When a Powerpoint Presentation Goes Bad

I sat through a webinar on www.authorstream.com last week given by an acclaimed Powerpoint and presentation expert.  The webinar was a huge dissappointment, with the presentation committing many of those common presentation blunders that anyone who has received the most basic presentation advice has been warned against.  Among the presenters biggest mistakes:

·         Make the Point and Move On:  The biggest focus in the first part of the presentation was on bad slides.  And bad slides were indeed presented.  There was the bullet slide, the slide with the complicated flowchart, the slide full of text.  Then there was the slide with the distracting background, the slide with many different fonts and sizes and the slide with the complex graph.  Then there was the slide with the distracting animations, the slide cluttered with needless graphics and ... well, you probably get the point.  There were probably 15 to 18 consecutive slides and significant discussion with each about bad slides.  After the first four or five bad slides the point was well made and it was time to move on to what a good slide looked like.

·         Read Your Audience:  There were about 65 – 70 people online for the webinar and there was a chat forum off to the side of the webinar screen where people were bantering back and forth.  By about the eighth bad slide in a row coupled with a full verbal description of what sins it committed, comments started trickling through about it being time to move on.  By the tenth slide, it had turned into a steady stream of comments.  By the twelfth bad slide the steady stream had turned into a torrent.  You should have a plan of how your presentation will flow when you’re putting it together – that’s one of the most important things you have to do before you even open up Powerpoint or whatever tool you use.  However, you have to be able to go with the flow during the actual presentation and if your audience is clearly disinterested or getting antsy, it’s time to think on your feet and modify your plan.  The webinar presenter should have quickly cycled through the last half dozen slides, stopping only momentarily to sum up in one short sentence what offended about the slide.

·         Tackle Adversity Head On:  We’ve all been there and it’s not fun:  You’re in the middle of a presentation and technical difficulties arise.  Your laptop goes to sleep or runs out of battery, the projector stops working properly, that embedded movie file just won’t start properly.  Here again you have to be quick on your feet.  In my experience it is best to confront the problem head on – don’t pretend it isn’t happening, the room full of people that you’re presenting to sees that it is.  Embrace what has happened, see if you can’t make a quick joke while you’re calmly (on the outside, frantically on the inside) resolving the issue.  Most people have been in a similar situation at some point in their lives and they’ll be more that a little sympathetic.  In the webinar, the presenters slides weren’t advancing properly.  He clicked to advance and nothing happened, so he clicked again and again and again, then his PC caught up and shot five or six slides ahead.  Then he started scrambling to get back to the slide he wanted to be on and the same thing happened and when his computer started responding it slingshot him back through slides that he had already presented.  I’ve experienced this exact issue – I’ve boiled the issue down to something between a Powerpoint presentation and the online meeting tool I use (GoToMeeting).  It still flusters me when it happens, but I know through experience that I just have to stall for a few moments and then everything will sort itself out.  The presenter either hadn’t encountered his particular issue before or failed to recognize what was happening.  Either way, he handled it poorly.  At this point in the presentation I stepped away to take a call from a client and when I returned just a few minutes later the webinar had been ended prematurely because of “technical difficulties”.

Presentations are usually very important times for you to shine when you’re trying to win a new account or order or climbing the corporate ladder.  Make sure that your presentations are focused, concise and precise and present them with confidence and grace.

Need help with an upcoming presentation?  Visit our website to contact us or email me directly, we’d love to help!

Steve Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications, Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com