What your boss hates in your presentation?

As a presenter you want to do well. You want to be understood by your boss. You want to impress him/her with your presentation skills (and your work). But how can you do well? You don't even know what your boss likes and does not like? Do you know what your boss hates in your presentation?

And why should I restrict it to your boss? Even your colleagues and clients hate the same things about your presentations. But what are those things that they hate in your presentation?

Do you have the answer?

To find this out I asked this question to people from different fields of work:
"As an audience, what do you hate most in a presentation?"

Most of these people work in corporate India as managers and make (or see) presentations day in and day out. I asked HR managers, teachers, investment bankers, IT professionals, entrepreneurs and even a doctor who delivers a lot of presentations across India (and abroad). The answers were diverse but on a closer scrutiny one can find common traits. Most of the answers were kind of commonsensical (Ya, I know that). But the very reason they are in the list shows that you are making these mistakes very often.

The biggest mistake which audiences find in your presentation is: "Too much text on the slide." You would have heard this so many times. Every presentation guru would have said this a thousand times to you. Every other 'How to make a great presentation' tips would talk about it. Yet what is the result. You are still making the same error.

Please Note: If so many people are being put off due to excess text on the slide, it means that almost every presenter is committing this mistake. And committing it very frequently. Open your last presentation and see if you made this mistake.

The next biggest mistake you make is: "Reading out from the slides." Like the first one, even this one is a Fundamental Mistake of Presenting. It is like a Class X student committing a simple addition error in a maths problem. How can you do this dear?

The third biggest mistake you commit is: "Unclear objective and lack of direction." It is very interesting to note that this has come up in the top three. The answer respondents give to a survey reflects what is on the top of their mind. It is called TOM (Top Of Mind Recall). And what is at the top of their minds? Things which happen very often. That is why they are recalled faster.

So, unclear objective and lack of direction is a mistake which you are committing too often and hence is staying in the mind of your boss.

The other major mistakes (along with the top three) have been captured in the bar graph below:

A presentation is composed of three elements; Content, Design and Delivery. Content is the planing part before you start making slides whereas Delivery means presenting your slides to the audience. If we look at all the responses of the survey, 51% related to Design, 30% to Delivery and 19% to Content.

What does it mean?
The thing that upsets people most is not 'what you have to say' but 'how you say it'. Your mistakes in slide design and delivery are overshadowing your content. For all you know, your content might have been great, but yet your boss did not like it. Why? Because, that great content (coming out of your hard work and effort) got diluted by your 'excess words on the slide' and your 'reading our from the slides'.

Take cognizance of these mistakes. Accept the fact that you might be making these mistakes (and you are not even aware of it). Make sure that the next time you present to your boss, you do justice to your hard work and do not repeat them again.

Why do I need to put my logo in the presentation?

It is a common practice in organizations to have a logo on each slide. Many a times the logo is part of the 'corporate template' which a manager cannot do much about. An extreme case of this can be found in some consultancies where they put the client logo and their logo on each slide.

If you also have a habit of putting your organization's logo on each slide, then you need to take a pause here and think; "Why am I putting the logo on each slide?" I would go a step further and ask you "Do you even need the company anywhere on the slide?

I am of the opinion that you should not put 'anything' on your slide without a justification. A justification to yourself. Why should the logo be there? What value is it adding to the presentation?

I read a post of Michael Hyatt where he says, "Instead of placing your logo on every page, you should use “bumper slides” with your logo on the first and last slide only. Other than that, it should almost never appear."

I would disagree to Micheal and ask "Why should I put the logo even on the last and the first slide unless it makes sense?" In case the presentation is to an internal audience in a company, would you still need a logo? Do people need to be reminded where they work?

Let us look at two situations:

1. Internal Presentations
These presentations are made to employees and hence do not need a logo on any slide. In case you are inducting new employees, you might like to put the logo on the very first slide. Using the logo anywhere else is unwarranted. You cannot put the logo anywhere else without a reason (example, if you are discussing the evolution of your company logo, then putting a logo obviously makes sense).
2. External Presentations
You are an advertising agency and are presenting to the client. In such cases you should put your logo on the first slide. That is all. Do not try to force fit your logo anywhere else in the presentation. People know who you are and putting the logo on each slide will only cause clutter.

