Peter Finkelstein, South Africa’s leading sales coach and head of the country’s premier sales consulting practice, tells you how you can transform your presentation into an exciting event.

Script your ideas. The single most important thing you can do to dramatically improve your presentations is to have a story to tell before you work on your PowerPoint slides. Like any movie script, yours should include all the key elements of the story – a setting, a main character, a conflict and the desired outcome, followed by development of the conflict, the framing of a climax and a decision that the main character must face to resolve the situation.

Storyboard your ideas. When filmmakers prepare to make a movie, they first work with a storyboard, sketching selected scenes to show how things will look on screen. To start, think of your presentation not as a collection of individual slides but as slides related as frames in a strip of film. Each slide should contain a statement or heading that is simple, clear and direct.

Once you have your headlines in place, open the notes page and write out what you plan to say about each slide in complete sentences and paragraphs. During the presentation, the headline or two-line statement on the slide will show the audience at a glance the idea of the slide and will also prompt you to improvise on your detailed, written explanation.

Engage your audience. Next, add the visuals that support and help tell your story. As you begin to think about visuals the most important thing to remember is that you’re not just designing slides, you’re designing a complete experience. It’s easy to become absorbed in the details of fonts, graphics and animations while losing track of your spoken words and how the entire experience should help the audience understand your message.

Design the complete experience around the headline – that two-line statement that appears on screen during the presentation and summarises the meaning of the entire notes page.

Presentation rules.

• Use clear, simple type faces such as Arial, Impact and Times
  
• Never make the type face smaller than 14 point, though 16 point is better
  
• Don’t use confusing backgrounds – the cleaner the better
  
• Use colours carefully – contrasting colours read easier than tones
  
• Keep slides simple – the less cluttered the easier they are to read
  
• Never read your slides, talk around the ideas you have on your presentation