TJ Walker says most presentations fail because PowerPoint becomes a data dump instead of a communication tool. Start by deciding what single action you want your audience to take, then pick your strongest supporting facts and design each slide around one image, not bullet points.
Chapters
What are the habits of highly effective PowerPoint presenters? At some point in your life, you're going to have to either prepare a PowerPoint presentation or deliver a PowerPoint presentation, or both, or listen to someone else give a PowerPoint presentation. Let's be honest, when I mention PowerPoint presentation, what's the first reaction many of us have? Boring. That's because most people do a horrible job creating PowerPoint presentations. They become long laundry list dumps of data. The person stands up there and reads blah blah, blah, blah blah, and the person sort of pretends to go through a presentation. If you're in the audience, we pretend to listen. Meanwhile, what's everyone doing? Checking email, checking Instagram, checking TikTok, and the whole thing is a waste of time. I'm here to tell you it doesn't have to be that way. So I'm going to spend a few minutes today going over the habits of highly effective PowerPoint presenters and creators. And if you want to know more, I do have something very special. I mentioned this yesterday and I'm happy to announce it is officially launched my new course that covers everything you could possibly want to know about PowerPoint slide creation, design and delivery. What do you think of when someone says PowerPoint presentation? If you're like a lot of people, you have to create one. It seems like it's going to be this tedious, awful task, painful. What do you do? And unfortunately, the starting point for many people is gathering lots of facts, gathering lots of data, gathering lots of numbers and then arranging bullet points, columns, little A, big A, indentations, playing with color schemes, rearranging logos, timeout. That is the worst possible way to start a PowerPoint presentation. A PowerPoint presentation at some level is like any other presentation. It's an opportunity for you to really communicate ideas, messages to an audience. It's fundamentally a communications tool. So the first thing you've got to ask yourself is what is it I want my audience to do? If you're giving a sales presentation, then presumably you want a sale, you want a check, you want a contract. If you're giving a PowerPoint presentation to fight for a specific budget for your department for next year, you want an approval of your budget request. With every PowerPoint presentation you ever give, you have to look first at what is my goal, what do I want my audience to do? That's the first good habit you need to get into. That's very different from going into a PowerPoint presentation, thinking what's every single fact I could possibly think of on this subject, How Can I dump it all out in front of people? That's unfortunately what most people do when they're thinking of their PowerPoint. After you've decided, what is it I want my audience to do, then you need to brainstorm on every fact number message you could possibly try to convey that might motivate your audience to take the action you want. But then you got to narrow it down to your top five messages. This is the hard part for most people, really narrowing it down. Because if you try to give people everything, you give them nothing. If you try to communicate everything, you communicate nothing. Remember, just putting a factor number down on a slide isn't communication. That's not enough to really make it come alive. You've got to breathe life into it. You have to tell stories. You have to have pictures to animate it to make people remember it. Now, let's really get down to some brass tacks. When it comes to PowerPoint slides, the most effective way to use a slide is to put one image per slide. Now, I know most of you are not used to seeing PowerPoint presentations with just one image. We're used to seeing lots of words, lots of bullet points, numbers. There simply isn't any evidence that that is an effective way to communicate. I understand it's done that way all the time, but I actually test audiences all over the world all the time on what they remember from PowerPoint presentations. The only thing people remember. Pictures. An image. A graph. If it has just one message coming from it, perhaps two variables in one relationship. But if it's a graph that's charting 27 different product categories and there's sales per day from 89 stores, it's all lost. It's too complex. So think about using a slide in a way that's most effective. One image per slide. So people hear me say that in my live presentation workshops on PowerPoint, they say, oh, TJ, I know what you mean. I agree. Use fewer words, only limit it to three bullet points, Right? No, that's not what I'm saying. In my professional experience, using three bullet points on a PowerPoint slide is a complete waste of time. Is it the end of the world if you do it? No. But it doesn't necessarily enhance your ability to communicate your message. Think of it this way. If you meet someone at a professional conference in one city, three months go by, you bump into them in Airport in another city, what are you going to remember most? Their full name, spelling, and title on a business card. Or their face. If you're like most people, you Remember the face much more easily than you remember names, words from a business card, their title, any of that. That's because our memories are much more image processors than word processors. So keep that in mind when you are creating images. PowerPoint, by the way, everything I'm saying here is all covered in this complete PowerPoint course. So I want to mention again, if you haven't signed up for it yet, do so before this show finishes. Again, I can't give away everything I do or I would be homeless, okay? But every so often I do want to share with you and I do want to give back to this community in a way that's going to cost you absolutely nothing. And I'm very happy that in this particular case, I have a co instructor with me, Imran Afzel, who is one of the premier online technology instructors in the world. And he is someone who really knows the ins and outs of every kind of technical aspect of how you create slide this way. Dissolves, edit, putting up one image at a time, and it's very easy. But I understand that many of you may have to give PowerPoint presentations where your boss or someone is telling you you have to lay out all the sales data and you've got to make it look nice. This course has every detail you need, hour upon hour upon hour of instructional videos, homework assignments to really level up your skills when it comes to your ability to design and create PowerPoint slides. So if you think there's any chance in the next five years you might have to create a slide deck, design a slide deck, or give a PowerPoint presentation, go ahead and get this course right now. It will really give you the strong fundamental basics, but also the most advanced tips in the world so that you stand out. Because let's face it, any fool the dog on the Internet, the proverbial dog on the Internet, can do a few typing things, put it on a slide, stand up and read to people. Guess what? That's not communication. Every presentation is looked at through the lens of is this interesting? I'll pay attention. This is useful. Or TJ's boring. Let me sign out and go play Fortnite. That's the only thing going on in someone's brain once you realize that. Once you adopt that philosophy, it changes everything you do. When you're creating slides, delivering slides, and giving a presentation using PowerPoint, that's really the mindset I want you to have. It's still your presentation. You may or may not be using some slides, but it's your presentation for your audience that is the mindset you need to be a great world class presenter, whether you're using PowerPoint or not. Good luck with all of your PowerPoint presentations in life and I beg you, please establish good habits when it comes to PowerPoint. Don't just use it as a crutch.
