Any professional business career is often filled with an incredible amount of presentations, whether one is sitting through one or actually giving the presentation themselves. Basically, this is something that is crucial to understand and be able to do at some point throughout any career to a wide reaching audience at some level. Naturally, there are often an incredible amount of nuances involved in this process which should be understood and worked through at all times which makes it pertinent of what to know about PowerPoint presentation training for a more effective presentation skill.

When one has to give a presentation, there are often countless difficulties and anxieties that are present which makes if pertinent to calm and work through prior to giving one. Naturally, this anxiety level is something that allows for an amazing amount of dynamic appeal and diversity which makes it crucial, at some point, to allow for a more smooth transition in speaking. Thus, this type of training truly is vital to any given level of presentation success.

When anyone is actually given a presentation, there are actually quite a few actions that are definitely detracting to an effective presentation. Basically, the training that is often provided will go through these actions and help to prevent them. Thus, knowing what they are will greatly assist the training process.

When going through PowerPoint presentation training, one of the most common and first things taught is to limit the amount of points on a slide. Basically, the message could become convoluted when this occurs. Thus, make sure you are the one presenting the data, not the slides.

Any presentation using PowerPoint should be interesting and engaging to the audience. Basically, this is often accomplished by being able to incorporate graphs, charts, and pictures whenever possible in order to ensure that people are as engaged as possible. Thus, try not to just rely on words and data points throughout the process.

Perhaps everyone has been through a presentation where there were an incredible amount of slides that were all filled with an amazing amount of data. When this occurs, people often become lost and zone out and miss much of the information that is being presented. Try to keep the number of slides down and simply present data from memory in order to keep people focused on the content as opposed to how many slides there are in total.

When moving from slide to slide, try not to read what is on the slides as this is something the audience should be able to do on their own. Ultimately, anyone that is presenting should be able to deliver a message without having to read the slides. Thus, ensure that there is merely a glance without have to turn your back on the audience at any given time to read the slides.

PowerPoint presentation training will actually include the fact of not passing slides out at any given time. Remember, you are the one giving the presentation, not the slides. Thus, keep things on the slides as opposed to in the hands of the audience.

In 2009 Young Markets has been running a survey on the way people give presentations. Given all the publicity and material available on the internet about how to give an Effective presentation, the message doesn’t appear to be getting through.

An astounding 73% of people rely on their slides to remind them what to say next with 83% revealing a whole side of bullet points at one time.

The vast majority of people are still using their slides as handouts, either before or after their talk.

With presentations techniques such as these being so common it is no wonder that the vast majority of audiences suffer from “death by PowerPoint” and that presentations are boring people to death.

If you are one of the majority of people who rely on your bullet point slides during a presentation, you are probably thinking what is so wrong with that. After all, it is what most people do. I’ll let you in to a secret; that is exactly what I used to do as well. But now I have seen the error of my ways, I now realise how boring it makes it for your audience.

I am not one of the anti-PowerPoint brigade or even anti-Prezi who believes you should give a presentation without any slides. I believe that slides add value to a presentation and can help to make a presentation memorable and motivational, but only if they are used in the right way.

So what is so bad about relying on your slides to remind you of the key points, what is so bad about having a number of bullet points on the screen and what is so bad about using copies of your slides as handouts?

Essentially, it all boils down to one thing. Using slides in this way will let your audience get ahead of you. The slides will tell them what you are going to talk about next. And as everyone knows there is no point listening to someone when you already know what they are about to say.

Speaker notes, visual aids and handouts are three completely separate things with completely different objectives. Your speaker notes are to remind you what to say. Your visual aids should be designed to accompany your words and create strong mental images for people to remember. And your handouts need to be stand alone documents that cover not just the slides but what you said as well. By planning to use the slides as speaker notes you tell the audience what you are about to say. By using the slides as handouts you tend to overfill the slides so they still make complete sense even without your words. Both of these things will ruin a presentation.

Most of the time, the bullet points on a slide make excellent speaker notes, so use them as that and think up new visuals for the slides that you will share with your audience. The write down your talk and put it along side the slides in a PDF document which you can have as a handout, to give to people after your presentation.

If you are confronted with a pre-written corporate presentation that you have to use, which has lots of bullet points in it, then my advice is to use bullet point reveal facilities of the presentation software to display the bullets one at a time, and then talk about each topic and bring the bullet point up after you have talked about it. This has the affect of reinforcing what you have just said, rather than pre-announcing it and making your words superfluous.

Just because the majority of other people do it, doesn’t make it right. Stop, relying on your slides, stop displaying bullet point text and stop giving copies of your slides as handouts. Your audiences will thank you for it.

Whatever your reason for standing in front of an audience, it is important to identify your objective before you even outline your material. What is your primary goal? Are you being requested by your boss to give a report on your latest sales presentation? Are you taking a course in public speaking and it is your turn to deliver a speech? Maybe you are interested in pursuing public speaking as a career.

Some professional speakers will tell you that there are four reasons for public speaking: to inform, to persuade, to inspire, or to entertain. On the other hand, most college texts on public speaking will tell you there are only three reasons. They do not include speaking to inspire because that category will fall into either the informative or the persuasive category. [Public speaking as a means to entertain is not covered in this article because it is a topic unto itself.]

With the informative presentation, you may be teaching your audience about something, you may be talking about a death-defying experience, or you could be describing your business to your leads group. Whatever your subject is, your primary goal with the informative is to deliver a speech or presentation that is descriptive. Your objective is not to sell anything or persuade anyone, it is merely to teach or inform.

The informative presentation can have a number of main points, although most books will suggest that you should limit your main points to five. (Tell that one to Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People!)

With the persuasive presentation, on the other hand, your reason for speaking is to persuade your audience to agree with you. While this category may deal with an idea, a theory, or a product, your objective is to have your audience understand and agree with your point of view. You could be a lawyer giving the closing statement for your client. You could be a politician running for office. You might be an insurance broker explaining the value of life insurance. Or, possibly, you are a motivational speaker with an inspirational message designed to help improve the lives of your listeners.

In a nutshell, the persuasive presentation has the objective of selling something. As a persuasive speaker, you want your audience to agree with because you need their support. You may be trying to convince your audience of global warming or trying to explain to them that global warming does not exist.

Whereas the informative presentation can have a number of main points, the persuasive will only have two. The first point should deal with the problem that needs to be resolved, answered, or changed. The second will be what you believe is the answer to the problem.

Whatever your motivation with the persuasive presentation, it is of utmost importance that you are convincing. Your success will be determined by how effectively you can sway your audience to see the story your way. In addition, you may have books, CDs, workshops, or other products at the back of the room that you intend to sell.

You will be much more successful in public speaking if you know your objective and accomplish your goals the next time you stand in front of an audience.