10 Tips To Be A Presentation GOD.

I do workshops, seminars and keynotes all the time and have been for over 25 years. There are good presenters and there are bad presenters — it really comes down to a few key tips to guide any great speaker:

1. Use A Solid, Plain Background

Keep it simple and open (I like plain white). Also, everyone loves to have their logo on every page - I don't ascribe to this tenet. If you are afraid of someone absconding with critical information, have copyright info at the beginning and end. If you're worried, add it to the printed form. But for screen projection - Less is More.

2. No Bullets

If you are using bullets on a slide, you are saying TOO much. Your slide is a thought, an impact, or an idea that people will remember. What you add verbally is the filler, the bullets, the knowledge. The minute I see bullets I want to walk out - because I know that the presenter has no idea what they're doing.

3. Ten Words or Less

I prefer 10 or less, but 15 is fine. Again, less is more. People don't want 'War & Peace', they want ideas, they want knowledge, they want to be entertained. If you fill the page with words, they are reading and not listening to you.

4. Use Images

Use images to add flourish and vibrancy to what you are saying. If they are boring business photos or bad art (which comes with PowerPoint - and they're awful) — stop before you kill again. Don't put an image on every slide - let the typography of the information reinforce your verbal statement.

5. Colors & Fonts

Keep it to 2-3 consistent colors. Since my branding has green, I use it with a graphite gray and a subdued autumn orange. That's it. Keep to 1 font only - if you begin to mix, I will walk out. Mixing of fonts communicates to the audience that you don't know what you're doing.

6. Know Your Material

Feel free to glance up and see what slide you are on, but don't read the slide verbatim (the only caveat to this rule are quotations). The act of glancing at the slide allows your audience to follow your gaze to the slide, get the gist of the image/message, and then re-focus on you. These actions develop a great synergy between the presenter and the audience.

7. No Lecterns or Pedestals

You need to reach out and touch your audience. Placing lecterns, tables, and stages between you and the audience separates you from them. Step out into the audience, get to their level, and move around. That will make your presentation much more powerful.

8. Act Naturally

Animate yourself. Too many presenters try to act too cool. Move your hands, smile, raise your voice - presenting is ACTING. And the audience wants a performance. Make a powerful point. They want BROADWAY!

9. Greet Attendees Prior To The Presentation

Arrive really early - 1-2 hours and setup your entire presentation, LCD projector, laptop and make sure they work flawlessly. Then when the attendees arrive, mingle with them. Introduce yourself, learn their name, and learn a little about them. This is a trick I use to then incorporate their experiences into my presentation: "Take Tom from Tacoma, he's a used car salesman with a speech impediment . . ."

10. Pay Attention To Your Audience

Regularly temperature check for attentiveness. If you begin seeing yawns, pick it up a bit - start calling names for examples. Get the room moving - constantly ask for questions - use 'WHO' questions to raise the audience excitement: "Everyone's been fired at one time or another. I need a good story from the audience — WHO would like to go first?"  Your delivery should moderate to the audience - pick it up or slow it down.

Watch the master (Steve Jobs) at work:

What other tips make you a Presentation GOD?

Powerpoint: Do You Make These 5 Simple Slide Mistakes?

I can't tell you how many BAD presentations I've sat through. Let's just say — a lot. My major pet peeve centers around what your presentation slide background looks like. Now before you start your protestations (i.e., executives from organizations) — I totally understand you might have to stick with an approved slide background. I truly feel sorry for you. I was an executive for 20 years and for all internal (and many external) presentations, I broke the rules. No one ever took me to task — ever.

But here are my thoughts (in no special order):

1. "I have to have my logo on each slide!"

No you don't. Maybe your company requires you to have it there, but if you really looked into it, you probably don't need to.

Most of the time, you will need to begin (and end) the presentation with your logo, but for all intents and purposes, the inner slides will only need the information you're presenting. Now if you need to send/distribute the presentation, that's another story — see #5.

Slide real estate is at a premium and the inclusion of a repetitive logo on each slide (and the accompanying buffer around it) is a WASTE OF SPACE. Remember — the object of each slide is to be open, simple, and uncluttered so the audience can focus on the message. Repetitive logos, slide numbers, dates, and titles are not required.

2. "I have to have my company's colors on each slide!"

No you don't. Think of FedEx - purple and orange - imagine a background of purple and orange. OMG. Your job is to present a message to your audience — not hit them over the head with each slide. We've already dispatched the logo, let's work on the background colors.

When you work with a number of colors, shapes, or repetitive images, you are muddying the message. It's as if the audience is wearing 3D glasses and the movie isn't 3D. When you have a number of colors, shapes, lines, or gradations, it just makes it harder to see the font on the screen. Especially if the gradation moves from light to dark — try placing a phrase in black on a background that has a gradation from white to black. You won't see some of the letters — making it hard to read — equals lost message. It also looks juvenile.

3. "The audience can't see the words on my slide when I project on a screen!"

This happens ALL the time. Why? All projectors, screens, and room lighting are different — so you need to compensate for these changes. What I do is always work with a white background — you can never lose with white. It brightens up the screen, takes advantage of any projector bulb's shortcomings, and keeps people's focus on the screen. In addition, colors look brighter.

You can also use a black (or dark) background. But I find it tends to darken the whole room and adds a somber edge to the experience. Steve Jobs used a slightly-graded background for his presentations — but he had perfect stage lighting. Try it — you might like it. One caution — if you like to use images, sometimes their background is white — so you'll have to do some Photoshop magic to make the background around them transparent. That's why I stick with white.

4. "I have to stick to the 'Powerpoint-approved' template!"

No you don't. Honestly, they suck. They stick with boring fonts, the leading (space between each line of text) is not the best, and their choice of bullets . . . terrible. The only way for you to personalize the presentation (to your subject) is to start fresh and choose your own layout. Once you lock it in — stick with it — it will then be easy for you to replicate again and again and again.

In addition, you don't want your presentation looking generic or like another person's presentation. Candidly, when I see a canned 'Powerpoint-approved' background presentation, I think two things:

1. This person has no idea what they're doing. They're whole presentation is suspect.
2. This person really doesn't care about the look and feel of their presentation. They've rushed it.

5. "Projecting and printing are two totally different deliverables!"

So they can look different. In fact, they can look like two totally separate deliverables. Why?

1. One is for projecting on a screen in front of an audience with commentary from you. The audience is focusing on you and using the slideshow as an accompaniment to bolster your message.
2. The other is for silently reading at one's desk. Two different deliverables. You do need a logo or copyright on each page because the presentation might be pulled apart and distributed to other people. Also, it's frequently printed on white paper, so the use of complex and colorful backgrounds (and fonts) might interfere with the final printed product. In addition, if you have to email it, eliminating most (if not all) images will dramatically affect the size of the emailed file.

I run into these five mistakes at least once a week and it's a train wreck when it happens. In fact, I see a presenter (who is an accomplished academic and speaker) who sabotages their own presentation by making all five of these mistakes.