Presentations Training Courses

Our presentation training course is the most highly participatory and personalized class of its kind. Participants have two instructors to help them learn and practice fundamental and advanced presentation skills. There are 10 videotaped personal presentations and each of the 10 presentations is followed by personalized one-on-one feedback from a senior instructor to guarantee progress and eliminate any distracting behaviors.

For more information and pricing on our presentation training courses, please contact us.

Course Objectives:

• Present technical information clearly, concisely, and persuasively.

• Enhance voice projection, articulation, pace and fluency, body language, eye contact, and gestures.

• Determine audience attitudes and needs.

• Overcome nervousness, anxiety, and any distracting mannerisms.

• Use both common and high-tech media effectively.

• Implement persuasive communication techniques.

• Project control and confidence.

• Plan and develop complete, formalized product presentations around the market forces that affect business.

• Structure presentations to gain maximum effect.

• Use audience involvement techniques to identify and handle questions.

• Set up an on going action plan to improve future presentations.

Presentation Training:
PowerPoint Presentation Courses - 10 Top Tips for Presenters

Could our current fixation with the PowerPoint presentation inspire a future generation to critically analyze this turn of the century social convention? Will our focus on this presentation style be worthy of social commentary? In much the same way that today's graduates smirk at how we used to send memos in the internal post will our business successors marvel at the convention that is PowerPoint?

If the answer is, "no", then I hope it is because the convention is short-lived; that somehow we ditch the idea that because we can create some text rich slides on our notebook we can, therefore, present at will. The one does not follow the other. There is a lot more to giving an effective presentation based on PowerPoint slides than just creating the slides themselves. There are 10 main tips that I follow:

Don't forget the basics. As a speaker our role is to entertain, motivate, inspire, persuade, cajole or inform an audience. No matter the sophistication of the software we have at our finger tips the prime role we play is no different. If the software gets in the way of our main role we should not use it. All the speaker techniques and effects remain totally applicable when PowerPoint is used.

Go light on the bullet points. PowerPoint defaults can push us into one of a number of presentation slide formats (text and content layouts) that feature bullet lists. If we use them we should be careful. Bullet lists should summarize -- in one, two or three words per bullet -- each of the points we want to make. When we fill each bullet point with words we run the risk of exhausting our audience. The lists themselves should also be kept brief. A few bullets only. Not a whole slide full of them.

Go easy on the data. Yes, we have to show how we reach a conclusion or a recommendation -- but we do not need to show all the data available to us. A deluge of data projected on to the back wall of the meeting room is just not going to be read. Our audience wants to scan for trends. They will seek anomalies and they want to know causes. Our audience is not in a position to digest huge chunks of data and we should respect that.

Use only one word where two might do. Editing our material is a necessity. We have to keep our material succinct, readable and indicative of our main points so our audience can take it all in. PowerPoint lends itself to superb graphics, image display and video. These are the most powerful parts of the package and we should aim to use them more as speaker supports. Whatever we do, however, we should not be tempted to use the copy/ paste function to introduce chunks of text from another document into the PowerPoint presentation slide format. It won't work.

Don't read the slides. PowerPoint tends to encourage us to read from our own slides - from either the notebook screen display or the larger projection screen. Both are inappropriate. They indicate that we are using the slides as a crutch. Reading from the screen also ensures that we don't have eye contact with the audience and run the risk of blocking the audience's view. But worst of all, reading our slides suggest that we do not know our own material, we are unsure of its content and we have not rehearsed. Audiences respect expertise and authority in their presenters -- reading our slides suggests neither.

Reference the points on the slides. Clearly we use PowerPoint slides for a purpose. Either to summarize our main points or to illustrate them. Given the purpose, therefore, it's incumbent on us to actually reference these points once they are illustrated. Try to pause. Indicate the point, look back to the audience and make the reference. Doing this joins up our talk with our slide show -- helping our audience to digest the main points.

Use the slide build technique. This is a PowerPoint jewel that is under used. It deserves more attention not least because it lends itself to an interactive approach in our presentation. Using slide build techniques we can reference a point on the display screen, we can ask an open question of the audience and then we can all witness an answer appear on the screen. This could be a word build or a graph display. The options are practically limitless. All the settings are accessed via the Slide Show, Animation Scheme settings in PowerPoint. Again, the cautionary note, we shouldn't allow the technology to take over -- but there's great opportunity here.

Use the black slide technique. We often need to take stock during a presentation -- to confirm where we are or the direction in which we are headed. At this moment we need our audience's total focus on us the speaker. We don't want a distracting slide on the display screen. It's tempting to project a corporate logo or a title slide. These are OK but can still be a distraction. Instead we should use a black slide (Format, Background, Colors, and Apply to Selected). The black slide gives the impression that we have switched off the projector or the notebook. Naturally our audience switches their attention to us. Once our point is made we can continue with our slides. The technique also works at the close of a presentation.

Use fonts and font sizes carefully. PowerPoint will always default to a selected font and font size when we prepare a slide presentation. Our task is to either stick with the default arrangement or use a better option for the job. When we use alternative fonts and font sizes our drivers should be: readability and consistency. Some fonts are made for reading at a distance -- others are not. Fonts can signal structure changes such as titles, sub-titles and content. But when applied indiscriminately they don't signal anything other than a mess. Over capitalization is also a major blow to legibility. It appears that the human race is not designed to read in CAPITAL LETTERS -- the upper case, lower case approach is best. PowerPoint will advise us when we are being a little too extreme in our selections -but many of us have already turned off the Office Assistant!

Take it steady with the imagery. Slide color schemes can actively hinder the readability of our PowerPoint slides. Reading red or green text at a distance is tough. Plan to use dark text colors (black or blue) out of a white background if you can. Or, where corporate color schemes are used with a template format aim for crisp white lettering out of a dark background. We noted earlier that PowerPoint is superb at incorporating high quality visuals (not necessarily Clip Art!) into our presentations. These should be used wherever possible. But take the cautionary point not to overdo the whiz bang effects in the slide show menus (Slide Show, Slide Transition and Slide Show, Animation Schemes).

Any slide presentation can distract an audience from their speaker. But by sticking to the basic principles of giving a presentation and noting both the advantages and disadvantages of PowerPoint we can use this package to its full effect. Our slides are not a crutch -- we should still prepare fully. Our slides are not designed to be read by us, the speaker -- we should still rehearse. And our slides should be consistent with our primary purpose of entertaining, motivating, inspiring, persuading, cajoling or informing. If we note these principles our audiences will not smile at our PowerPoint convention. But they will respect our expertise and authority as presenters.

Source: Andrew Ivey link