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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

By Krystle Wong , Jul 20, 2023

A top-notch presentation possesses the power to drive action. From winning stakeholders over and conveying a powerful message to securing funding — your secret weapon lies within the realm of creating an effective presentation .  

Being an excellent presenter isn’t confined to the boardroom. Whether you’re delivering a presentation at work, pursuing an academic career, involved in a non-profit organization or even a student, nailing the presentation game is a game-changer.

In this article, I’ll cover the top qualities of compelling presentations and walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to give a good presentation. Here’s a little tip to kick things off: for a headstart, check out Venngage’s collection of free presentation templates . They are fully customizable, and the best part is you don’t need professional design skills to make them shine!

These valuable presentation tips cater to individuals from diverse professional backgrounds, encompassing business professionals, sales and marketing teams, educators, trainers, students, researchers, non-profit organizations, public speakers and presenters. 

No matter your field or role, these tips for presenting will equip you with the skills to deliver effective presentations that leave a lasting impression on any audience.

Click to jump ahead:

What are the 10 qualities of a good presentation?

Step-by-step guide on how to prepare an effective presentation, 9 effective techniques to deliver a memorable presentation, faqs on making a good presentation, how to create a presentation with venngage in 5 steps.

When it comes to giving an engaging presentation that leaves a lasting impression, it’s not just about the content — it’s also about how you deliver it. Wondering what makes a good presentation? Well, the best presentations I’ve seen consistently exhibit these 10 qualities:

1. Clear structure

No one likes to get lost in a maze of information. Organize your thoughts into a logical flow, complete with an introduction, main points and a solid conclusion. A structured presentation helps your audience follow along effortlessly, leaving them with a sense of satisfaction at the end.

Regardless of your presentation style , a quality presentation starts with a clear roadmap. Browse through Venngage’s template library and select a presentation template that aligns with your content and presentation goals. Here’s a good presentation example template with a logical layout that includes sections for the introduction, main points, supporting information and a conclusion: 

2. Engaging opening

Hook your audience right from the start with an attention-grabbing statement, a fascinating question or maybe even a captivating anecdote. Set the stage for a killer presentation!

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

3. Relevant content

Make sure your content aligns with their interests and needs. Your audience is there for a reason, and that’s to get valuable insights. Avoid fluff and get straight to the point, your audience will be genuinely excited.

4. Effective visual aids

Picture this: a slide with walls of text and tiny charts, yawn! Visual aids should be just that—aiding your presentation. Opt for clear and visually appealing slides, engaging images and informative charts that add value and help reinforce your message.

With Venngage, visualizing data takes no effort at all. You can import data from CSV or Google Sheets seamlessly and create stunning charts, graphs and icon stories effortlessly to showcase your data in a captivating and impactful way.

5. Clear and concise communication

Keep your language simple, and avoid jargon or complicated terms. Communicate your ideas clearly, so your audience can easily grasp and retain the information being conveyed. This can prevent confusion and enhance the overall effectiveness of the message. 

6. Engaging delivery

Spice up your presentation with a sprinkle of enthusiasm! Maintain eye contact, use expressive gestures and vary your tone of voice to keep your audience glued to the edge of their seats. A touch of charisma goes a long way!

7. Interaction and audience engagement

Turn your presentation into an interactive experience — encourage questions, foster discussions and maybe even throw in a fun activity. Engaged audiences are more likely to remember and embrace your message.

Transform your slides into an interactive presentation with Venngage’s dynamic features like pop-ups, clickable icons and animated elements. Engage your audience with interactive content that lets them explore and interact with your presentation for a truly immersive experience.

8. Effective storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story? Weaving relevant anecdotes, case studies or even a personal story into your presentation can captivate your audience and create a lasting impact. Stories build connections and make your message memorable.

A great presentation background is also essential as it sets the tone, creates visual interest and reinforces your message. Enhance the overall aesthetics of your presentation with these 15 presentation background examples and captivate your audience’s attention.

9. Well-timed pacing

Pace your presentation thoughtfully with well-designed presentation slides, neither rushing through nor dragging it out. Respect your audience’s time and ensure you cover all the essential points without losing their interest.

10. Strong conclusion

Last impressions linger! Summarize your main points and leave your audience with a clear takeaway. End your presentation with a bang , a call to action or an inspiring thought that resonates long after the conclusion.

In-person presentations aside, acing a virtual presentation is of paramount importance in today’s digital world. Check out this guide to learn how you can adapt your in-person presentations into virtual presentations . 

Preparing an effective presentation starts with laying a strong foundation that goes beyond just creating slides and notes. One of the quickest and best ways to make a presentation would be with the help of a good presentation software . 

Otherwise, let me walk you to how to prepare for a presentation step by step and unlock the secrets of crafting a professional presentation that sets you apart.

1. Understand the audience and their needs

Before you dive into preparing your masterpiece, take a moment to get to know your target audience. Tailor your presentation to meet their needs and expectations , and you’ll have them hooked from the start!

2. Conduct thorough research on the topic

Time to hit the books (or the internet)! Don’t skimp on the research with your presentation materials — dive deep into the subject matter and gather valuable insights . The more you know, the more confident you’ll feel in delivering your presentation.

3. Organize the content with a clear structure

No one wants to stumble through a chaotic mess of information. Outline your presentation with a clear and logical flow. Start with a captivating introduction, follow up with main points that build on each other and wrap it up with a powerful conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Delivering an effective business presentation hinges on captivating your audience, and Venngage’s professionally designed business presentation templates are tailor-made for this purpose. With thoughtfully structured layouts, these templates enhance your message’s clarity and coherence, ensuring a memorable and engaging experience for your audience members.

Don’t want to build your presentation layout from scratch? pick from these 5 foolproof presentation layout ideas that won’t go wrong. 

4. Develop visually appealing and supportive visual aids

Spice up your presentation with eye-catching visuals! Create slides that complement your message, not overshadow it. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean you need to overload your slides with text.

