Do you use a laser pointer during your presentations, to highlight something on the projected screen?
It could be a specific data point on a chart or a number in a table. I have a laser pointer inside my presentation remote, the Kensington33374 Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer, and “occasionally” I use the built-in laser pointer.
If you like to use a laser pointer when presenting, you should do it with a bit of care and follow these two tips:
Make sure you limit the movements to the bare minimum, and turn off the laser pointer after you have indicated the item you want to highlight. Presenters who insist on circling around and around the items on the screen and move the pointer all over the slide think they are focusing the audience’s attention, but in fact they may cause everyone’s head and eyes to spin and get distracted. Some speakers even forget they have the laser turned on and move their hand while dangerously pointing the laser beam everywhere.
If you hand shakes too much, maybe because you are a bit nervous, it might be better to find an alternative way of highlighting items on the screen, for example by
using arrows and different colors directly within the PowerPoint presentation
enlarging the font size to increase readability
breaking the information into multiple slides or building a specific slide for each point you want to highlight
The same problems can happen during a webcast, this time it’s not the laser pointer but the mouse pointer. Try to limit the mouse movements when you are recording or presenting to a live Internet audience. Here as well too many movements can be very distracting.
There is a tendency to use bar charts and pie charts for all sorts of data. This very often does not communicate well. The chart in a presentation or in a flyer must be chosen based on the message you want to communicate. Here are two useful reference tools if you need help in deciding which graph is best for the message behind your data:
There is a part (around 0:41:55) that is very applicable to many presentations seen today. Simon makes a comparison between dating and a sales call.
Here is what Simon says:
“We sit across from someone at the other end of the table, we whip out our PowerPoints, and what do we start doing?
we’re the biggest in our industry
we’re very good at what we do
we have beautiful offices, you should come and visit us sometime
we do business with all the biggest brands
we are pretty well known, you might have seen us in the press
we’re doing pretty well for ourselves”
This does not work. This is not how we should start a sales presentation.
If you watch the entire video you will understand why presentations that talk about “what and how” often don’t get any results.
Recently I was teaching a marketing workshop to a group of Italian IT resellers and when they were developing the agenda for a hypothetical event the first item of the day was the company presentation. But earlier in the day when we were talking about why they do customer events, the primary reason was “to solve customer problems”.
Remember to start with the why.
This engages the audience much more than beginning with a standard company presentation.