The next time you are presenting ask yourself this question: Do I need a logo on my presentation at all? Do not put anything on the slide which does not add value.

How to present one bullet point at a time?

A few years back my superior at office was making a slide. He had 5 sentences (as bullet points) and he wanted to present them one at a time. He wanted to achieve what's explained in the following slide: This is not a normal animation which people use, but this can be of immense use in cases where you want to present points in a sequence. Presenting one bullet at a time ensuring full audience attention on the presented point. It is especially helpful when you have many bullet points and you don't want to show all of them on the slide. This is how you do it.

Step-1
Click on the placeholder (denoted by arrow) -> Go to Animations tab -> Choose Custom Animation Step-2
Add Effect -> Entrance -> Fade
This effect will ensure every bullet point will enter with a 'fade' effect. You can choose any other Entrance Effect you desire. Step-3
Under Custom Animation on the right, select Effect Options. Step-4
Under Effects Tab -> After Animation -> Choose Hide on Next Mouse Click
Your animation is ready! Try this out and use it when you want 100% audience attention on one of your bullet points.

What if you don't use bullet points? Bullet points have already become the most despised thing about presentations today. What if you just have 3 text boxes? How do you animate them in a similar manner? Click and the first text box appears. Click again and it disappears and the next text box appears.

Try solving this exercise and let me know how you did it? Unable to solve, shoot me a mail or leave a comment on the blog.

Open and edit a .ppsx in MS PowerPoint

Recently a friend of mine was struggling to open a .ppsx file in MS PowerPoint. He wanted to edit some slides of the presentation but the sender of the file had sent a .ppsx instead of a .pptx.

If you have never opened a .ppsx (PowerPoint Show) file in MS PowerPoint 2007 then you might like to read on.

The solution is pretty simple. Open MS PowerPoint and then Go to Open --> Choose the .ppsx file. But in his case this was not working for some strange reason. So we solved the problem thus:



Step-1
Open MS PowerPoint

Step-2
Go to the windows folder where the file has been saved and drag the .ppsx file inside MS PowerPoint

Step-3
Drop it on the top (not on the slide)



Any faster way than this, drop in a comment.

How many slides for a 30 minute presentation?

I have already answered this question in one of my previous post here (How many slides should your presentation have?). Then why am I writing on it again? In the last one month I have seen umpteen number of Google searches for this. There are scores of people out there who are facing this question and so I thought I will nail this issue once and for all.

The Question: How many slides for a 30/20/10 or 5 minute presentation?
The Answer: It does not matter. Have the right content, say one thing per slide and finish before the allotted time. Do not worry how many slides your presentation runs into.

Even if you realize that there is no ideal number there are various reasons which will make you worry about the original question. This is something I want to discuss in today's post. The reasons why you are forced to think on the number of slides?

Concern #1: Printing handouts. Lesser number of slides means lesser number of prints.
Concern #2: Time management. If I have more slides I will exceed the time

Answer #1: If you are going to present more slides then you need more prints. This might make your handout bulky and will have lesser content on each page. Looks like waste of space right? Wrong! You should never print slides and give it as handouts in the first place. A handout should be prepared separately and should capture the main points of your presentation. Why print something which cannot stand alone without your presence. Read more on handouts: Pick of the Week: Why do you need Handouts?

Answer #2: Time management is the main concern why people want to know how many slides is right. You can manage time by planning like this: If you have three sections in your presentation and 30 minutes, then first decide on how many minutes should you spend behind each section. If you allocate 10 minutes for section 1 then ask yourself, "How much content should I share with my audience so that i finish within 10 minutes?".

The presentation content is your input (leading indicator) and the no. of slides is your output (lagging indicator). To manage time, focus on the input that goes into the presentation and not the output.

Once you have zeroed-in on the right content it all depends on your presentation style. If you present visuals and want small bits of information per slide then you might run into many slides. If you are putting up complex information (a table for example) and want to elaborate on it, then just 2/3 slides might take up 10 minutes.