Well-chosen designs create a cohesive and professional look, capturing your audience’s attention and enhancing the overall effectiveness of your message. Here’s a list of carefully curated PowerPoint presentation templates and great background graphics that will significantly influence the visual appeal and engagement of your presentation.

5. Practice, practice and practice

Practice makes perfect — rehearse your presentation and arrive early to your presentation to help overcome stage fright. Familiarity with your material will boost your presentation skills and help you handle curveballs with ease.

6. Seek feedback and make necessary adjustments

Don’t be afraid to ask for help and seek feedback from friends and colleagues. Constructive criticism can help you identify blind spots and fine-tune your presentation to perfection.

With Venngage’s real-time collaboration feature , receiving feedback and editing your presentation is a seamless process. Group members can access and work on the presentation simultaneously and edit content side by side in real-time. Changes will be reflected immediately to the entire team, promoting seamless teamwork.

7. Prepare for potential technical or logistical issues

Prepare for the unexpected by checking your equipment, internet connection and any other potential hiccups. If you’re worried that you’ll miss out on any important points, you could always have note cards prepared. Remember to remain focused and rehearse potential answers to anticipated questions.

8. Fine-tune and polish your presentation

As the big day approaches, give your presentation one last shine. Review your talking points, practice how to present a presentation and make any final tweaks. Deep breaths — you’re on the brink of delivering a successful presentation!

In competitive environments, persuasive presentations set individuals and organizations apart. To brush up on your presentation skills, read these guides on how to make a persuasive presentation and tips to presenting effectively . 

Whether you’re an experienced presenter or a novice, the right techniques will let your presentation skills soar to new heights!

From public speaking hacks to interactive elements and storytelling prowess, these 9 effective presentation techniques will empower you to leave a lasting impression on your audience and make your presentations unforgettable.

1. Confidence and positive body language

Positive body language instantly captivates your audience, making them believe in your message as much as you do. Strengthen your stage presence and own that stage like it’s your second home! Stand tall, shoulders back and exude confidence. 

2. Eye contact with the audience

Break down that invisible barrier and connect with your audience through their eyes. Maintaining eye contact when giving a presentation builds trust and shows that you’re present and engaged with them.

3. Effective use of hand gestures and movement

A little movement goes a long way! Emphasize key points with purposeful gestures and don’t be afraid to walk around the stage. Your energy will be contagious!

4. Utilize storytelling techniques

Weave the magic of storytelling into your presentation. Share relatable anecdotes, inspiring success stories or even personal experiences that tug at the heartstrings of your audience. Adjust your pitch, pace and volume to match the emotions and intensity of the story. Varying your speaking voice adds depth and enhances your stage presence.

5. Incorporate multimedia elements

Spice up your presentation with a dash of visual pizzazz! Use slides, images and video clips to add depth and clarity to your message. Just remember, less is more—don’t overwhelm them with information overload. 

Turn your presentations into an interactive party! Involve your audience with questions, polls or group activities. When they actively participate, they become invested in your presentation’s success. Bring your design to life with animated elements. Venngage allows you to apply animations to icons, images and text to create dynamic and engaging visual content.

6. Utilize humor strategically

Laughter is the best medicine—and a fantastic presentation enhancer! A well-placed joke or lighthearted moment can break the ice and create a warm atmosphere , making your audience more receptive to your message.

7. Practice active listening and respond to feedback

Be attentive to your audience’s reactions and feedback. If they have questions or concerns, address them with genuine interest and respect. Your responsiveness builds rapport and shows that you genuinely care about their experience.

8. Apply the 10-20-30 rule

Apply the 10-20-30 presentation rule and keep it short, sweet and impactful! Stick to ten slides, deliver your presentation within 20 minutes and use a 30-point font to ensure clarity and focus. Less is more, and your audience will thank you for it!

9. Implement the 5-5-5 rule

Simplicity is key. Limit each slide to five bullet points, with only five words per bullet point and allow each slide to remain visible for about five seconds. This rule keeps your presentation concise and prevents information overload.

Simple presentations are more engaging because they are easier to follow. Summarize your presentations and keep them simple with Venngage’s gallery of simple presentation templates and ensure that your message is delivered effectively across your audience.

1. How to start a presentation?

To kick off your presentation effectively, begin with an attention-grabbing statement or a powerful quote. Introduce yourself, establish credibility and clearly state the purpose and relevance of your presentation.

2. How to end a presentation?

For a strong conclusion, summarize your talking points and key takeaways. End with a compelling call to action or a thought-provoking question and remember to thank your audience and invite any final questions or interactions.

3. How to make a presentation interactive?

To make your presentation interactive, encourage questions and discussion throughout your talk. Utilize multimedia elements like videos or images and consider including polls, quizzes or group activities to actively involve your audience.

In need of inspiration for your next presentation? I’ve got your back! Pick from these 120+ presentation ideas, topics and examples to get started. 

Creating a stunning presentation with Venngage is a breeze with our user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and professionally designed templates for all your communication needs. 

Here’s how to make a presentation in just 5 simple steps with the help of Venngage:

Step 1: Sign up for Venngage for free using your email, Gmail or Facebook account or simply log in to access your account. 

Step 2: Pick a design from our selection of free presentation templates (they’re all created by our expert in-house designers).

Step 3: Make the template your own by customizing it to fit your content and branding. With Venngage’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can easily modify text, change colors and adjust the layout to create a unique and eye-catching design.

Step 4: Elevate your presentation by incorporating captivating visuals. You can upload your images or choose from Venngage’s vast library of high-quality photos, icons and illustrations. 

Step 5: Upgrade to a premium or business account to export your presentation in PDF and print it for in-person presentations or share it digitally for free!

By following these five simple steps, you’ll have a professionally designed and visually engaging presentation ready in no time. With Venngage’s user-friendly platform, your presentation is sure to make a lasting impression. So, let your creativity flow and get ready to shine in your next presentation!

