Most weak presentations are born the same way: you open the program, pick a theme and start filling the first slide. Two hours later there are thirty slides full of bullet points and no clear idea of what the audience should remember.
An effective presentation is built the other way round: first the message, then the structure, and only at the end the slides. The presentation program is a support tool, not the place where you think.
Start from one sentence
First of all, try to write in a single sentence what you want the audience to know, think or do at the end. For example:
- «The move to the new backup system must be approved this month, because the current one does not cover laptops.»
- «People who use the shared templates save time and avoid mistakes: from Monday you will find them in the common folder.»
If you cannot write this sentence, the presentation is not yet ready to be designed. If you can, you have the criterion for deciding what to keep and what to cut: anything that does not support that sentence is a candidate for removal.
Know your audience
The same information should be presented differently to a technical group, to management or to customers. Three questions help:
- What do they already know? Avoid explaining the obvious and taking for granted what they do not know.
- What worries them? Costs, timing, risks, changes to their daily work.
- What decision or action is expected of them? Approve, choose, adopt, or simply understand.
A three-part structure
A simple framework works for most work presentations:
| Part | Content | Indicative weight |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | The problem or question, why it concerns the listeners, the main message | 10-15% |
| Body | Three to five supporting points, each with an example or a figure | 70-80% |
| Closing | Summary, requested action, next steps | 10-15% |
Three body points are easy for listeners to remember; beyond five, memory gives way. If you have ten arguments, group them.
The opening
The first minutes decide attention. Avoid opening with the presentation's agenda or with the history of the organisation. These work better:
- a concrete situation the audience recognises («Last month we lost two days of work because of a stolen laptop»);
- a question the presentation will answer;
- the main message stated straight away, especially in front of decision-makers.
The closing
Many presentations end with «Thank you, any questions?». It is a missed opportunity. The last thing the audience sees and hears should be the main message and the requested action, clear and with a deadline if there is one.
Write the outline before the slides
A plain text outline, even on paper, lets you see the whole structure and move blocks around effortlessly. For example:
Message: approve the new backup by the end of the month
1. Opening: the stolen laptop case
2. What the backup covers today (and what it does not)
3. The proposal: three levels of copies
4. Costs and activation time
5. Risks if nothing is done
6. Closing: decision requested and next steps
Only when the outline holds up do you move on to the slides, and often each of these lines needs one or two of them, not ten.
Time
A useful rule is to plan for 20% less time than you have. Presentations always run long: a question halfway through, a connection that will not start, an example that grows as you tell it. Finishing a few minutes early is never a problem; overrunning is.
As an order of magnitude, many people speak for one or two minutes per slide, but it depends heavily on the content. It is better to time yourself during a rehearsal than to rely on a formula.
Speaker notes
Speaker notes, available in PowerPoint, Impress and online tools, let you take text off the slides without losing it. In presenter view the audience sees the slide, while the speaker sees notes, the next slide and elapsed time on their own screen.
Write short notes, in bullet form: keywords, figures to quote precisely, the transition to the next slide. A text to be read word for word makes the presentation flat.
Rehearse out loud
Going over it in your head is not enough. A rehearsal out loud, ideally in front of a colleague, reveals unclear passages, missing transitions and wrong timing. In my work I always do at least one full rehearsal with a stopwatch, and almost always cut something afterwards.
In short
- Write in one sentence what the audience must know or do at the end.
- Adapt content and examples to what the audience knows and what worries them.
- Opening, three to five body points, closing with the requested action.
- Prepare the outline before the slides and plan for 20% less time.
- Use speaker notes to take text off the slides and always rehearse out loud.
