How to create a killer presentation
It's all in the story.
If you Google “how to make a great presentation”, you’ll get thousands of results, give or take a few hundred million. If you then throw in the 20,000 results for books about Presentation Skills on Amazon, it becomes rather overwhelming.
In this edition of The Jolt, we give you a FastClass in structuring a great presentation from one of our founders, Simon Waters.
Simon has delivered hundreds of high-level pitches and presentations to tens of thousands of people over his career, so we thought we’d break the 4th wall.
Up until now, The Jolt team has been anonymous because a number of our board and founders are still sitting in their fancy executive chairs, trying to look important while playing Wordle. But we thought we’d start to put faces to the team. And if you like what you read & see, remember, please share The Jolt or subscribe.
Without further ado, this is Simon’s not-so-secret-(anymore)-killer-presentation-sauce.
WINK - It’s All About The Story.
Super-Skill: Storytelling
You may have heard that only 7% of audiences pay attention to the actual content on your slides. Which leaves 93% of people in front of you focused on what you say and how you say it. Some people think this means they can hide behind anything they put on a slide and it won’t matter.
When I hear someone say “I know this is an eye-chart, but…”, I know they’re not a master of their content. Trap number one, your honor.
In this edition, I'm going to show you that it ALL matters - it’s what you say, how you say it and what you visually show.
Just like a movie.
Because the secret to a great presentation, is crafting a great story.
NUDGE - I Hate Public Speaking.
Super-Skill: Doing & Storytelling.
Let’s get this Nudge out of the way first, because it’s what stops most people believing they can do it. Public Speaking is one of the top fears that humans have. It’s up there with flying, spiders and being caught naked at work.
There’s lots of advice about how to relieve presentation anxiety, and it’s useful stuff - like, being prepared, not thinking about how others see you, making eye-contact as you speak etc. Although it’s solid advice, it’s also hard to practice, especially when you hate speaking in the first place. The last thing you want to do is try to make eye contact with Dave in Sales, especially because you know what he did the night before.
In the early days, I was never a fan of presenting. But the only way to master it, was to get in the presentation boat and sail it. Now I love it.
It’s one of the most essential career skills you can master.
So how do you master it?
It’s called “doing”. Action, dear Jolters, is the master of all fears. It is the only action. My advice to anyone who wants to get better at presenting, is to simply present. Start small and start scrappy.
But do so with a natural structure and foundation for the presentation itself. You can start learning this structure skill by creating your next presentation using our Jolt guide below, and forget everything else for now.
JOLT - A Presentation Is A Story.
Super-Skill: Storytelling & Doing.
Stories are how we make sense of the world. They increase our understanding by allowing for a shared experience with an audience, triggering our imagination for how we’d feel or act if we were in the story too.
Stories offer structure for our brains, because our brains look for the story in everything we do in life. Understanding story, is understanding how to communicate with ease.
Ultimately, highly successful communication depends on empathy; our ability to understand the feelings and actions of others we are talking to, and in return, for them to understand the feelings and actions of us.
When someone tells you something, but you don’t give two hoots as to why they’re saying it, you'll just nod and continue to pick your nose. When someone tells you something and you know why they’re saying it and where it’s coming from, it goes much deeper.
The beauty of a story is that it can be used in any presentation situation, big or small. From meeting one-on-one with a colleague for a catch-up, to the big sales convention in front of 1000 people. The principle is the same. I know it, because I’ve used it successfully throughout my career.
Below are the Jolt 8 Steps to Creating a Killer Presentation. You can use the model to be as grandiose or as simple and scrappy as you want.
The point is, if you follow the steps, the story will win through.
The Jolt 8 Steps To A Killer Presentation:
Script: write it first! Write down what you want to say before you do anything with a PowerPoint. Write it as if you were having a conversation about your topic in a pub with a friend. This is your story. Even if you don’t use a script to speak from, this is the essential step people most often miss. A script forces you to organize your thoughts as a human conversation, helps you identify images in support of your talking points if you’re creating a deck, and saves you utter headaches later on when you realize the presentation is garbage. The script is your story, raw and real. Don’t rush it. I’ve spent weeks on scripts.