10 PowerPoint Tips for Preparing a Professional Presentation

Use these Microsoft PowerPoint tips to avoid common mistakes, keep your audience engaged, and create a professional presentation.

Professional presentations are all about making an impact. Your slides should look the part. Once you know what makes a presentation look professional, you can customize any half-decent PowerPoint template or create your own custom slides.

Our PowerPoint tips will help you avoid common mistakes, keep your audience engaged, and create a professional presentation, in form and content.

PowerPoint Slide Design

The design can leave a first and lasting impression. Give it a professional touch to win your audience's trust and attention.

1. Carefully Compose Your Slides

Don't copy and paste slides from different sources. You don't want your presentation to look like a rag rug. What you're aiming for is a consistent look. This will help your audience focus on the essential; your speech and the key facts you're highlighting on your slides.

To that end, use a basic template or make your own . PowerPoint comes with a wide selection of professional PowerPoint presentation templates , but you can also find free ones online.

PowerPoint Tip: When you open PowerPoint, note the search field at the top. One of the suggested searches is "presentations". Click it to see all of PowerPoint's default presentation templates. Choose a category on the right to narrow down your search.

Pick an easy to read font face . It's hard to get this right, but these professional-looking Google fonts are a safe bet. Unless you're a designer, stick to a single font face and limit yourself to playing with safe colors and font sizes.

If you're unsure about fonts, refer to "The 10 Commandments of Typography" shown below for orientation.

Carefully select font sizes for headers and text. While you don't want to create a wall of text and lose your audience's attention, you do want them to be able to read what you've highlighted. So make your fonts large enough.

PowerPoint Tip: PowerPoint offers several different slide layouts. When you add a new slide, choose the right layout under Home > New Slide . To switch the layout of an existing slide, use Home > Layout . By using the default layouts, you can make coherent design changes across your presentation anytime you want.

Leave room for highlights, such as images or take home messages. Some elements should stand out. So try not to bury them in background noise but give them the space they need. This could be a single quote or a single image per page with nothing but a simple header and a plain background.

Decorate scarcely but well. If you have good content, you won't need decoration. Your template will be decoratively enough.

Note: Restrict the room your design takes up, and don't ever let the design restrict your message.

2. Use Consistency

Consistently use font face and sizes on all slides. This one goes back to using a template. If you chose a professional presentation template, the designer would have taken care of this aspect. Stick to it!

Match colors. This is where so many presentations fail. You might have chosen a funky template and stuck to the designer's color profile, then you ruin it all with ugly Excel charts .

Take the time to match your visuals to your presentation design.

Text and Background Colors

A poor choice of colors can ruin your presentation.

3. Use Contrast

Black text on a white background will always be the best, but also the most boring choice . You're allowed to use colors! But use them responsibly.

Keep it easy on the eyes and always keep good contrast in mind. If you're color-challenged, use one of the many online tools to select a good looking color palette. Or just use a template and stick to its default colors.

PowerPoint Tip: Use PowerPoint's Design menu to quickly change the font and color palette of your entire presentation using preset design layouts.

4. Apply Brilliance

Carefully use color to highlight your message! Colors are your friends. They can make numbers stand out or your Take Home Message pop.

Don't weaken the color effect by using too many colors in too many instances . The special effect only works if used scarcely. Try to limit pop colors to one per slide.

Make a brilliant choice: match colors for design and good contrast to highlight your message . Use a professional color palette, to find which color will work best with your theme. Use The 10 Commandments of Color Theory shown below to learn more about colors:

Text on PowerPoint Slides

K eep I t S traight and S imple. That means...

• Keywords only on your slides.
• Absolutely no full sentences!
• And never read your slides , talk freely.

Remember that your slides are only there to support, not to replace your talk! You want to tell a story, visualize your data, and demonstrate key points. If you read your slides, you risk losing your audience's respect and attention.

PowerPoint Tip: Afraid you'll lose your train of thoughts? Add notes to your slides. Go to View and under Show click Notes to make them show up under your slides while editing. When starting your presentation, use PowerPoint's presentation mode (go to Slide Show and under Monitors , check Use Presenter View ), so you can glance at your notes when needed.

6. Take Home Message

Always summarize your key point in a Take Home Message. Ask yourself, if your audience learned or remembered one single thing from your presentation, what would you like it to be? That's your Take Home Message.

The Take Home Message is your key message, a summary of your data or story. If you're giving an hour-long presentation, you might have several Take Home Messages. That's OK. Just make sure that what you think is key, really matters to your audience.

Make your Take Home Message memorable. It's your responsibility that your audience takes home something valuable. Help them "get it" by making your Take Home Message stand out, either visually or through how you frame it verbally.

Presentation Visuals

Images are key elements of every presentation. Your audience has ears and eyes, they want to see what you're talking about, and a good visual cue will help them understand your message much better.

7. Add Images

Have more images in your slides than text. Visuals are your friends. They can illustrate your points and support your message.

But do not use images to decorate! That's a poor use of visuals because it's just a distraction.

Images can reinforce or complement your message. So use images to visualize or explain your story.

Use a sufficient image resolution. Your visuals might look good on your desktop, but once blown up by a projector, low-resolution images will make your presentation look anything but professional. So choose a resolution that matches the projector's resolution. If in doubt, don't go below a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels (XGA) and aim for 1920 x 1080 pixels (FullHD).

Always maintain your image's aspect ratio. Nothing looks more awkward than a distorted image. Whatever you do, don't stretch images. If you have to resize them, do so with the aspect ratio intact, even if that means dropping slightly above or below your target resolution.

PowerPoint Tip: Need a visual, but don't have one at hand? PowerPoint is connected to Bing's library of online images you can use for your presentations. Go to Insert and under Images select Online Images . You can browse by category or search the library. Be sure to set a checkmark for Creative Commons only , so you don't accidentally violate copyrights.

