If you’re not sure where to begin on this tremendous site, start by reviewing the Publications section.

5. Data.gov (official site)

Home of the U.S. Government’s open data

Tip: Instead of heading straight to the Data section, start by selecting a Topic to focus your research.

6. Google Scholar (official site)

A simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature

Tip: After you enter your search query, use the filters to the left of the search results to weed out unusable materials.

7. Topsy (official site)

A social search and analytics tool

Tip: Before you jump right into a search query via the homepage search bar, check out the Social Analytics section.

8. HubSpot Marketing Statistics and Data (official site)

All the marketing statistics you need

Tip: Download HubSpot’s resource, 120 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts, & Graphs.

9. Nielsen (official site)

Insights and data about what people watch, listen to and buy

Tip: To get started, check out the Top 10 lists.

10. Radicati Group (official site)

Quantitative and qualitative research on email, security, instant messaging, social networking, information archiving, regulatory compliance, wireless technologies, web technologies, unified communications, and more

Tip: Download the free executive summaries of their most recent reports.

About the Author:

Leslie Belknap is the marketing director for Ethos3, a presentation design and training company. For more information about the organization’s services, visit www.ethos3.com

Each Time You Present a Lifetime of Baggage Comes With You

Recently I had an opportunity to do some personal presentation skills coaching with Michael. That’s not his real name but his story could be your story, your manager’s or maybe even your company president’s.

Michael certainly made a very polished first impression as he walked in. He was well groomed and very executive looking in his well-tailored suit. “Feel free to take off your jacket,” I told him. He politely declined.

During the first 15 minutes with a new client, I always spend some time to try to understand who’s sitting in front of me. I learned a long time ago I’m never just working in the moment – I’m working with the sum total of someone’s life experiences; both good and bad, acknowledged and deeply buried.

“I wasn’t completely honest with you about setting up this time.” he continued. “And there was a reason I kept putting off this personal coaching time. Even the thought of presenting is terrifying to me and has been for as long as I can remember.”

Not much explanation was needed. You see, I had experienced this many times before over the years.

During one coaching session a senior executive recalled an extreme presentation embarrassment 50 years earlier as he stood in front of his 6th grade class…with everyone laughing.

After a speaking gig, a young senior account representative in a large PR firm pulls me aside and asks about her incapacitating fear in front of clients. “I completely freeze up,” she confides. “What’s happening to me?”

Then out of the blue a few years back, a senior officer in a large company calls me looking for some insight into his debilitating anxiety when presenting to his Board; other presentation settings were never an issue. His coping mechanism? Xanax for the anxiety and avoidance whenever possible.

Baggage for All

We are all the sum total of our life experiences.

I find few people who relish presenting, but for most they find a way to cope, some surviving the moment at best. For others, however, the pressure of an important presentation brings back old tapes, deeply internalized embarrassments, harsh words or confidence that has been systematically dismantled over decades by the relationship with a parent.

And it’s precisely these moments that I realize that no matter how good I may be as a personal presentation coach, I am woefully inadequate in untangling issues that have ensnared people for most of their lives.

So my counsel to them and maybe you is pretty much the same.

I can help them work on the outside and very visible manifestations of their fear. But for the stuff on the inside, presenters owe it to themselves to better understand what’s going on, if for no other reason than to live a more fulfilling life. One that isn’t metered by fear and anxiety.

So whether you’re simply a survivor of anxiety or have never turned the corner on overwhelming fear, know this…personal victories in this area can and do happen.

I’ve seen breakthroughs change people’s lives through a partnership of a coach and a clinician, all focused on helping individuals overcome the things they fear most. Deeply held anxiety slowly mitigated not only by meaningful insight, but also a client seeing with his or her own eyes a more confident, polished presenter on the video playback in front of them.

They can’t believe it’s them. Old tapes slowly rewritten. Self-defeating scripts joyfully discarded. Confidence blossoming.

And most of us have experienced this important truth – avoidance is not a very successful strategy. Because presenting our thoughts and ideas to others will be something we will be asked to do the rest of our lives. And there simply aren’t enough places to hide.

So if this article strikes a little close to home for you… maybe it’s time to go to “baggage” claim. Check your tag carefully, and finally find someone to help you carry it all to the curb.

