When it’s time to write a presentation, most people put together an outline which they immediately turn into a PowerPoint.  They rehearse it once or twice to themselves, and then think they’re good to go.

Writing a powerful presentation is like writing a good article. You write, then rewrite, then rewrite some more.  Professional writers rewrite their work a dozen times. Look to make it more condensed. Try to eliminate half the bullet points. Knock out the redundancies and overly glib lines. Just put the key points on the slides, not every word you’re going to say.

Be single focused.  Ask yourself what the one thing is you want everyone to remember and make sure it is in the open, middle and close.

Finally, have a friend listen to you present it.  Fix those parts where they either pass out or glaze over.

Work it, baby.

We often use formal language in business presentations.  “Without further ado I’d like to present Joe James to you who will present the agenda points of today’s meeting.” Instead try, “Here’s what we want to cover today” It’s not only a more economical way to speak, it’s clearer and shows much more confidence than that stilted way of speaking.

When pitching your offering to a prospect, package your selling points as ways of making the client’s life easier.  We’re all interested in solving our own specific problems, so when you phrase things as solutions, you’ll have rapt attention and ultimately robust business.

It’s never about you.  It’s always about the prospect.

Storytelling is a terrific way to communicate. When you start a presentation with a story it calms you down.  When you make a point with a story it can be dramatic and memorable.

Stories are also valuable in Zoom presentations because they pull the audience back into the screen. Stories are good. Long stories, with lots of side bars, back stories, asides, explanations and other interruptions are bad.

Construct the story in a manner that allows it to flow easily.  If there are things that happened in the story that are extraneous to the reason you’re telling it, don’t mention it.  You don’t have to tell a story exactly the way it happened nor in the order the events occurred.

Practice telling the story among friends and relatives. Why should they be spared?  If you watch their faces as you tell the story, you’ll quickly learn where to edit.

Some people think the more they talk, the more persuasive they become. Not so. The more compact your presentation, the more you will be seen as confident and your presentation as brilliant.  Get rid of jargon, stay focused on the one idea you want the audience to remember and support it with data and stories.

When developing your presentation, don’t use or even think about PowerPoint.

Develop and write what you want to say.  Identify the one thought you want the audience to take away and find a story or anecdote and build that into the opening. Then determine how PowerPoint can add to the impact with stark graphics that bring a point to life and a few key words that reinforce your message. When you create a presentation in PowerPoint first, it gets very wordy and uses silly visuals that are gratuitous.

You may even find you don’t need PowerPoint at all.

Recently, we had a water crisis in New England and our tap water was compromised causing complicated rules on water usage. But one official simplified things by using a metaphor when he advised people to “think of your water supply right now as a lake. All the things you might do in a lake you can do with our water.” It quickly explained what we should and shouldn’t do with the water.

Someone somewhere set in stone the notion that a good presentation should have at most 3 main points. Try this math instead.

A good presentation makes a single point.  That point is articulated in the very beginning. It is proved through facts and stories in the middle. It is summarized at the end.

If you do all of that and do it well, there’s a chance the audience will actually hear and remember it.  If you try to convey more than that one point, they won’t hear anything.

One point. One.

This advice is especially useful if you are making a Zoom presentation.  Getting and holding the audience’s focus is difficult.  It’s better to make one point repetitively than to try to cover lots of material.

When you learn at the last moment that the allotted time for your presentation has been cut, here are some suggestions of what to do:

• Cut chunks of the presentation out or cut out an entire section. Don’t take a little from each section.

• Put even more emphasis on your open and close, which may now constitute the bulk of the pitch. Do not touch the open and close. Leave it just as you planned it.

• Don’t complain at the presentation that your time was cut.

• Finally, and most importantly, don’t rush through the presentation. You worked hard to prepare.  Present at a normal pace with confidence.

Take your time and make a great presentation.

Every sentence, story, aside, example, metaphor and analogy must support the single takeaway you want the audience to get.

Remove everything else. Be ruthless.

One of the sins that many speakers commit is that they try to cover too much material for the time slot they have. Use the time given to discuss your topic, but instead of drilling deep into the details, emphasize a single point.  Sell it with stories, examples, demonstrations and passion. Find other angles to come at the point. Invite audience participation.

Don’t rehearse until you have the content locked down.

Trying to prep and rehearse at the same time hurts each effort.  Have at least two rehearsals, the last being a dress rehearsal (no stopping, no comments).

If possible, the best time to rehearse is in the morning when everyone is fresh.

Clichés can be very helpful in bringing more color to your presentation.

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” might be good advice when discussing allocations. Be sure the cliché’s meaning is obvious. Telling someone to “push the envelope” without a tangible example is vague.

Avoid qualifying language in a pitch or presentation. 

When asked a question don’t respond with “To tell you the truth,”  or “Candidly”  or “To be honest” and the ever popular “In my opinion”.

A direct response is perceived as much more truthful, candid and frank…in my opinion.

Data, statistics and other computational information take on a powerful role in a presentation when designed creatively. 

Get rid of the standard graphs and charts and look at ways of showing data that will build your case.

Check out, Best American Graphics. 

The more you read from notes, the less you connect with your audience. This is true even if you are doing an on-line presentation and the client can’t see you. They can see if your eyes are on the lens or on the screen.

In the book, Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, research indicates that 18 minutes is long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention.

If you are making a Zoom presentation. Cut all of that by half.

The #1 crime of most storytellers is a heavy-handed reliance of chronology. “Then we did this and then that happened, and then the phone rang and then the cat jumped on the table.”  It sounds like they are reading an instruction manual instead of telling a story.

Great storytellers don’t worry about the precise order. They only worry about the impact on the audience. And, if they do tell something out of order, only they know.

No “buts” in Your Presentation

If you have something exciting to say in a presentation, don’t follow it up immediately with “but”, it flips the emphasis from the good news to the bad. Don’t use “buts” in your content.

For example, don’t say “The new program offers real opportunities, but the ordering system is more complicated.”

A better way is to separate the two thoughts and drop the but. “The new program offers real opportunities, (pause) and a few challenges with the ordering system.” In this way you don’t yank the rug out from the good news.

Avoiding “buts” also allows you to appear more positive, body language-wise.

When senior people are interviewing for a new job, demonstrate leadership, not credentials.  The reason you are being interviewed is because of your resume, now show what you can do with it.