Note: Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In other words, if you don't have time for a thousand words, use a picture!

PowerPoint Animations and Media

In animations, there is a fine line between a comic and a professional impression. But animations can be powerful tools to visualize and explain complicated matters. A good animation can not only improve understanding, it can also make the message stick with your audience.

8. Don't Be Silly

Sparingly use animations and media. You should only use them in one of two cases:

• To draw attention, for example, to your Take Home Message.
• To clarify a model or emphasize an effect.

Embed the media in your presentation and make sure it works in presentation mode. Testing your presentation at home will save you time and avoid embarrassment.

Target Your Presentation Content

Your target, i.e. your audience, defines the content of your presentation. For example, you cannot teach school kids about the complicated matters of the economy, but you may be able to explain to them what the economy is in the first place and why it is important.

9. Keep Your Audience in Mind

When you compile your PowerPoint presentation, ask yourself these questions:

• What does my audience know?
• What do I need to tell them?
• What do they expect?
• What will be interesting to them?
• What can I teach them?
• What will keep them focused?

Answer these questions and boil your slides down to the very essentials. In your talk, describe the essentials colorfully and use your weapons, i.e. text, images, and animations wisely (see above).

Note: If you fail to hit the target, it won't matter how ingenious your design is or how brilliantly you picked colors and keywords. Nothing matters more than your audience's attention.

10. Practice Your Presentation Like a Professional

A well-practiced and enthusiastic talk will help you convince your audience and keep their attention. Here are some key points that define a good talk:

• Know your slides inside out.
• Speak freely.
• Speak with confidence, loud and clear.
• Speak at a steady pace, better too slow than too fast.
• Keep eye contact with your audience.

Bonus: Implement the 10/20/30 Rule

The 10/20/30 rule is a concept brought forward by Guy Kawasaki:

It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

A similar concept is PechaKucha , a storytelling format limited to 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide, i.e. less than seven minutes to conclude the presentation.

Now there's a challenge! Telling your story succinctly, might help you get through to some of the busiest and most distracted people on the planet.

One Final PowerPoint Presentation Tip

I've shown you how to think through your entire presentation, from choosing a design to speaking to your audience. Here's a mind trick: never try to interpret the looks on your listeners' faces. Chances are, you're wrong. Just assume they're focused and taking notes.

You've done your best to create a professional PowerPoint presentation that will help your audience focus on the content and learn new things. The looks on their faces aren't doubt or confusion. It's focus! Well, d'oh! Obviously, you're the expert, and they're the learners. If you can get into this mindset, you can relax and perform at your best.

Ideas and insights from Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning

Powerful and Effective Presentation Skills: More in Demand Now Than Ever

When we talk with our L&D colleagues from around the globe, we often hear that presentation skills training is one of the top opportunities they’re looking to provide their learners. And this holds true whether their learners are individual contributors, people managers, or senior leaders. This is not surprising.

Effective communications skills are a powerful career activator, and most of us are called upon to communicate in some type of formal presentation mode at some point along the way.

For instance, you might be asked to brief management on market research results, walk your team through a new process, lay out the new budget, or explain a new product to a client or prospect. Or you may want to build support for a new idea, bring a new employee into the fold, or even just present your achievements to your manager during your performance review.

And now, with so many employees working from home or in hybrid mode, and business travel in decline, there’s a growing need to find new ways to make effective presentations when the audience may be fully virtual or a combination of in person and remote attendees.

Whether you’re making a standup presentation to a large live audience, or a sit-down one-on-one, whether you’re delivering your presentation face to face or virtually, solid presentation skills matter.

Even the most seasoned and accomplished presenters may need to fine-tune or update their skills. Expectations have changed over the last decade or so. Yesterday’s PowerPoint which primarily relied on bulleted points, broken up by the occasional clip-art image, won’t cut it with today’s audience.

The digital revolution has revolutionized the way people want to receive information. People expect presentations that are more visually interesting. They expect to see data, metrics that support assertions. And now, with so many previously in-person meetings occurring virtually, there’s an entirely new level of technical preparedness required.

The leadership development tools and the individual learning opportunities you’re providing should include presentation skills training that covers both the evergreen fundamentals and the up-to-date capabilities that can make or break a presentation.

So, just what should be included in solid presentation skills training? Here’s what I think.

The fundamentals will always apply When it comes to making a powerful and effective presentation, the fundamentals will always apply. You need to understand your objective. Is it strictly to convey information, so that your audience’s knowledge is increased? Is it to persuade your audience to take some action? Is it to convince people to support your idea? Once you understand what your objective is, you need to define your central message. There may be a lot of things you want to share with your audience during your presentation, but find – and stick with – the core, the most important point you want them to walk away with. And make sure that your message is clear and compelling.

You also need to tailor your presentation to your audience. Who are they and what might they be expecting? Say you’re giving a product pitch to a client. A technical team may be interested in a lot of nitty-gritty product detail. The business side will no doubt be more interested in what returns they can expect on their investment.

Another consideration is the setting: is this a formal presentation to a large audience with questions reserved for the end, or a presentation in a smaller setting where there’s the possibility for conversation throughout? Is your presentation virtual or in-person? To be delivered individually or as a group? What time of the day will you be speaking? Will there be others speaking before you and might that impact how your message will be received?

Once these fundamentals are established, you’re in building mode. What are the specific points you want to share that will help you best meet your objective and get across your core message? Now figure out how to convey those points in the clearest, most straightforward, and succinct way. This doesn’t mean that your presentation has to be a series of clipped bullet points. No one wants to sit through a presentation in which the presenter reads through what’s on the slide. You can get your points across using stories, fact, diagrams, videos, props, and other types of media.

