People presumes that making Powerpoint presentations are very time consuming. If you are given a task of presenting data to your employer or your clients – who are your audiences, you need to work fast to prepare your presentation including compiling all important data into your presentation. There are several ways to organize these data which audiences find it easy to understand. It is crucial when especially you want to close your sales or give a business proposal, or even look for business solutions that meets clients’ needs.

Before you start making one presentation, you should summarized all the related information before you deliver it to your audiences. Remember, simplicity is the main rule of effective presentation. Please use simple slide designs to avoid create confusion among audiences. You can even use plain white background for your slides. Avoid complicated slide designs that could distract your audiences’ attention.

Therefore, you can only include related graphics on your Powerpoint presentations. If you are promoting a product, then you should include pictures of the products. Cleverly arrange the pictures on your slides so that you can capture audiences’ attention. For example, i prefer to put one product picture in one slide to allow clients to experience and discover the product visually.

One of the main reason your clients buy your products because they have the clear view of the potential of your products. You may include few words for the product description on your slides but I prefer to put two-to-three short lines to describe the products. Make sure the text-contents fonts and colors match the background picture.

You can use animation effects to enhance your presentation especially during the appearance of the text-contents and pictures. Normally, I use “Dissolve In” or “Ascend” animation effects for the text-contents and pictures to appear.

Concurrently, charts and graphs are included in these business presentations. You can have mixtures of text and content layouts in your presentation slides. I suggest that you do not mix bullet-texts with chats and graphs together. For example, insert three dimensional charts and graphs to show your annual profits to your employer. If you are using bar graphs, maximize the use of color effects in every bar graphs. Most business presenters use primary colors in their graphs. If you are using plain white backgrounds for your presentation, dark colored charts and graphs are chosen as the foreground objects of the slide presentation.

There is a lot of debate these days about the effectiveness of social media. Indeed what prompted me to write this article, was a question posed along the lines of – which was most effective social media or face to face presentation.

If you want to sell – you need to be in front of qualified prospects. This is where so many businesses fail.

Do not confuse activity and results. We all know Pareto’s Law 80 / 20, that is only 20 per cent of effort produces 80 per cent of the results. Dabbling away at social media may feel like an effective promotion of business, but when you read the rest of the banal comments about “don’t know whether to have pizza or Chinese tonight” you can’t help but wonder is that the best place to try and promote your business.

Would you wade through all the tweets to find a plumber if you had a burst pipe in the house. You may be well advised to go to a business networking site to satisfy the need, but a social networking site – I don’t think so!

Prospect – qualify – close. Yes you can use social networking to prospect, but you can also waste a lot of time. No matter how much people like you, if they don’t have a need for your service or product, then they aren’t going to give you their hard earned cash.

A lot of social networking is a bit like the business equivalent of, flirting – but never asking for a date.

Poor use of PowerPoint is rampant in presentations. And to be fair, it’s an awkward business. You’re trapped in a corner trying to read the visual and juggling a keyboard, the mouse, or a pointer while making sure you don’t trip over any wires and your audience can see the screen. Yet there are definitely some ways you can manage this process to be effective and professional. Here are some effective usage guidelines:

*STAY WITH THE VISUAL.  When you separate yourself from the visual — whether by standing at the lectern or the computer or off to the side — you split the audience’s attention. You don’t want them to have to choose between looking at you or looking at the visual. Step back to the screen and put yourself in the picture. Stepping all the way back to the screen first of all ensures that you’re not blocking the view of the screen for some audience members. Plus, it keeps you out of the projector’s light. In addition, it gives you a chance for purposeful movement, as you can refer to the visual and help direct your audience’s attention to the specific item you want them to focus on. Remember though, don’t talk to the screen. You can glance at it and refer to it, but always make sure you turn and talk to your audience.

*USE A CORDLESS REMOTE. This is a wonderful tool, allowing you to stay at the screen while you advance your slides. If the option isn’t available, however, and you have to use your laptop keyboard or a mouse with a cord to advance your slides, then just remember that the simpler your visuals are — fewer mouse clicks, less information that you can talk more about — the less you’ll look like a jack-in-the-box, constantly jumping from the screen to the computer.

*LEAVE THE LASER POINTER BEHIND. Please. It doesn’t help. First, if your visuals are done with a good color contrast, which means with a dark background, it’s extremely difficult to even see that little red beam. Secondly, the very nature of its use requires the speaker to face the slide, which means his back is turned on the audience and he’s talking to the screen, not the people in the room. You can be the pointer.

*AVOID PRE-SET TIMED TRANSITIONS. This may seem like a great option since you don’t have to worry about advancing the slides yourself. You can be free of the laptop and stay with the visual as your slides automatically move ahead. However, it is extremely rare that this feature works well. No matter how much you practice in front of your computer screen, it’s almost impossible to perfectly time your remarks in front of a group to coordinate with your transitions. You’ll invariably find that either the slide show will get ahead of you or you’ll have to pause uncomfortably waiting for the next bullet point or slide to come up. 

*DON’T TURN OUT THE LIGHTS IN THE ROOM. This implies that the visuals are more important than you, and that’s not a good message to send. You may have to sacrifice the readability of your visuals a little – although most projectors today are very bright and allow great visibility of slides – but it’s still better to sacrifice the visibility of your slides instead of you.

*DON’T RUN A CONTINUOUS SLIDE SHOW. Let go of the need to have to have a visual up all the time. Go to black from time to time, either by blacking out the screen with the remote or with the B key on keyboard or by inserting the occasional black slide. This is a powerful technique that prevents PowerPoint overload and allows some of the focus to shift back to you. 
 
*END ON A BLACK SLIDE.   This is a nice way to end your presentation-nothing on the screen to distract from you during your close or the Q&A session. Leave your black slide there and don’t exit the “Slide Show” mode until you are completely done with your presentation, ready to leave. If you exit Slide Show before you’re done, the audience has to look at the “Slide Sorter View” of your program, which is busy and distracting.

*FINALLY, MAKE SURE YOU CAN GIVE YOUR TALK WITH IT. Stuff happens — light bulbs blow out, the computer crashes, there’s no electrical outlet to be found. Don’t take up your presentation time fiddling with the equipment or bemoaning your bad luck. Go forward as if nothing’s amiss. If visuals are crucial to your presentation, have hard copies on hand to distribute so that your audience will have something to refer to.