Presentation Training Skills

Presentations Skills Training Workshops

Presentations skills training workshops are provided across the country via public open enrollment workshops in all major metropolitan areas and can also be delivered on-site via private training workshops. Our presentation training workshops can be provided as off-the-shelf workshops or training sessions which are ready to be delivered to a diverse audience or can be customized to provide a tailored training and personalized approach workshop based on client needs. All presentations training workshops are limited to a maximum of twelve participants so as to increase workshop effectiveness and provide the individual level of presentation coaching and interaction that is associated with the Presentations Training Skills Workshop Center.

For more information on our presentations skills training workshops please contact us.

Presentation Workshops: Don't Assault Your Audience with PowerPoint

Hopefully we can all agree that as a speaker, you should never start a presentation speech with intention of killing some or all of your presentation audience - your chances of being asked back go way done if you do. Given this, why are you still using such bad PowerPoint slides?

Shooting Bullets At Your Presentation audience
First things first, how many things can you do at the same time? No, I mean really well? As human beings, we simply don't do a good job of multitasking no matter how well we think that we can do it.

It turns out that when you slap that PowerPoint slide up there with all of those bullets on it, you are asking your presentation audience to make a decision. You are asking them to either pay attention to you or spend their precious attention reading the words on your slide. There's really no way that you can win this game.

Titles Count
So what's a presenter to do? I mean if you create slides, you're going to have to put at least some words on there, right? It turns out that what you need to do is to take the time to make every word count.

This means that, among other things, the title of your slide is now million dollar waterfront property. You've got to pack a clear message into each title: "Status Update" is out, "Update on dramatic drop in 4th quarter profits" is in.

Build Your Own Background
The look and feel of each slide can be determined by not the words that you use, but rather by the background that you choose. Don't make the same mistake that everyone else does.

PowerPoint comes with a set of standard slide backgrounds (lots of blue in them for some reason). The problem with this is that since PowerPoint is so popular and has been around for so long, we've all seen all of them before. The last thing that you want to do is set your presentation audience up to be bored starting with your first slide.

Instead, build your own backgrounds. Instead of choosing a PowerPoint provided background, instead start with a blank background and add pictures, images, and graphics to build up a unique background for each of your slides. This simple but effective technique will give your slides a powerful fresh look.

More IS Better
So how should you handle the case where you do have a lot to say on a given slide? All too often we just bite the bullet (sorry for the pun) and pack all of the words that we want to say into a single slide and hope for the best.

A much better way of doing this is to break a single word-heavy slide up into multiple slides with few words on them. In the past when we were dealing with physical slides we were hesitant to do this because it would have caused a lot of physical effort to switch slides all the time. With today's electronic slides, this is no longer an issue.

What All Of This Means For You
A reality of the world that we speak in is that PowerPoint is here to stay. This means that you're going to have to figure out how to make this beast work with you, not against you.

You don't need to be a professional graphics artist to create a PowerPoint presentation that will enhance your presentation speech. Minimizing the number of words that you use and creating custom slide backgrounds are simple and yet powerful techniques that you can use to be effective.

The great communicators of the past never had PowerPoint slides that they could use. Done correctly, just imagine how much more powerful you'll be with good slides!

Source: Dr. Jim Anderson link

Related: Presentation Workshops