Comments on: 9 ways to edit your presentation

By: Simon Raybould

Simon Raybould — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:37:12 +0000

Yeah – what we normally do is have all the material available but concentrate on what the client says they want/need (and modify on the day if it becomes evident that the two aren’t the same ). S

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:24:28 +0000

Hi Simon

I can really relate to this. We’ve had the same problem with our one-day training course.

There’s two options – cover everything more lightly OR take out one big chunk. We decided to take out one big chunk, and do justice to the rest of the material. It’s still a wrench though. Olivia

By: Simon Raybould

Simon Raybould — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:58:08 +0000

…. and what makes it worse is that for the life of me I can’t find anything I want to take out!

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:38:53 +0000

Thanks for your honesty Simon! It’s a very easy trap to fall into. Olivia

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:37:09 +0000

Thanks Nick for contributing your thoughts. I think an “elevator speech” is a great way of putting it. Olivia

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:35:49 +0000

Hi Milind

Good point Milind. I think it is much better to create a new simple graph in PowerPoint rather than export an Excel graph. Olivia

By: Simon Raybould

Simon Raybould — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:28:00 +0000

Great points. I’d go even further though and add the idea that if you can’t explain your main point in a single sentence, you can’t explain it in a paragraph or an hour.

Okay, I’m over-stating to make the point, but I’m sure you see what I mean.

That said, giving too much is a problem I sometimes fall for myself and I have to confess that it’s a critisism on some feedback forms from a training day I did last week: “Too much to take in in just one day!”. I’m spending today looking at what could get cut but still leave a coherent day!

Simon

By: nick morgan

nick morgan — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:09:12 +0000

Great suggestions here. I would stress the importance of focusing on one point and one point only. We always have clients develop an “elevator speech” — that is, the one-sentence summary of the speech that says why you should attend and what you’ll get out of the speech. Then, everything that doesn’t support that sentence gets cut. Audiences remember 10 -30 percent of what they hear, so don’t waste your time and the audience’s by dumping too much information in your talk.

By: Milind Paranjape

Milind Paranjape — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:30:40 +0000

while editing business presentation I want to ensure use of appropriate graphs to highlight context of the presentation. I mean there is always temptation to add all data from XL to PowerPoint as is. You then end up with increased content, more things to explain and potentially more confusion for audience. Goes with your item 2 in the list.

By: Kathy Reiffenstein

Kathy Reiffenstein — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:12:07 +0000

Great summary, Olivia. Another way to be comfortable about leaving some secondary points out of the main presentation is to plan to bring them up in the Q&A period…either in answer to a question or proactively…if they still seem relevant.

Kathy