The bottom line is, do not worry on the number of slides. Know how much time you have and decide on how much information can you share within that time. How does it matter if your presentation has 10 slides or 20?

It's not over yet. To end today's post let me ask you something. Arvind, a sales manager, has to make a 20 minute presentation in his office and his boss has put a upper cap of 5 slides. Arvind does not feel that he can 'put' all the content in just 5 slides. What should he do? How can he put 10 slides' matter into 5? How can he circumvent the law without breaking it?


Update (Sept 2013)
I have written a new post about it.
Presentation FAQs: #1 How many slides in my presentation?

How to add hyperlink to Smart Art?

SmartArt is a great feature in PowerPoint 2007. It has enhanced the visual appeal & ease with which we present information (I will share more on using SmartArt later). But there is a small problem with SmartArt. You cannot create a hyperlink with SmartArt. At least I am yet to figure that out :)

But there is a way you can bypass the problem. Do you know it already? If not, then can you guess?

Let us take a simple example to understand how to add hyperlink to SmartArt. We have a slide on the 4 P's of marketing. You need hyperlinks so that when in slideshow mode, you click on 'Product' you land on the slide which talks about product. Suppose you want to go to Slide No. 8.
Here are the simple steps we will use to create the hyperlink:Step 1: On the 4P's slide, insert another shape. A rounded rectangle (matching the shape of the Product box). Place the new shape over the existing one (need not match it perfectly).


Step 2: Format the newly placed shape -> White fill -> Set transparency to 100% -> Remove lines. You now have a completely transparent shape over your 'Product' SmartArt box.
Step 3: We will now create a hyperlink on this transparent shape. Right click -> Hyperlink -> Choose the slide 8. Choose it from 'Place in this document' because your slide is in the same PPT file.

Your hyperlink is now ready!If you know of any other easier way of adding hyperlinks to SmartArt do leave a comment.

How many slides should your presentation have?

Last week I was working with a client of mine on improving his presentation. When I told him that the presentation might stretch to 40 slides he was anxious. He wanted it to be under 20. Both the versions had the same content but different number of slides. He knew that. Still he wanted it to be under 20.

What's happening in this case?

By having 40 slides the content per slide will get drastically reduced and that he felt meant being low on content (less text on a slide meant less work done by the manager). He wanted the presentation to be content heavy.

Friends this is a mindset issue. Still in most companies in India having more text on the slides means you have done your research and hard work.

How do we solve the problem?
It wont be solved bottoms-up (by changing the mindset of the lower level managers). It has to be solved top-down. When managers see their top bosses reducing content per slide they will follow suit.

So my answer to the question is:

There is no correct number of slides.
Just make sure you have the right content, you talk one thing per slide and you finish your presentation in the allotted time.

Do not try to say 2/3 things in a slide. Do not worry about how many slides your PowerPoint runs into. If you are skilled at using PowerPoint, you can present the matter of 10 slides in 1 using animation. If your presentation has a lot of images, then you can really run through them in no time. So how does it matter how many slides your presentation has? All that matters is whether you finish within your allotted time and get your point across.

What is your take on this? Are you also advised to stick to a certain no. of slides? Leave a comment and let me know.

Pick of the Week: Should You or Should You Not?

You have just finished making a corporate presentation. Your client praises you and asks you to hand over a soft copy of the presentation. What should you do?

If you have never faced this situation before then you definitely will. How can you say no when the client is asking?

Actually you should not hand it over if you are not prepared for it.
Not so easily.

When you face this situation next time ask yourself these questions:

1. Is the presentation going to make sense without your presence when someone else sees it?
2. Are you sure you are not handing over some confidential information about your company?
3. Can your presentation be misinterpreted by people who have not heard you present?

In his interesting post M.J. Plebon asks you to be cautious. A presentation (if made like a presentation) cannot stand alone without your presence. So if you expect such a request then you can actually carry a word doc (or pdf) which captures what you want to say properly.

If you are not prepared with a word doc, ask for time and send a word doc later.

Read M.J.'s post to know more.