Visual design matters While you don’t want to clutter up your presentation with too many visual elements that don’t serve your objective and can be distracting, using a variety of visual formats to convey your core message will make your presentation more memorable than slides filled with text. A couple of tips: avoid images that are cliched and overdone. Be careful not to mix up too many different types of images. If you’re using photos, stick with photos. If you’re using drawn images, keep the style consistent. When data are presented, stay consistent with colors and fonts from one type of chart to the next. Keep things clear and simple, using data to support key points without overwhelming your audience with too much information. And don’t assume that your audience is composed of statisticians (unless, of course, it is).

When presenting qualitative data, brief videos provide a way to engage your audience and create emotional connection and impact. Word clouds are another way to get qualitative data across.

Practice makes perfect You’ve pulled together a perfect presentation. But it likely won’t be perfect unless it’s well delivered. So don’t forget to practice your presentation ahead of time. Pro tip: record yourself as you practice out loud. This will force you to think through what you’re going to say for each element of your presentation. And watching your recording will help you identify your mistakes—such as fidgeting, using too many fillers (such as “umm,” or “like”), or speaking too fast.

A key element of your preparation should involve anticipating any technical difficulties. If you’ve embedded videos, make sure they work. If you’re presenting virtually, make sure that the lighting is good, and that your speaker and camera are working. Whether presenting in person or virtually, get there early enough to work out any technical glitches before your presentation is scheduled to begin. Few things are a bigger audience turn-off than sitting there watching the presenter struggle with the delivery mechanisms!

Finally, be kind to yourself. Despite thorough preparation and practice, sometimes, things go wrong, and you need to recover in the moment, adapt, and carry on. It’s unlikely that you’ll have caused any lasting damage and the important thing is to learn from your experience, so your next presentation is stronger.

How are you providing presentation skills training for your learners?

Manika Gandhi is Senior Learning Design Manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at [email protected] .

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Home Blog Education Presentation Skills 101: A Guide to Presentation Success

Presentation Skills 101: A Guide to Presentation Success

Getting the perfect presentation design is just a step toward a successful presentation. For the experienced user, building presentation skills is the answer to elevating the power of your message and showing expertise on any subject. Still, one can ask: is it the same set of skills, or are they dependable on the type of presentation?

In this article, we will introduce the different types of presentations accompanied by the skillset required to master them. The purpose, as always, is to retain the audience’s interest for a long-lasting and convincing message.

Table of Contents

The Importance of Presentation Skills

Persuasive presentations, instructional presentations, informative presentations, inspirational presentations, basic presentation skills, what are the main difficulties when giving a presentation, recommendations to improve your presentation skills, closing statement.

Effective communication is the answer to reaching business and academic goals. The scenarios in which we can be required to deliver a presentation are as diverse as one can imagine. Still, some core concepts apply to all presentations.

 We define presentation skills as a compendium of soft skills that directly affect your presentation performance and contribute to creating a great presentation. These are not qualities acquired by birth but skills you ought to train and master to delve into professional environments.

You may ask: is it really that evident when a presenter is not prepared? Here are some common signs people can experience during presentations:

• Evasive body language: Not making eye contact with the audience, arms closed tightly to the body, hands in pockets all the time.
• Lack of interest in the presenter’s voice: dull tone, not putting an effort to articulate the topics.
• Doubting when asked to answer a question
• Irksome mood

The list can go on about common presenter mistakes , and most certainly, it will affect the performance of any presented data if the lack of interest by the presenter is blatantly obvious.  Another element to consider is anxiety, and according to research by the National Institute of Mental Health, 73% of the population in the USA is affected by glossophobia , which is the fear of public speaking, judgment, or negative evaluation by other people.

Therefore, presentation skills training is essential for any business professional who wants to achieve effective communication . It will remove the anxiety from presentation performance and help users effectively deliver their message and connect with the audience.

Archetypes of presentations

Persuasive presentations aim to convince the audience – often in short periods – to acquire a product or service, adhere to a cause, or invest in a company. For business entrepreneurs or politicians, persuasive presentations are their tool for the trade.

Unless you aim to be perceived as an imposter, a proper persuasive presentation has the elements of facts, empathy, and logic, balanced under a well-crafted narrative. The central pillar of these presentations is to identify the single factor that gathered your audience: it could be a market need, a social cause, or a revolutionary concept for today’s society. It has to be something with enough power to gather critiques – both good and bad.

That single factor has to be backed up by facts. Research that builds your hypothesis on how to solve that problem. A deep understanding of the target audience’s needs , concerns, and social position regarding the solution your means can offer. When those elements are in place, building a pitch becomes an easy task. 

Graphics can help you introduce information in a compelling format, lowering the need for lengthy presentations. Good presentation skills for persuasive presentations go by the hand of filtering relevant data and creating the visual cues that resonate with what your audience demands.

One powerful example of a persuasive presentation is the technique known as the elevator pitch . You must introduce your idea or product convincingly to the audience in a timeframe between 30 seconds and less than 2 minutes. You have to expose:

• What do you do 
• What’s the problem to solve
• Why is your solution different from others 
• Why should the audience care about your expertise

For that very purpose, using engaging graphics with contrasting colors elevates the potential power of your message. It speaks professionalism, care for details, and out-of-the-box thinking. Knowing how to end a presentation is also critical, as your CTAs should be placed with care.

Therefore, let’s resume the requirements of persuasive presentations in terms of good presentation skills:

• Identifying problems and needs
• Elaborating “the hook” (the element that grabs the audience’s attention)
• Knowing how to “tie” your audience (introducing a piece of information related to the hook that causes an emotional impact)
• Broad knowledge of body language and hand gestures to quickly convey your message
• Being prepared to argue a defense of your point of view
• Handling rejection
• Having a proactive attitude to convert opportunities into new projects
• Using humor, surprise, or personal anecdotes as elements to sympathize with the audience
• Having confidence
• Be able to summarize facts and information in visually appealing ways

You can learn more about persuasive presentation techniques by clicking here .