About the Author:

Jim Endicott is president of Distinction Communication Inc, a Newberg, OR consulting firm specializing in message development, presentation design and delivery skills coaching. For more information about the company, visit www.distinction-services.com

4 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do in PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a massive program with lots of capabilities built in, and there will always be things that not everyone knows about. Here are four awesome PowerPoint tricks we’ve found that 99% of people don’t know they can do in PowerPoint (including some of the pros):

#1: Break a table
#2: Break SmartArt
#3: Break up a list of bullets
#4: Resize and crop multiple pictures in one go

PowerPoint Trick #1: Breaking A Table

Breaking a table is the fastest way to get all of the information out of a table.

To break a table, simply:

Copy and paste your table as a Metafile (CTRL + ALT + V for the Paste Special dialog box).
Once you have a Metafile, simply ungroup it (CTRL + SHIFT + G) to break the table into shapes, lines and text boxes.

This will leave you with an individual text box for each entry in your table. From here, you can massage the pieces into your layout of choice.

This PowerPoint trick alone should radically increase the amount of things you can do in PowerPoint with your existing data.

PowerPoint Trick #2: Breaking SmartArt

SmartArt is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in that it can quickly generate slide layouts, but it is a curse as it’s often a pain to format and work with. To bring SmartArt graphics back into a format that’s easier to manage, you can “break” it into shapes, lines and text boxes:

Simply select the SmartArt graphic, ungroup it by hitting CTRL + SHIFT + G.
Ungroup it a second time, and the SmartArt graphic is now simply a collection of shapes, lines and text boxes.

Now you can go ahead and massage the individual pieces into whatever slide layout you need.

PowerPoint Trick #3: Breaking Up A List Of Bullets

Everyone knows that you are not supposed to use long lists of bullets in your layouts, but the question becomes, what can you do with them without spending hours at the drawing board?

The fastest way to break up a list of bullets and generate layout ideas is to throw it into SmartArt:

SmartArt will force your bullets into the different SmartArt layouts (you get a live preview of the graphics), so you can quickly generate layout ideas for your bullets.
Once you find a SmartArt graphic that is close to what you want to work with, you can simply break the graphic apart (see #2).

I often use this technique to quickly break up my content, and end up combining two or three different SmartArt graphics into my final presentation layout, to create something unique and interesting.

PowerPoint Trick #4: Resizing And Cropping Multiple Pictures In One Go

How often have you had several pictures on a slide that were all different shapes and sizes and that you needed to make uniform to fit into your layout?

While cropping and resizing images manually is the more technically correct way to address this, it can be an extremely time-intensive and frustrating task. To shortcut your way through the process, simply throw the pictures into SmartArt:

Select the pictures that you want to resize, select the “Picture Layout” button, and choose a SmartArt graphic.
Just like with bullets, SmartArt will force all of the pictures into uniform shapes by cropping and resizing each picture for you.
Once you find a SmartArt graphic that is close to what you want to work with, you can simply break the graphic apart (see #2).

If you don’t like the cropping and resizing that SmartArt does, you can always manually adjust the pictures yourself afterwards.

With these 4 PowerPoint tricks, you now know more than what most PowerPoint users know they can do in PowerPoint, so welcome to the inner circle. For a video summarizing the 4 tricks, see below:

About the Author:

Taylor Croonquist is the shortcut and productivity guru for Nuts and Bolts Speed Training company, which helps companies build better PowerPoint slides in shorter time frames. Hailing from the home of Microsoft and Starbucks, he came up with the “One Armed Mouse” technique in order to be able to combine these two passions: PowerPoint-ing with a coffee in one hand and a mouse in the other. For more information about the company’s services, visit nutsandboltsspeedtraining.com

3 Tips for Handling Hostile Questions During Presentations

Chances are that you’ve seen the following happen more than once: A colleague builds a beautiful case to support his recommendation. Then comes the relentless questioner who pummels him with questions that seem to have nothing to do with the core case, and the colleague limps to a close as if he’d been attacked by war planes rather than stung by a B-B gun.

If you haven’t experienced this in real life, you’ve certainly seen it on TV press conferences.

People ask hostile questions for any number of reasons:

They disagree with what you have said or have wrong information.
You have not established credibility with them.
They’ve misunderstood you.
They think they are “saving the day” for everyone else or their entire organization.
Their personality makes them always look for the cloud in every silver lining.
They are angry with someone else and are taking it out on you—consciously or unconsciously.

Whatever the reason, your presentation success and credibility often rides on your ability to remain unruffled and walk away from the situation on a positive note with an air of confidence. Here are three tips that can help you do just that.

