Italian Marketing

Most roles in business require good presentation skills. Not only is proficient communication essential to convey information, an exciting or entertaining delivery is an integral ingredient for keeping an audience’s attention and ultimately getting the response you want. A successful presentation will have energy from beginning to end, engage the audience, use dynamic body language and include innovative and creative ways of bringing facts to life and making them memorable. All the while, ‘death by PowerPoint’ should be avoided at all costs. Competent presentation skills can be used in many aspects of working life, from winning pitches, to getting a pay raise. Getting your messages across with impact will give you the best possible results.

Preparation is synonymous with success. A poorly planned presentation, lecture or pitch will leave you nervous, easily distracted and vulnerable to a feisty audience if you haven’t got your facts straight. You will need to identify your target audience, pin-point the purpose of the delivery, and be clear about what your key messages are. After that you need plenty of practice to ensure you stay within the allotted time, get over any potential tongue twisters and fine tune the content. There are so many tangents that an inadequately planned presentation can go down; the more you rehearse, the more of these winding paths you will discover, along with dead-end statements that you can choose to avoid. More importantly you can ensure you can bring your content to life and make if highly impactful. If you can practise in front of someone who will give you feedback, or video yourself, so that you can see how you come across, that will be highly beneficial. Ideally, for a big and important presentation you might like to have some individual presentation skills training or coaching for some expert and tailored advice.

First of all it’s necessary to understand your audience. Knowing who the audience are their roles, objectives and interests should inform the way you plan and deliver a presentation. Right from the start, all your key messages should you be tailored to meet your objectives and theirs. Make sure that all references, anecdotes and metaphors relate to the topical issues and interests of your audience, ensuring sure that you keep it relevant to the ideas under discussion.

It’s very important to open your presentation with a bang. It’s far easier to present to an audience who’s attention you’ve grabbed and which is engaged. There are several ways to do this: you might like to start with a striking or surprising fact, ask them a question, introduce an analogy or crack a joke. These are just a few ideas – there are many more ways to open with impact.

Using PowerPoint, or another form of media display can bring a presentation to life, clarify points and help them stick in people’s minds. However, it can also have the opposite effect, so it’s crucial to get it right. Any slides used in a presentation should be kept to a minimum and include only the key points. As a guide, you should include no more than 6 words per line and 6 lines per slide. This keeps the slides clear and easy to read and avoids overload. It can also be helpful to reveal each point separately as you talk about it, to avoid the audience jumping ahead and not concentrating on what you’re saying. If you do this though, ensure your reveals are consistent and that they’re not whizzing in from all sides with crazy sound effects for each – this will just distract your audience and make you look amateur. Instead, it should be the words you use, the anecdotes and stories you tell and the relevant imagery you use that engage, amuse and inspire the audience.

Pictures, diagrams and graphs can help bring facts and figures to life and help them stick in people’s minds. A carefully chosen image or chart can drive a point home far more successfully than a whole slide of words. Sometimes it can also be useful to use video clips to change the pace and add interest. They should be kept short though, to avoid the audience’s attention drifting.

Finally, be prepared for questions. A well planned and informative speech will inspire listeners to respond with ideas you may not have considered, or inadvertently overlooked in research. It’s a good idea to flag up from the beginning when you will be responding to questions, to avoid disruptive questions throughout. Once again, knowing the topic inside out will prepare you for questions from any angle. Give yourself time to respond, repeat the question back for the audience, try not to waffle when you reply and don’t get emotional! If you don’t know the answer, it’s ok to admit that, but tell them you’ll find out and get back to them. Or give them an answer to the best of your ability, but explain that you’re not 100% sure.

There are many more tips to creating the perfect presentation, but these should get you started and help you to make your presentation clear, impressive and engaging. Presentation skills training will take you through many areas of tips and advice, give you the opportunity to practise and offer personalised feedback and advice.

How often have you attended a presentation where great attention apparently went into designing the slides – and apparently none into how they were used? Or the speaker played with the slides as if to entertain rather than edify?

Such idiosyncratic presentation techniques have helped give rise to the calumnious phrase “death by PowerPoint”. PowerPoint and other types of visual aids can significantly enhance a presentation if properly used. And significantly detract from it if improperly used.

It is normal for each person to have his or her individual style for using slides. Such individuality often adds to the effectiveness of the presentation; however excessive individuality damages clarity and comprehension, putting effectiveness at risk.

Fortunately, this problem can be easily resolved. By recognizing and applying three fundamental principles of slide presentations, you can make “death by PowerPoint” completely disappear.

Fundamental Principles of Slide Presentations

1. Use the slides; don’t be controlled by them

It is important to recognize that slides are a visual aid. And the most important part of this term is “aid”. Too many speakers seem to believe that if they show enough slides, their presentation will automatically be successful.

The opposite is true. No matter how good the slides, if they assume center stage, the presentation will almost certainly be less effective than it could be.

