Archive for the 'PowerPoint Tips' Category

I was giving a presentation yesterday to a group of 30 major account sales professionals from a global company. For many in the room, English was their second language, so there was somewhat of a gap in our communication. Greater than the adjustments I made to my content and delivery—speaking slower, repeating key ideas, checking [...]

Visual aids like PowerPoint are an important part of any business presentation. When done correctly, they strengthen your presentation by boosting audience understanding. In fact, research shows that listeners remember key messages conveyed with the help of visual aids more than six times better after a period of three days than they do messages that [...]

I recently read a Fast Company blog about a new political party in Switzerland that wants to make PowerPoint illegal. The Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP) is a new movement formed by Matthias Poehm, a professional public speaker in Switzerland. His goal is to “influence the public to put a stop to the phenomenon of idle time [...]

Wednesday for Women Celebrates Oprah!
Oprah’s legend is…well…legendary. For 25 years, she has been the foundation of daytime TV for millions of people all over the world. And throughout it all, her presence and messages have been uplifting, inspiring and revitalizing.
I recently heard the story of a woman who purchased a pair of Oprah’s shoes at [...]

The word “enchant” means to cast a spell on or bewitch; to delight or captivate utterly; to fascinate; charm. Guy Kawasaki’s new book, Enchantment, The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions, has given us a new spin on a more traditional approach to persuasion, influence, marketing and customer care.
Kawasaki defines enchantment as “the process [...]

I was flying to Houston recently and sat next to a woman who was working on…you guessed it… her PowerPoint presentation. We started up a conversation, and before she knew what I did for a living, she confessed that she really couldn’t take the time to chat because she was giving a presentation the next [...]

What do Samoan car thieves have to do with public speaking or speech writing?
On April 1st I received a phone call from my son.  “You’ll never guess what happened,” he said.  “My car got stolen…again.”
Since it was April Fools’ Day, I figured it was a joke.  After all, his car was stolen six months earlier [...]

I work with many people who give PowerPoint presentations.  And no matter how experienced they are, invariably a few of them forget to bring (or don’t own) a remote control for advancing their PowerPoint slides.  As such, whenever I’m working with clients I always take extra remotes with me and usually end up giving them [...]

The PowerPoint Revolution continues! Every few months another contender appears in the marketplace, attempting to poke a hole in the thick skin of the 800 lb slideware-gorilla that dominates meeting rooms across the globe. I don’t believe that there is anything inherently wrong with PowerPoint, but it has undoubtedly become the software program everyone loves [...]

In part one of this two-part post, we talked about the seven sins of PowerPoint. If you missed it, you can read it here.

So now that you know what not to do when preparing your slide deck, here are the seven virtues of what you should do to create informative, entertaining and memorable slides that will motivate your audience to action