Rephrase a Legitimate Question… Minus the Hot Words and Hostile Tone

If the question is, “Why are you demanding that we submit these forms with an approval signature? I think that’s totally unreasonable,” try rephrasing it to emphasize its validity, and then respond:

“Why do we think the forms should have an approval signature? Well, first of all, the approval signature allows us to. . . .”

Don’t feel that you have to refute an opposing view in great detail, particularly if the hostile view is not well supported itself. Simply comment: “No, I don’t think that’s the case.” No elaboration is necessary.

Your answer will sound authoritative and final and will make the asker appear rude and argumentative if he or she rephrases and continues.

1) Upgrade the Tone

Avoid matching hostility with hostility; try to maintain a congenial tone and body language. The audience almost always will side (or at least respect and empathize) with the person who remains calm and courteous. Keep in mind that how you answer questions will be remembered more clearly and for much longer than what you say.

2) Acknowledge and Accept Feelings

Try to determine possible reasons for any hostility. By acknowledging and legitimizing the feelings of the asker, you may defuse the hostility and help the other person receive your answer in a more open manner.

Examples: “It sounds as though you’ve been through some difficult delays with this supplier” or “I don’t blame you for feeling as you do, given the situation you describe. I’m just glad that has been the exception rather than the rule in working with this audit group.”

3) State Your Own Experience and Opinion

People can argue with your statistics, data, surveys, and facts indefinitely. But they cannot argue with your experience. It’s yours, not theirs.

After you’ve listened and acknowledged their opinion and feelings, feel free to end by stating your own in a non-confrontational way. “My experience has been different. Based on X, Y, and Z, it’s my opinion that ABC approach will work in our situation.” Then break eye contact and move ahead.

Your audience will take their final cues from you. Make them positive.

About the Author:

Booher Consultants, a communications training firm, works with business leaders and organizations to increase effectiveness through better oral, written, interpersonal, and enterprise-wide communication. Founder Dianna Booher is the author of 46 books, published in 26 languages. Recent titles include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate With Confidence! The Revised and Expanded Edition. For more information, visit www.Booher.com
Copyright © Booher Consultants; article used with permission.

Create Training Courses with Screenshots Inside PowerPoint

Screenshots are a staple of training courses, especially computer-related ones. So trainers are accustomed to using screenshot software to illustrate tutorials.

Often, these screenshots end up in PowerPoint, which is used as the basis for online courses or self-running presentations. In PowerPoint 2010, you can create these screenshots within PowerPoint.

Here’s how it works.

Create the slide that will contain the screenshot.
Make sure that the screen that you want to show is displayed. It can be a browser tab or an application screen — anything you want.
Back in PowerPoint, choose the Insert tab and in the Images group, click Screenshot.
You see thumbnail images of the available screens, as shown on the right. Click one of them.
Move and/or crop the image.

Here you see an example based on a course I teach.

Have you tried using PowerPoint’s screenshot feature? I also use Techsmith’s SnagIt because of the editing options it provides.

About the Author:

Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, visit her website at www.ellenfinkelstein.com

PowerPoint Paradigm Shift: The Power of Going Dark

Do you ever get into the rut of doing what you’ve always done because it’s comfortable – or because it’s the way it’s always been done?

I’m talking about presentations – specifically the ones where you use PowerPoint. We were reminded of this when a client recently shared that he led a talk to 1,000 brand managers at Procter & Gamble with no slides. He was strangely terrified of the idea initially, yet he loved the outcome when it was done.

Slides can be effective for speakers when they highlight key points. Nothing tells a trend story like a graph, and nothing illustrates the analogy you want to make like a picture. When we use slides correctly, we are more effective.

But we’re not using them correctly most of the time, or at least we can do better – it’s hard to argue with that. This article is not to remind you that we use too much information on a single slide – too many bullet points or even words – and that pictures are better. I have no doubt that you already know that.

This article is about actually having the boldness to go dark.

Specifically, use black slides.

A black slide simply has a black background with no master template, and you insert it between your slides – or where it makes sense.

Adding black slides will do three things:

1. Clear the screen. Once you’re done with the picture, graph or supporting information, you want to remove distraction and go to a black slide so you can amplify, tell a story, or make an additional point. Audience minds will wander if you allow it to happen.

2. Bring the focus to you. It’s amazing to see the eyeballs go from the screen to you when you put up a black slide. It’s actually invigorating, and it helps connect you with your audience and so much more! It also opens up the room and allows you to go in front of the projector and not be stuck in one place (although we’re seeing less projectors, more TVs and large monitors).

