Time To Assess Your Business PowerPoint Presentation Performance
With the end of 2015 on the not-too-distant horizon, it’s a good time to reflect… on your work, your achievements, and especially your business PowerPoint presentation.
It’s time to sit down with all of your presentations from the past year, identify the big winners and losers, and take stock of when and why things went right or wrong. This is a valuable exercise, because it allows you to build on your successes and figure out how to avoid repeating any failures. Our “less than shining moments” can sting, but often prove to be the most valuable opportunities for improvement and strengthening future performance.
“I have found 10,000 ways something won’t work. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” These are the words of Thomas Edison on his 10,000th attempt at inventing the lightbulb.
On to some truth telling about your business PowerPoint presentations.
How is Your PPT-ROI?
It’s a good idea to keep a record of all returns you received during and after each business PowerPoint presentation. Measurable Presentation ROI, such as sales increases, social media hits, or projects green-lighted, are obvious highlights.
But don’t discount the intangible feedback, both positive and negative. It can be a rich source of information and can be mined in future to inform your next presentation or project. For example, as you go through each presentation, remember any “ah ha” moments from the audience. When did they occur? Is this where you thought or hoped they would? If not, what happened? It’s helpful to have a colleague make notes while you are presenting to inform this process.
Did you get feedback after your presentation? Did anyone remark that it was good? Next year, make a mental note to ask them what they liked or didn’t like about it. Better yet, provide feedback forms or email your audience afterward and ask for feedback.
Once you can pinpoint your tangible and intangible returns, you can link them to presentations and even particular slides. Then you know what ideas or visuals you can reuse or remake where applicable – voila! – another ROI!
Is Tech Your Achilles’ Heel?
Were there technical problems during any of your presentations? Projectors problems, laptop problems, connection problems – all of these are easy fixes.
The best time to look at these issues is immediately after the presentation, so that the source of the problem can be identified and a fix can be made before your next presentation.
But it’s also a good idea to reflect on these at the end of the year. If you are continually experiencing the same problems, you may need to upskill or make sure you’ve always got technical help at the ready.
Watch Your (slide) Weight!
A content heavy presentation can be a challenge to deliver, because it’s difficult to maintain audience focus for a long period of time. Some topics require lengthy explanation, but often even a very in-shape presentation can afford to lose a few minutes worth of content.
If your presentations are consistently filling the entirety of your given time slot, with little wiggle room at the end for Q+A, it’s time for some editing.
It’s important that you limit your presentations to key points so you don’t lose your audience’s attention before the end. But it’s not always easy to edit. You are likely so close to your material that you can’t immediately see what’s extraneous. So get the help of a colleague who can approach your presentation with a sense of detachment.
Are You Standing in Your Way?
If it’s your presentation style that needs an upgrade, the best way to begin making it better is by recording yourself giving your presentation and watching it back.
When you see yourself as your audience sees you, potential sticking points become obvious. It’s like looking behind the curtain on a magic trick. You can then make fixes to your energy levels, tone, vocal range, etc. that will make you a more powerful and persuasive speaker.
Here’s our great blog on why filming yourself will make the difference between an OK presentation and a presentation that delivers results.
Afraid to Banish the Bullet Points?
Are your slides littered with language? Are there words and bullet points everywhere? It’s time to look at why you think you need to spell everything out.
It could be a lack of confidence in your material. It could be doubts about your presenting skills. Or, it may be an effort to shorten your presentation by having fewer slides – which often backfires by driving you to pack as many bullets per page as you possibly can.
If you want to fix your surfeit of words, but your PowerPoint skills don’t extend to creating mind-blowing visuals, it may be time to contact some PowerPoint design professionals to help.
Are Your Templates in a Tangle?
The end year is a great time to refresh your presentation template files. A good template should make building and sharing presentations easier. If your template is something you always struggle to”work around” instead of “work with” then it could be time for a professional template tune-up.
At eSlide we find that most companies’ presentation templates are not properly set up with useful colors, masters, or styles. One of our secrets to creating polished, consistent, professional looking presentations for our clients is always starting with an optimized template. It doesn’t take long to fix a broken template – and especially for large teams – a good template can literally save thousands of hours work in the course of a single year.
If you’re not sure whether your template needs help or not, check out this article – or simply contact us to set up an evaluation.
Are Visuals REALLY that Important?
This cannot be overstated: visuals are really, really important when it comes to your business PowerPoint presentation. Here’s our great blog on why.
Our brains were designed to process images a lot easier than words. A lot faster too. So you’ll have more success getting your points across if you do it with visuals. You can also condense a lot of complex information into one graphic, making relationships and cause and effect of those relationships really easy to identify, digest and remember.
If your business PowerPoint presentations are filled with words alone, stock images, or graphics that aren’t working hard enough, it’s time to reach out for some advice.
The professional design team at eSlide knows how to show off your information, stats, numbers and key points in the best way possible. We’ve been doing it for years and we know how to create visuals that get results.
Get in touch to find out how we can help your presentations perform better in 2016.
