An ongoing challenge that technical presenters have is how can large data sets in charts and graphs be presented without overwhelming the audience. Showing the full set of raw data is often necessary to establish a starting point or source. It may also be important to not appear to be “dumbing-down” the information. But a slide with dozens or even hundreds of data points simply cannot be assimilated from the screen.

The solution is to make the data meaningful by distilling down your numbers to just the essential material. Begin with the full table or chart if you must (remember if you put it on the screen your audience will try to make sense out of it even if it is overwhelmingly complex) then quickly show just the important numbers you wish to highlight.

Above, the top slide shows the full chart. On the right is the simplest solution: draw a box or circle around the number you want to showcase. The bottom slide illustrates how to pull out a piece of data and enlarge it greatly while obscuring the chart (to focus attention on the important large text).

You are the expert. It is your job to zero in on the essential numbers or ideas – to show your audience what deserves their attention and what does not.

If you are like most of the business world’s CEOs, COOs, managers, presidents, vice-presidents, sales managers, sales superstars and yes, even professional speakers, your slides probably suck.

You might spend a few million on a consultant who will tell you that making a slightly thinner coffee cup will save you $20 million a year and then send your sales staff out into the world with boring, childish, mind-numbing slides in a sad attempt to connect with your customers.

I have spent the last decade trying to “fix” bad PowerPoint for companies from New York to Hong Kong. I have seen just about everything. What amazes me is why. Why do the leanest, most powerful, most productive and most successful companies on our planet still show their staff, their customers and the world lousy, horrible PowerPoint?

It is time to face this huge blind spot in corporate communications and marketing. It is time to Fix your lousy PowerPoint!

If you want to improve your PowerPoint here are 5 things you can, no, you must do.

1. Make presentations a critical priority. Understand this is about your corporate or personal brand — that thing that you just spent $5 million on with a fancy super-hip ad agency. Bad presentations are not about a small flaw in a small approach to small meetings. This is about the quality of your corporate image. Your brand. Are you serious about quality? About respecting your clients and staff? Are you serious about how you portray yourself in the world? You may consider an executive presentations coach for yourself and your team.
2. It is about the person not the slides. The audience wants to hear the speaker’s take, their opinions and their recommendations instead of having them read a laundry list of prepackaged marketing talk. Build slides accordingly. Let those images support the speaker — the true star of the presentation. Be sure to invest in your people with training that will boost their presentation abilities.
3. Get 80% of the text and data off the screen. Simplify your message and your slides without dumbing it down. If you have to show large quantities of data be sure to guide your audience to what is important while minimizing what is not. Focus on your one BIG idea. Your audience won’t remember the 15 features or benefits that you droned on about. They may just retain your single, big core message.
4. Invest in quality design and images. Would you ask some 8-year old with crayons to design your new corporate headquarters? Then you should be willing to demonstrate quality in your presentations as well. Top-notch images and designs project professionalism and they cost money.
5. Tell stories, or if you are not comfortable with the “s” word, call them examples or case-studies. Stories are a powerful and direct connection to emotions. And emotions will touch you audience in a way that numbers and facts cannot.

PowerPoint seems like such a minor irritant in the corporate universe but presentations (with or without PowerPoint) are at the heart of countless business communications. It is an incredible opportunity to stand out — far above your boring competition.

I was reminded of a great technique for customizing a PowerPoint presentation on the fly to suit your audience. It was demonstrated by veteran speaker Ruby Newell-Legner, CSP at the NSA Georgia meeting this past weekend.

It is simply this: print or write a listing of the titles of the slides that introduce each major section in your presentation along with their specific slide numbers. Keep this list handy during your speech. Then as you present you can determine which sections may or may not be most appropriate for your audience. Instantly jump to that section by typing in the number of the slide and pressing enter. No need to exit the presenter view and fumble around with the mouse.

This creates the potential for having one master presentation and using the best sections for each audience.

A smooth move.

If you want to see what the future of corporate presentations looks like, check out this CORE Live keynote in Nashville with Jeremy Gutsche, a New York Times bestselling author and top-notch innovation expert. It has multiple, well-edited videos and animations; great traditional images; tightly controlled, timed transitions and a well-rehearsed live, hyper-energized expert presenter — Gutsche. Plus he has super stories and content.

I will note that there is little room for spontaneity or audience involvement in his talk but he totally nailed what has become the number one presentation component: he gave them a high-energy, inspiring, off-the-charts experience.

This is what we will have to shoot for in the very near future.

Humor is such a subjective area. Culture, emotions, demographics, gender, delivery, age and a hundred other variables will determine whether your attempt at humor will soar or bomb. Whatever your strategies for adding levity to your presentation, PowerPoint can be a valuable part of your speaking humor toolbox.

There are dozens of possibilities. The silly photo in a business context (above) can be seen as funny in and of itself (or maybe not?). The same for a slide of a mocked-up book cover, a cartoon or strange sign lifted from the internet. A image with a few words can serve as a setup for a verbal punchline or the reverse — a slide can deliver the punchline to your verbal opening.

There can be two advantages to using slides for your comedy:

1. You don’t have to be a natural “comedian.” Using an intrinsically lighthearted image may be all that is needed to build some humor into your presentation. Often, the less actually said, the better — let the slide make the point.
2. If your PowerPoint based jokes fall a little flat it doesn’t necessarily suck the energy out of the rest of your presentation. There is some distance between the content of the slide and you the speaker.

The sure way to give this a chance at working is the same as with any other part of delivering presentations: experiment and rehearse and then rehearse some more. Then give PowerPoint a try to lighten up your performance.