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What makes a great presentation?
5 June 2010
Most of us know what makes a great presentation.
Don’t we?
Perhaps we learned from experience. We’ve had to give a talk. We’ve sat through many more. We’ve been on a PowerPoint course. We’ve read one of thousands of books.
If you’ve ever seen a great presentation you’ll know two things:
1. Great presentations make ideas stick and spread, but
2. hardly any presentations are great.
It’s easy to spot a great presentation. So why are there still so few?
I bet we all know the so-called ’rules’, too. Talk loudly and slowly. Don’t move around too much. Don’t stand in one place. Have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Make it interactive. Leave questions ’til the end. No more than one point per slide. No more than seven slides in total. Use lots of pictures. Don’t put too many words on a slide. Use bullets, not prose. Replace text with diagrams.
But, which of those rules work? And, what’s missing?
I want to help answer these questions.
So, please share your ideas here. And add your own questions, too.
5 comments to ‘What makes a great presentation?’
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Sales and marketing to make your ideas
stick and spread.
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David,
I’ve recently learned (from a linkedin q&a) of a brilliant programme which may considerably liven stuff up for communicators who are unfortunatly addicted to boring, predictable, loaded and dead powerpoint.
I downloaded it straight away. I believe it is a must see for any one serious about communications and presentations. Never look back. Easy to learn, download their 3 videos to learn how to make it purrrrr. http://www.prezi.com
Hi David
The difference a great presentation makes can be as important as winning multi million pound contract or convincing a team of directors to give you a job, so it surprises me when I see some that are so dull. It also frightens me when I have to create one, knowing so much can be at stake!
Whilst key rules can be useful, most are not universal (the seven slide rule goes out of the window if you spend 20 minutes on each slide).
For me the key is to use the visuals to enhance what you are talking about, not dictate it. The best presenters can convince without using something like Powerpoint at all, but the advantages it can add should be succinct not overused.
My one rule for using Powerpoint or an equivelent, is not to read what is on the slide. Hearing someone just read from bulletpoints on a slide is the quickest way to kill a presentation in my view. It’s like viewing someone’s holiday photos and them describing exactly what you can see, rather than why the place is interesting and the reason for taking the picture.
Say what you want to the recipients to hear and use the slides to enhance your words.
David, I’ve learned much from being on the recieving end of some of your presentations and if I have one question it would be, how you gauge reactions going through a presentation and would you ever change your approach midway through to accomodate this?
All the best
Nick
You’re right about the power of a great presentation, Nick. What proportion of presentations are dull, do you think? I also agree with you about the so-called ‘rules of presenting’. I don’t like rules as they try to make everyone the same. Seth Godin recently wrote about The 200 slide solution. Have you ever tried that?!
Great graphics go a long way to getting the message across!
http://bit.ly/RoslingTED
These are the (very few) rules that I stick to:
1. Never use bullets
2. Be interested, invested and enthusiastic about what you’re saying
3. no more than 3 key points per presentation
Oh, one more: enjoy it because if you don’t, the audience certainly won’t.
Here’s an article I wrote on the subject a while ago, where I discuss it in more detail:
Designers’ PowerPoint Secrets http://bit.ly/9XBdvc (I compressed the URL as it was very long)