Images: as you write your script, images will pop into your head - your brain won’t be able to stop them. That’s the magic of the script process. As they pop up, Google these thoughts or find them in your work assets. Grab them and save them. Make a note of them or drop them into your script. If you’re making a presentation that requires slides, rather than thinking about each slide as a page of information that leads you, start to think how each major script beat can show up as an image that supports you. Big difference. As you hone your script, you’ll soon get a feel for the images that work. It’ll feel like someone is actually working as your personal movie director.
First Pass: whether it’s a 5 minute presentation or 45 minutes, hammer your script into a first pass story flow. A story flow is quite simply your topic written with a beginning, a middle and an end. It sounds so simple! But boy, is it magically powerful. This is where the craft comes in, and it starts with a very important first step:
Ice Breaker: always open the story with an ice breaker. It doesn’t have to be clever, funny or personal, but it does have to be you. I’ve opened presentations using the weather, hangovers, cats and tattoos. The point is, an ice-breaker puts you at ease first of all, then it signals to the audience you’re in control, even if you don’t feel it. It’s a powerful empathy building tool. Don’t underestimate it.
Act One (10%): this is where you set up what you’re going to talk about through the eyes of the audience. It’s a good old fashioned executive summary without people feeling like they’re being sand-papered to death. You can deliver Act 1 as a story beat in itself, for example, “I found X problem on my desk this morning, but fortunately, I also found three Y solutions…”. Act 1 is purposely short and punchy. You’re laying the ground work. It’s the part of the presentation where the audience gets to see the landscape of your topic - and where your story will go. Use bullet points, images - your call. But give the audience the clear scope for what they’re about to experience and hear. Their simple human brains will thank you later.
Act Two (70%): this is the main thrust of your presentation. The meat & potatoes. The life & color. The story mojo. It’s where you dig into your topic and dive into your exposition. Whatever the content or topic, it’s where you present your case. If you’ve spent time on your script, this section will flow, and should be tuned to what your audience wants to hear. “Know thy audience” is a good mantra for a reason. You’ve already broken the ice and set up the landscape, so the audience will have a natural expectation that this is coming next. Enjoy it. Make it fun. Trust me, the audience wants to mentally smile, even if they have a face like a beaten-up piece of coal on a dark winters day.
Act Three (20%): this is where you close. It’s where you tell the audience what you’ve told them - then tell them again. It’s where you create your call to action or your clear statement of what you want your audience to walk-away with - and ideally, put into action. Spend time on the wrap. Give it punctuation and power. Repeat statements if needed. Help your audience recap from their perspective, for example “Remember that problem I told you about? Hopefully now you can see why these Y solutions work - let’s recap…”. The ending of movies are critical for a reason; they help us make sense of what we’ve just seen and heard. We go and tell all our friends about it later.
Review: Before you give your presentation, walk it through with a few friendly faces. Test the content & your assumptions. Test the story. Make sure that your slides have strong visuals that support your main points for the beginning, middle and end, and use minimal words on the slides. If you’ve got long sentences and data on slides, kill it. If you’ve got too many images that make your eyes dance, kill them. Everything communicates.
I’ve not spent much time on how a presentation should look on screen, or how you should deliver it. They’re important subjects unto themselves and we’ll tackle them in future issues.
More important now, is honing the skill of story.
A good story structure allows you to work on your tone and delivery and the theatre of presenting, because you’ve created a solid base by which you can practice on building those next level skills.
Love, Decks & PowerPoint,
The Jolt.
PS. Honestly, if you can ONLY hone this Super-Skill, you’re already miles ahead of everyone else.
PPS. If you liked this, please forward it. It’ll make us stupidly happy.