2. Show that you are in charge

Keep in mind that the greatest visual aid is YOU. People come to hear what you have to say because they believe that you have something important to impart to them. So they want to see you, hear your voice, and watch your facial expressions, and observe body movements in order to better understand and evaluate your ideas and information.

If you start your presentation by immediately turning off the lights, and keep them off until the presentation is finished, it is almost as if you are not there. It would be easier and more convenient for everyone just to send the audience the presentation as a videocassette or DVD for them to play at their leisure.

3. Present a “win-win” situation

To be truly effective, slides must:

• Help the speaker deliver a better presentation

• Help the audience better understand the presentation

It is not a question of either/or. The speaker and the audience must both benefit; otherwise, neither one will. This means that you must deliver a good presentation both in terms of content and slides.

It is generally a good idea to prepare the first draft of your presentation without any slides, then return to your text to see where slides are really needed. This will ensure that you do not drown the audience in slides – and that each slide is truly useful.

If you take these three fundamental principles fully on board, you are already well on your way to an effective presentation. Here are a few practical suggestions to make your inherently good presentation even better.

A. Use build-up slides

Let’s try an experiment. Open a newspaper or magazine to any page. Keep looking at it, but try not to read anything on the page. It is virtually impossible. The moment the eye is confronted with text, there is a natural urge to read it.

Putting too much text on a slide has the same effect. The speaker may expect the audience to pay attention only to the part of the text he is talking about and ignore the rest. In reality, while the speaker is talking about the text at the top, the audience will almost certainly be reading the text below.

The result is significant loss of attention. Since attention ensures better comprehension, using text-heavy slides is detrimental to speakers and listeners alike.

To maintain attention, introduce text gradually, not all at once.

In the days of 35 mm and overhead transparencies, this was achieved by using “build-up slides”. For example, instead of showing five bullet points on a single slide, the speaker prepared six sides. The first slide showed only the title; the rest of the screen was left empty. The next one showed the title plus bullet point 1; the rest of the screen was left empty. The next slide showed the title plus bullet points 1 and 2. The same was done for each succeeding slide. It was only on the last slide that the full text (general statement + bullet points) became visible.

Producing six slides was of course considerably more expensive than producing only one. But it was also considerably more effective.

You should use the same technique with computer-generated slides. There is essentially no additional cost. Moreover, you can use animation to highlight each new bullet point as it appears on the screen in order to reinforce its importance. For example:

Slide 1

Title

Slide 2

Title

• First bullet point

Slide 3

Title

• First bullet point

• Second bullet point

Slide 4

Title

• First bullet point

• Second bullet point

• Third bullet point

And so on.

Illustrated slides such as diagrams, flow charts, etc., work essentially the same way. Introduce the illustration piece by piece so that the audience will not be drawn to one part of the image while you are talking about another. There are three possible variations to this approach.

1. Introduce the illustration piece by piece, with commentary, until the illustration is complete

2. Show the full illustration to give an overview. Then re-introduce it piece by piece, with commentary, until it is complete.

3. Show the full illustration to give an overview. Then re-introduce it piece by piece, with commentary, until it is complete. However, occasionally revert to the overview to remind the audience of where the piece-by-piece build up is leading.

Read the Text to the Audience

Another common mistake is for the speaker to continue talking while the audience is reading. Once again, this results in significant loss of attention.

The remedy is quite simple. The speaker should read the slide aloud to the audience. This ensures that:

• The attention of the listeners is first focused totally on the text.

• Next, it is focused totally on the speaker.

If the speaker reads the slide aloud, the audience is not forced to do two things at the same time: reading the slide while trying to listening to the commentary. Attention is maintained, and everyone benefits.

B. Use your laser pointer correctly

My bête noire (black beast) is in fact red. It is the horrendous way many speakers use their laser pointers. Like old-fashioned stick pointers, lasers should be used to:

• Help the audience identify and better understand the importance of key words and phrases in text slides.

• Help the audience identify and better understand the importance of key elements in photos, drawings, diagrams, flow charts, and other illustrations.

Pointing is all that is necessary. Don’t keep circling key words or visual elements. Don’t keep swinging the laser beam back and forth across the screen. The eye will naturally follow these movements. Since they add nothing to the presentation, they subtract from it.

The best way to avoid making these damaging gestures is by using the pointer as name implies. Just point to identify the key word or element you want to talk about, then turn it off. When you want to point to something else, simply turn it on again.

C. Pace your slides

Slides support what the speaker is saying. Therefore, they should:

• Appear on the screen only when needed.

• Stay on the screen only as long as needed.

The first point is obvious. You don’t want to show a slide before you are ready to talk about it. And of course hardly anyone e

ver does this.

Immediately removing the slide from the screen when it is no longer needed apparently is less obvious. Many speakers leave a slide on the screen while they talk about something else just to have something there until they are ready for the next one. Worse, they create “filler slides” they don’t really need just to have something there.

Both tactics damage the presentation. As long as something is on the screen, the eye will be attracted to it. This significantly reduces attention on what the speaker is saying, and so hurt comprehension.