In the case of instructional presentations, we ought to differentiate two distinctive types:

• Lecture Presentations : Presentations being held at universities or any other educative institution. Those presentations cover, topic by topic, and the contents of a syllabus and are created by the team of teachers in charge of the course.
• Training Presentations : These presentations take place during in-company training sessions and usually comprise a good amount of content that is resumed into easy-to-take solutions. They are aimed to coach employees over certain topics relevant to their work performance. The 70-20-10 Model is frequently used to address these training situations.

Lecture presentations appeal to the gradual introduction of complex concepts, following a structure set in the course’s syllabus. These presentations often have a similar aesthetic as a group of professors or researchers created to share their knowledge about a topic. Personal experience does tell that course presentations often rely on factual data, adequately documented, and on the theoretical side.

An example of a presentation that lies under this concept is a Syllabus Presentation, used by the teaching team to introduce the subject to new students, evaluation methods, concepts to be learned, and expectations to pass the course.

On the other hand, training presentations are slide decks designed to meet an organization’s specific needs in the formal education of their personnel. Commonly known as “continuous education,” plenty of companies invest resources in coaching their employees to achieve higher performance results. These presentations have the trademark of being concise since their idea is to introduce the concepts that shall be applied in practice sessions. 

Ideally, the training presentations are introduced with little text and easy-to-recognize visual cues. Since the idea is to summarize as much as possible, these are visually appealing for the audience. They must be dynamic enough to allow the presenter to convey the message.

Those key takeaways remind employees when they revisit their learning resources and allow them to ruminate on questions that fellow workers raise. 

To sum up this point, building presentation skills for instructional presentations requires:

• Ability to put complex concepts into simpler words
• Patience and a constant learning mindset
• Voice training to deliver lengthy speeches without being too dense
• Ability to summarize points and note the key takeaways
• Empathizing with the audience to understand their challenges in the learning process

The informative presentations take place in business situations, such as when to present project reports from different departments to the management. Another potential usage of these presentations is in SCRUM or other Agile methodologies, when a sprint is completed, to discuss the advance of the project with the Product Owner.

As they are presentations heavily dependent on data insights, it’s common to see the usage of infographics and charts to express usually dense data in simpler terms and easy to remember. 

Informative presentations don’t just fall into the business category. Ph.D. Dissertation and Thesis presentations are topics that belong to the informative presentations category as they condense countless research hours into manageable reports for the academic jury. 

Since these informational presentations can be perceived as lengthy and data-filled, it is important to learn the following professional presentation skills:

• Attention to detail
• Be able to explain complex information in simpler terms
• Creative thinking
• Powerful diction
• Working on pauses and transitions
• Pacing the presentation, so not too much information is divulged per slide

The leading inspirational platform, TEDx, comes to mind when talking about inspirational presentations. This presentation format has the peculiarity of maximizing the engagement with the audience to divulge a message, and due to that, it has specific requirements any presenter must meet.

This presentation format usually involves a speaker on a stage, either sitting or better standing, in which the presenter engages with the audience with a storytelling format about a life experience, a job done that provided a remarkable improvement for society, etc.

Empathizing with the audience is the key ingredient for these inspirational presentations. Still, creativity is what shapes the outcome of your performance as people are constantly looking for different experiences – not the same recipe rephrased with personal touches. The human factor is what matters here, way above data and research. What has your experience to offer to others? How can it motivate another human being to pursue a similar path or discover their true calling?

To achieve success in terms of communication skills presentation, these inspirational presentations have the following requirements:

• Focus on the audience (engage, consider their interests, and make them a part of your story)
• Putting ego aside
• Creative communication skills
• Storytelling skills
• Body language knowledge to apply the correct gestures to accompany your story
• Voice training
• Using powerful words

After discussing the different kinds of presentations we can come across at any stage of our lives, a group of presentation skills is standard in any type of presentation. See below what makes a good presentation and which skills you must count on to succeed as a presenter.

Punctuality

Punctuality is a crucial aspect of giving an effective presentation. Nothing says more about respect for your audience and the organization you represent than delivering the presentation on time . Arriving last minute puts pressure on the tech team behind audiovisuals, as they don’t have enough preparation to test microphones, stage lights, and projector settings, which can lead to a less powerful presentation Even when discussing presentations hosted in small rooms for a reduced audience, testing the equipment becomes essential for an effective presentation.

A solution for this is to arrive at least 30 minutes early. Ideally, one hour is a sweet spot since the AV crew has time to check the gear and requirements for your presentation. Another benefit of this, for example, in inspirational presentations, is measuring the previous presenter’s impact on the audience. This gives insights about how to resonate with the public, and their interest, and how to accommodate your presentation for maximum impact.

Body Language

Our bodies can make emotions transparent for others, even when we are unaware of such a fact. Proper training for body language skills reduces performance anxiety, giving the audience a sense of expertise about the presented topic. 

Give your presentation and the audience the respect they deserve by watching over these potential mistakes:

• Turning your back to the audience for extended periods : It’s okay to do so when introducing an important piece of information or explaining a graph, but it is considered rude to give your back to the audience constantly.
• Fidgeting : We are all nervous in the presence of strangers, even more, if we are the center of attention for that moment. Instead of playing with your hair or making weird hand gestures, take a deep breath to center yourself before the presentation and remember that everything you could do to prepare is already done. Trust your instincts and give your best.
• Intense eye contact : Have you watched a video where the presenter stared at the camera the entire time? That’s the feeling you transmit to spectators through intense eye contact. It’s a practice often used by politicians to persuade.
• Swearing : This is a no-brainer. Even when you see influencers swearing on camera or in podcasts or live presentations, it is considered an informal and lousy practice for business and academic situations. If you have a habit to break when it comes to this point, find the humor in these situations and replace your swear words with funny alternatives (if the presentation allows for it). 

