Powerful PowerPoint!

I've been working with a client of mine for a series of speeches that he has to give. He has to use PowerPoint for the presentations and we've been working on making it a Powerful PowerPoint. He was pretty surprised by the process that I go through when developing a PowerPoint presentation.

To create a great PowerPoint you need to find the flow. That's right, I said it, the flow. Just as with any presentation, there needs to be a theme or a "through-line" in the PowerPoint slides. I'm not talking about the aesthetic look of the slides; I'm talking about the content.

Once we had decided what the theme of the entire presentation was (in ONE sentence of no more than 7 words), we then went through each slide and found the point of each slide (in one phrase of no more than 5 words). Then we double checked that each point of the slide coincided with the point of the entire presentation.

Why I'm a so specific about the number of words when finding "the point" to the slides and presentation? Because, as presenters, we need to practice being clear and succinct. If we have to babble on and on to make a point, we're not doing our job.

Also, going through this exercise helps with memorizing the entire presentation! How many times have we seen PowerPoints that have the speech written on the slides and all the presenter is doing is reading the slides?! People do this partially because they're afraid of forgetting portions of the presentation. When you go through and KNOW the POINT of each slide, the rest comes easily. Trust me. This small exercise will make a huge difference in your future PowerPoint presentations.