Presentation Best Practice

Loughlin O'Nolan

Quick tips for more effective presentations. Trust me, these work.

One of the comments on the Techcrunch post about Google Docs adding embeddable presentations reminded me of Guy Kawasaki's 10 / 20 / 30 rule for presentations. I'm referring to presentations as being pretty much synonymous with PowerPoint and the way it is currently used.

10 slides (maximum)
20 point font size (minimum)
30 minutes (maximum)

I have proposed this as communications best practice anywhere I've worked. It struck me that I have yet to actually see a single presentation that adhered to it. Seth Godin goes so far as to propose "No more than six words on a slide. EVER." I have never found anyone whose jaw didn't drop in disbelief when this was mentioned to them.

More words provide a safety net for presenters. If they lose their train of thought, they can start reading their slides (if they haven't already been doing that).

Many people seem to feel that the more slides you have, the better. Wrong. Making an impact, then leaving the prospect with more detailed information to consider and a clear call to action is better.

Tell a story. People react to stories, not walls of text.
Use images as visual aids to reinforce what you are saying. If you're talking about the US market, try using a picture of the Statue of Liberty rather than a ream of statistics and projections.
Confirm how much time you have to present, and respect this. If you are running over time, skip to your conclusion.

Don't

Turn the lights off unless you really have to.
From read your slides. It's a presentation, not a book-reading
Don't give your audience handouts before the presentation, save that for when you're finished. Otherwise, they'll spend their time reading, not listening.
Don't use ClipArt. It looks cheap and is still overused. If you are using off-the-shelf artwork, the prospect is likely to think you will also provide them with off the shelf solutions to their problems. There are plenty of cheap or royalty free high-quality images available on the web - see below.
Resize images in PowerPoint by stretching them. If you're not competent graphically, get someone who is to help you.
Use many different typefaces. In fact, it's best to use fonts from within the same font family. It's also usually better to use sans-serif fonts for their legibility.

Image resources

This is just a selection, there are many more online.

Stock Exchange
everystockphoto (search engine for free photos online)
Morguefile
Dreamstime
Photl
Photoxpress

_{Image credit: woodsy @ stock.xchng}

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