Voice Tone plays a crucial role in delivering effective presentations and knowing how to give a good presentation. Your voice is a powerful tool for exposing your ideas and feelings . Your voice can articulate the message you are telling, briefing the audience if you feel excited about what you are sharing or, in contrast, if you feel the presentation is a burden you ought to complete.

Remember, passion is a primary ingredient in convincing people. Therefore, transmitting such passion with a vibrant voice may help gather potential business partners’ interest.  

But what if you feel sick prior to the presentation? If, by chance, your throat is sore minutes before setting foot on the stage, try this: when introducing yourself, mention that you are feeling a bit under the weather. This resonates with the audience to pay more attention to your efforts. In case you don’t feel comfortable about that, ask the organizers for a cup of tea, as it will settle your throat and relax your nerves.

Tech Skills

Believe it or not, people still feel challenged by technology these days. Maybe that’s the reason why presentation giants like Tony Robbins opt not to use PowerPoint presentations . The reality is that there are plenty of elements involved in a presentation that can go wrong from the tech side:

• A PDF not opening
• Saving your presentation in a too-recent PowerPoint version
• A computer not booting up
• Mac laptops and their never-ending compatibility nightmare
• Not knowing how to change between slides
• Not knowing how to use a laser pointer
• Internet not working
• Audio not working

We can come up with a pretty long list of potential tech pitfalls, and yet more than half of them fall in presenters not being knowledgeable about technology.

If computers aren’t your thing, let the organization know about this beforehand. There is always a crew member available to help presenters switch between slides or configure the presentation for streaming. This takes the pressure off your shoulders, allowing you to concentrate on the content to present. Remember, even Bill Gates can get a BSOD during a presentation .

Presentations, while valuable for conveying information and ideas, can be daunting for many individuals. Here are some common difficulties people encounter when giving presentations:

Public Speaking Anxiety

Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, affects a significant portion of the population. This anxiety can lead to nervousness, trembling, and forgetfulness during a presentation.

Lack of Confidence

Many presenters struggle with self-doubt, fearing that they may not be knowledgeable or skilled enough to engage their audience effectively.

Content Organization

Organizing information in a coherent and engaging manner can be challenging. Presenters often grapple with how to structure their content to make it easily digestible for the audience. Artificial Intelligence can help us significantly reduce the content arrangement time when you work with tools like our AI Presentation Maker (made for presenters by experts in presentation design). 

Audience Engagement

Keeping the audience’s attention and interest throughout the presentation can be difficult. Distractions, disengaged attendees, or lack of interaction can pose challenges.

Technical Issues

Technology glitches, such as malfunctioning equipment, incompatible file formats, or poor internet connectivity, can disrupt presentations and increase stress.

Time Management

Striking the right balance between providing enough information and staying within time limits is a common challenge. Going over or under the allotted time can affect the effectiveness of the presentation.

Handling Questions and Challenges

Responding to unexpected questions, criticism, or challenges from the audience can be difficult, especially when presenters are unprepared or lack confidence in their subject matter.

Visual Aids and Technology

Creating and effectively using visual aids like slides or multimedia can be a struggle for some presenters. Technical competence is essential in this aspect.

Language and Articulation

Poor language skills or unclear articulation can hinder effective communication. Presenters may worry about stumbling over words or failing to convey their message clearly.

Maintaining appropriate and confident body language can be challenging. Avoiding nervous habits, maintaining eye contact, and using gestures effectively requires practice.

Overcoming Impersonal Delivery

In virtual presentations, maintaining a personal connection with the audience can be difficult. The absence of face-to-face interaction can make it challenging to engage and read the audience.

Cultural and Diversity Awareness

Presenting to diverse audiences requires sensitivity to cultural differences and varying levels of familiarity with the topic.

In this section, we gathered some tips on how to improve presentation skills that can certainly make an impact if applied to your presentation skills. We believe these skills can be cultivated to transform into habits for your work routine.

Tip #1: Build a narrative

One memorable way to guarantee presentation success is by writing a story of all the points you desire to cover. This statement is based on the logic behind storytelling and its power to connect with people .

Don’t waste time memorizing slides or reading your presentation to the audience. It feels unnatural, and any question that diverts from the topic in discussion certainly puts you in jeopardy or, worse, exposes you as a fraud in the eyes of the audience. And before you ask, it is really evident when a presenter has a memorized speech. 

Build and rehearse the presentation as if telling a story to a group of interested people. Lower the language barrier by avoiding complex terms that maybe even you aren’t fully aware of their meaning. Consider the ramifications of that story, what it could lead to, and which are the opportunities to explore. Then, visualize yourself giving the presentation in a natural way.

Applying this technique makes the presentation feel like second nature to you. It broadens the spectrum in which you can show expertise over a topic or even build the basis for new interesting points of view about the project.

Tip #2: Don’t talk for more than 3 minutes per slide

It is a common practice of presenters to bombard the audience with facts and information whilst retaining the same slide on the screen. Why can this happen? It could be because the presenter condensed the talk into very few slides and preferred to talk. The reality is that your spectators won’t retain the information you are giving unless you give visual cues to help that process. 

Opt to prepare more slides and pace your speech to match the topics shown on each slide. Don’t spend more than 3 minutes per slide unless you have to introduce a complex piece of data. Use visual cues to direct the spectators about what you talk about, and summarize the principal concepts discussed at the end of each section.

Tip #3: Practice meditation daily

Anxiety is the number one enemy of professional presenters. It slowly builds without you being aware of your doubts and can hinder your performance in multiple ways: making you feel paralyzed, fidgeting, making you forget language skills or concepts, affecting your health, etc.

Meditation is an ancient practice taken from Buddhist teachings that train your mind to be here in the present. We often see the concepts of meditation and mindfulness as synonyms, whereas you should be aware that meditation is a practice that sets the blocks to reach a state of mindfulness. For presenters, being in the here and now is essential to retain focus, but meditation techniques also teach us to control our breathing and be in touch with our body signals when stress builds up. 