3. Totally change your mindset. Create your message first, then add support. (Of course, I recommend using the Decker Grid™.) When you are delivering your key points, the background should be black so that people can hear what you are saying.

Slides should be used to accent and add support – think graphs, pictures, video clips and other SHARPs to bring memorability and power to your Point Of View.

Try it in a low risk opportunity, and you’ll love how it helps the experience.

About the Author:

Ben Decker is the CEO of Decker Communications, a presentation skills coaching firm that coaches senior executives and managers to transform business communications. For more information about the company, visit www.decker.com

2 Ways to Improve Collaboration on Presentations

Many presentations are collaborative efforts and you may have discovered that putting your comments in an email and attaching the latest version of a PowerPoint file gets confusing fast. Here are some problems with that method:

There are multiple versions of the file all over the place
It’s hard to know who has the latest version
It’s hard to know which edits are approved and which aren’t
Some people open the file from within the email (you should always save it to your computer first), make changes, and then can’t find the file

If you’ve been in collaboration hell, here is Part I of two techniques that might help.

Lots of people would like a Track Changes feature in PowerPoint, like the one in Microsoft Word. But so far it doesn’t exist. But there are two features you can use instead to collaborate with others. In fact, the second one comes close to a Track Changes feature…in a roundabout way.

Add Comments to a Presentation

This is how the Comments section of the Review tab looks in PowerPoint 2013 (right). Comments provide a way for you to add your opinion or suggest changes. On the Review tab, click New Comment to open a text box, either on the slide (PowerPoint 2007 and 2010) or in a task pane (PowerPoint 2013).

Type your comment and press Enter. A new feature of PowerPoint 2013 is that others can reply to comments so that you can create a conversation. Comments will show your initials or even your photo, if you’re using a Microsoft account. You can easily move from comment to comment and, of course, you can delete comments.

Here’s a short comment conversation in PowerPoint 2013.

If a comment is collapsed or just shows as an icon, double-click it to display it.

Compare Two Presentations

The Compare feature lets you compare two presentations. For example, you can have a presentation on your computer and then send a copy of it to someone else to review. That person will make changes and return it to you. The Compare feature shows you the differences between the 2 presentations. Follow these steps:

Save your presentation on your computer. You’ll compare this presentation with the one that your colleague changes.
Send the presentation to a colleague. If you attach it to an email, this process creates a copy. You can also post the presentation to a shared location, such as your OneDrive storage. In that case, you’ll need to give your colleague the link to the presentation and provide editing permission. In the email or link notification, ask your colleague to make suggested changes and return it to you with another name (such as v2 at the end of the file name).
When the changes are done, open your original presentation and choose Review tab, Compare.
In the Choose File to Merge with Current Presentation box, navigate to the changed presentation and click Merge. The Revisions panel opens, listing the slide and presentation changes. (Changing the theme or adding a slide would be presentation changes.) You’ll also see an icon on a changed slide showing the changes, as you see below. This is as close to Track Changes as you can get in PowerPoint.

To accept a change, check the checkbox in front of it. When text was replaced, you need to check both the insertion and the deletion. If you don’t accept a change, the presentation stays as is on your computer.About the Author:
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, visit her website at www.ellenfinkelstein.com

The 5-Point Formula for Powerful Presentations with Author, Simon Morton

The presentations that are the most critical to the success of your organization today are not the ones delivered on stage in front of hundreds of rapt listeners. They are the ones you and your colleagues deliver every day, looking to connect with an audience – of a few, or many – and drive action. This webinar will challenge everything you thought you knew about creating and delivering engaging business presentations.

Based on Simon Morton’s critically-acclaimed book, The Presentation Lab: Learn the Formula behind Powerful Presentations”, this webinar is a great resource for the everyday presenter looking to drive results. His consultancy, Eyeful Presentations has perfected their methodology and created a formula for the success of their clients. Watch this webinar and Simon will teach you how to successfully:

Assess the needs of your audience
Structure an effective story
Be prepared for informal, interactive presentations
Use visuals with real meaning
Master nuances for blended presenting – live or on demand, in person or online, or a combination

About Simon Morton, Eyeful Presentations

Simon Morton’s early career as an executive for an international technology company exposed him to more PowerPoint presentations than was good for him. With his firm, Eyeful Presentations, based in the UK and with 6 international offices, Simon has been ridding the world of ‘Death by PowerPoint’ for over 10 years. In his new book, The Presentation Lab: Learn The Formula Behind Powerful Presentations, Simon shares the methodology and approach that has driven Eyeful’s success and that of its world-class clients.