Practical Advice From A Motivational Speaker – Effective PowerPoint

As a Texas motivational speaker, I often have the opportunity to watch industry educators give PowerPoint presentations. From what I’ve observed, a lot of business trainers have absolutely no clue how to employ this effective software. Instead of using PowerPoint to reinforce their seminars, they permit it to become a distraction. As another Texas motivational speaker pointed out, in many organizations, using PowerPoint is thought to be a best practice. That said, you should re-evaluate the place PowerPoint has in your presentations.

Here are a few motivational speaker best practices when using PowerPoint…

Tip 1: If you’re lucky enough to dictate the room layout, make sure the projector screen is situated off to one side. This enables you to position yourself in the center of the platform (a theatrically commanding position).
Tip 2: Here’s a tip I learned from another keynote speaker. Don’t fall into the easy trap of reading from your PowerPoint slides. Make a specific effort to maintain eye contact with your audience. (Remember, you have the task of persuading the audience, never the slides.) By the way, eye contact is a core technique keynote speakers use to “wow” an audience.
Tip 3: Sometimes (in a genuine effort to be “helpful”) the meeting planners will flip off the lights, ostensibly so people can see your slides. This is an awful idea! It can cause audience members to doze off. Do everything you can to make sure this doesn’t occur during your presentation. In most situations, dimming the lights a tiny bit is adequate for easy reading of your bullets. (Here’s an idea: Rather than being unnecessarily confrontational, explain that you can’t see your notes…The meeting planner has little option but to adjust the lighting, Sneaky, but it’s effective!)
Tip 4: Have specific strategies for drawing the audience’s focus away from the PowerPoint slides. For instance, you could recount a tale that directly relates to one of the principles you’re outlining.
Tip 5: Don’t cling to the projector remote with both hands…gripping it like grim death.
Tip 6: Always turn off the projection (not the projector) when you’re not actually referring to a slide. This is so audience members can refocus on you and your body language.
Tip 7: Prepare with your PowerPoint slides prior to your speech. Just because your main bullets are on your slides doesn’t mean you can “wing it”. Make sure you know the order of your slides and how long each one takes to explain.

One final point…

The commonest time for a industry educator (or even a motivational speaker) to lose their place in a speech occurs as they shift between one subject block and the next.

The great thing with PowerPoint slides is that your sub-topics are prearranged. And so you can be confident in the knowledge that you won’t “forget your place”. (If required, sneak a peek at your next slide to get your head back in the game.) You can concentrate on being influential, so you can pitch your product or inspire your staff…