The Presenter's Toolbox

Time-saving tools to build better presentations

Eric Bergman

• Publisher: Petticoat Creek Press, Inc.
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9780987968982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

This toolbox provides a series of models to help you develop clear, concise content for virtually any presentation challenge you'll face.

It will save you time. It will improve your effectiveness. And it is constructed on the assumption that the best approach to building any presentation is to develop slides last, not first, in the content development process.

Most people don’t remember the evolution of visual aids, but PowerPoint was created in 1987 to mimic the horizontal format of 35-mm slides. At the time, 35-mm slides cost anywhere from thirty-five to seventy-five dollars each to produce—i.e. to get from designer to audience.

They were called “speaker support slides” because that’s what they did. They supported the speaker.

Slideware programs like PowerPoint, Cricket Presents, Keynote, Prezi, SlideRocket, Haiku Deck and Google Slides were never created as content development tools. When PowerPoint was conceived, people always finished their content before a single slide was developed.

Yet most people today would never think of preparing a presentation without spending significant time (and probably too much time) at a slideware program.

When slideware is used to develop content, the finished product is often too much information and too many slides. The speaker now supports the slides, instead of the other way around.

The result? The next time you’re at a presentation, look around. Is the audience engaged and leaning in to listen? Or are they disengaged and tuning out to text?

The Presenter’s Toolbox offers an alternative to developing compelling, effective presentations. With it, you now have a choice.

The tools here will help you shape your strategy and develop clear, compelling content. You’ll shift your resources—your time—from spending hours putting slides together to focusing on audience needs and strengthening your strategic focus. And, because you’ll probably use fewer slides during your presentations, you’ll increase the chances of achieving your personal, professional and/or business objectives.

The tools here will help you focus on creating a win for both you and your audience. This is the foundation on which communication excellence is consistently constructed.

And once you become comfortable using the tools in this box, you'll wonder why you ever developed a presentation any other way.

Structure the Conversation

The basic presentation framework is a tool I developed during my speechwriting days and have taught in presentation skills workshops for more than twenty years. It has stood the test of time. I have clients who have been using this tool for more than two decades.

The framework forces you to clearly state the entire presentation—from start to finish—in six to eight sentences. To complete it, write one sentence in each of the boxes to shape the beginning, middle and end of your presentation.

The top box of the framework should contain the main theme of the presentation in one simple sentence. You already developed this sentence when you defined the value for the presentation. At this stage, you should turn the sentence into direct, spoken language for the audience.

For example, in the barking dog presentation, the value for council was: “Council will understand how our proposal to create a new barking dog bylaw will promote neighborhood peace and harmony.” For the presentation, the sentence becomes: “We’re here to talk about how our proposal to create a new barking dog bylaw will promote neighborhood peace and harmony.”

Next, state the call to action, again turning the one or two sentences written earlier into a clear, straight-forward call to action for the audience: “By the end of our presentation, we’d like your approval and support to pursue a community engagement process that obtains resident input on potential solutions for a new bylaw.”

The first two boxes form the core of the introduction for virtually any presentation. They outline the main theme, state the call to action, and establish common ground between speaker and audience. They immediately lead into the main body of the presentation by getting to the point.

The next step is to develop the main body of your presentation: three short sentences that directly support your main theme and your call to action. These should be complete sentences, not bullet points. You will find them where you earlier wrote down the audience’s need to understand.

Why three? Believe it or not, people tend t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Content First, Then Visuals
• Analyze the Audience
• Understand The Event
• Establish Objectives
• Define the Need to Understand
• Determine the Value
• State the Action
• Evaluate Success
• Structure the Conversation
• Delivering Presentations Conversationally
• The Finished Product
• About the Author