When you don’t really need a slide, don’t show one. Either leave the screen blank or project a soft background color until the next slide is needed. Don’t project a logo or any other illustration, which can only serve as a distraction.

If it will be several minutes before the next slide, turn the lights up so the audience can see who is talking to them. Remember, you are the star of the show, not the slides.

Properly used, slides can significantly boost the interest and effectiveness of a presentation. Poorly used, they can significantly damage a presentation. It takes only slightly more effort to do it well than to do it poorly. You owe to yourself and your audience to make this minor investment for this major return.

Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Journal and a marketing communication consultant. He currently teaches a course in good writing and good speaking in Brussels, Belgium. His recently published book In the “I” of the Storm: the Simple Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) like a Professional is available from Story Publishers in Ghent, Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).

For further information, contact:

Philip Yaffe

Brussels, Belgium

Tel: +32 (0)2 660 0405

Email: phil.yaffe@yahoo.com

When the new term begins, we often tend to get some new ideas on how to make our school activities such as academic activity or administrative activity go better and better. Here I am going to tell you something which can improve your school activities like training, teaching, conference, speech, school ceremony, etc with PowerPoint and DVD player.

Love it or not, Microsoft PowerPoint is widely accepted and used, epically in school. We all know that PowerPoint can only be played on computer with MS PowerPoint installed. But things have been changed all the time, PowerPoint is such a wonderful presentation tool, we are always expecting more. For example, when we made some excellent slides, we often want to share or enjoy the information that contains in the slides with others, and sometimes, we must tell someone something, like training, speech…school requires more. But if you are skilled in PowerPoint, you know it’s often not very convenient to show your PowerPoint Presentations, there must be a computer with MS software installed.

We want to find an easy and convenient way to Bridging the gap between the presenters and the viewers!

Ok, then why not play your PowerPoint presentations on TV with DVD player, the cheapest DVD player costs only $20, maybe less than that!

First, let’s have a discussion on what we will benefit if we play PowerPoint presentations with DVD player.

DVD player is cheap, but it’s not that easy, I am sure you care more about how to show your presentation in an efficient and effective way! We can take some examples to make this clear.

Training:

At the beginning of each term, school administration department need to arrange training for new teachers, sometimes including old staffs, it’s wonderful to show training courses with PPT, but often need to prepare too many things. How about DVD presentation, you only need a DVD player which cost $20, then you can held your training anywhere with a TV, of course, there are almost one TV in each class room, and more than one set in the hall. Another reason is that school often different from other organizations, maybe the whole training need no instructor, school only want to show PowerPoint to teachers and let they learn themselves, Play PowerPoint presentations on TV with DVD player will be the best choice, school can also burn PowerPoint presentations about the training to DVD and give the DVD Disc directly to teachers, so they can learn at home!

Advertisement:

Does School need AD? Are you kidding? The answer is yes! Every school want to be more famous, set up a good reputation both in parents and society! They also need to publicize their newest policies so that more students will enroll, and positively apply for expenditure from the government. So AD is important to school, at the beginning of each term, it’s very important to make a Presentation about school, with pictures and audio insert, then present to places (such as spot for enrolling) which will let parents of the students who often come to school at this time know something about the school. It is wisdom to burn your PowerPoint presentations to DVD disco and play on TV which we call it DVD Presentation! The school can do the same thing when any other organizations or individuals come to have a visit, besides, they also can take their DVD presentations to other school or use in any other activities(such as School Ceremony)! The most advantage of the DVD presentation is that the presentation can play itself and very convenient for delivering. In my opinion, each school should make a completely DVD presentation disc just like each school have a website. In a word, improve the quality of AD to make school famous with lowest cost!

Teaching and Academic activity:

It’s a fact that more and more teachers are tending to use PowerPoint in the class to make their courses more attractive, the same thing happened in Academic activities. As a teacher, are you tried of open the computer and click the PowerPoint Program to show your presentation once and once again, why not sit down with your students and watch your excellent PowerPoint slides on TV, just like watch Spider Man or Harry Potter?you can also explain your slides while it’s playing with no need to click your computer, everything is your hand with a DVD remote controller! During Academic activities like Speech, Proseminar, we have the same application! Maybe more than that, that’s your problem, I am sure you have more imaginations.

Here I only list a few of the applications in school, there are more than that, and you’d better try yourself! Now I’m going introduce the tool which will help you burn your PowerPoint to DVD/Mini DVD.

A $99.95 product called Wondershare DVD Presenter enables you to burn PowerPoint presentation to DVD/Mini DVD, or save it as DVD quality video formats (MPEG). You won’t get bothered with the 3-Click simplicity. With this tool, you can make a DVD copy for the PowerPoint slides with DVD menus, keeping the exact timings, transitions, sound and movies embedded, all in sync with the presentation.

It’s better for you to learn more about the product to have a better understand (http://www.sameshow.com/powerpoint-to-dvd.html)if you want to work in an efficient and effective way.