The customary practice of meditation has an impact on imagination and creativity but also helps to build patience – a skill much needed for connecting with your audience in instructional presentations.

Having the proper set of presentation skills can be quite subjective. It goes beyond presentation tips and deepens into how flexible we can be in our ability to communicate ideas.

Different presentations and different audiences shape the outcome of our efforts. Therefore, having a basic understanding of how to connect, raise awareness, and empathize with people can be key ingredients for your career as a presenter. A word of advice: success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes dedication and patience to build communication skills . Don’t condition your work to believe you will be ready “someday”; it’s best to practice and experience failure as part of the learning process.

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Business Presentations, Presentation Approaches, Presentation Skills Filed under Education

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• PRESENTATION SKILLS

Top Tips for Effective Presentations

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Presentation Skills:

• A - Z List of Presentation Skills
• General Presentation Skills
• What is a Presentation?
• Preparing for a Presentation
• Organising the Material
• Writing Your Presentation
• Deciding the Presentation Method
• Managing your Presentation Notes
• Working with Visual Aids
• Presenting Data
• Managing the Event
• Coping with Presentation Nerves
• Dealing with Questions
• How to Build Presentations Like a Consultant
• 7 Qualities of Good Speakers That Can Help You Be More Successful
• Self-Presentation in Presentations
• Specific Presentation Events
• Remote Meetings and Presentations
• Giving a Speech
• Presentations in Interviews
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• Attending Public Consultation Meetings
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• Crisis Communications
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How can you make a good presentation even more effective?

This page draws on published advice from expert presenters around the world, which will help to take your presentations from merely ‘good’ to ‘great’.

By bringing together advice from a wide range of people, the aim is to cover a whole range of areas.

Whether you are an experienced presenter, or just starting out, there should be ideas here to help you to improve.

1. Show your Passion and Connect with your Audience

It’s hard to be relaxed and be yourself when you’re nervous.

But time and again, the great presenters say that the most important thing is to connect with your audience, and the best way to do that is to let your passion for the subject shine through.

Be honest with the audience about what is important to you and why it matters.

Be enthusiastic and honest, and the audience will respond.

2. Focus on your Audience’s Needs

Your presentation needs to be built around what your audience is going to get out of the presentation.

As you prepare the presentation, you always need to bear in mind what the audience needs and wants to know, not what you can tell them.

While you’re giving the presentation, you also need to remain focused on your audience’s response, and react to that.

You need to make it easy for your audience to understand and respond.

3. Keep it Simple: Concentrate on your Core Message

When planning your presentation, you should always keep in mind the question:

What is the key message (or three key points) for my audience to take away?

You should be able to communicate that key message very briefly.

Some experts recommend a 30-second ‘elevator summary’, others that you can write it on the back of a business card, or say it in no more than 15 words.

Whichever rule you choose, the important thing is to keep your core message focused and brief.

And if what you are planning to say doesn’t contribute to that core message, don’t say it.

4. Smile and Make Eye Contact with your Audience

This sounds very easy, but a surprisingly large number of presenters fail to do it.

If you smile and make eye contact, you are building rapport , which helps the audience to connect with you and your subject. It also helps you to feel less nervous, because you are talking to individuals, not to a great mass of unknown people.

To help you with this, make sure that you don’t turn down all the lights so that only the slide screen is visible. Your audience needs to see you as well as your slides.

5. Start Strongly

The beginning of your presentation is crucial. You need to grab your audience’s attention and hold it.

They will give you a few minutes’ grace in which to entertain them, before they start to switch off if you’re dull. So don’t waste that on explaining who you are. Start by entertaining them.

Try a story (see tip 7 below), or an attention-grabbing (but useful) image on a slide.

6. Remember the 10-20-30 Rule for Slideshows

This is a tip from Guy Kawasaki of Apple. He suggests that slideshows should:

• Contain no more than 10 slides;
• Last no more than 20 minutes; and
• Use a font size of no less than 30 point.

This last is particularly important as it stops you trying to put too much information on any one slide. This whole approach avoids the dreaded ‘Death by PowerPoint’.

As a general rule, slides should be the sideshow to you, the presenter. A good set of slides should be no use without the presenter, and they should definitely contain less, rather than more, information, expressed simply.

If you need to provide more information, create a bespoke handout and give it out after your presentation.

7. Tell Stories

Human beings are programmed to respond to stories.

Stories help us to pay attention, and also to remember things. If you can use stories in your presentation, your audience is more likely to engage and to remember your points afterwards. It is a good idea to start with a story, but there is a wider point too: you need your presentation to act like a story.

Think about what story you are trying to tell your audience, and create your presentation to tell it.

Finding The Story Behind Your Presentation

To effectively tell a story, focus on using at least one of the two most basic storytelling mechanics in your presentation:

Focusing On Characters – People have stories; things, data, and objects do not. So ask yourself “who” is directly involved in your topic that you can use as the focal point of your story.

For example, instead of talking about cars (your company’s products), you could focus on specific characters like:

• The drivers the car is intended for – people looking for speed and adventure
• The engineers who went out of their way to design the most cost-effective car imaginable

A Changing Dynamic – A story needs something to change along the way. So ask yourself “What is not as it should be?” and answer with what you are going to do about it (or what you did about it).

For example…

• Did hazardous road conditions inspire you to build a rugged, all-terrain jeep that any family could afford?
• Did a complicated and confusing food labelling system lead you to establish a colour-coded nutritional index so that anybody could easily understand it?

To see 15 more actionable storytelling tips, see Nuts & Bolts Speed Training’s post on Storytelling Tips .

8. Use your Voice Effectively

The spoken word is actually a pretty inefficient means of communication, because it uses only one of your audience’s five senses. That’s why presenters tend to use visual aids, too. But you can help to make the spoken word better by using your voice effectively.

Varying the speed at which you talk, and emphasising changes in pitch and tone all help to make your voice more interesting and hold your audience’s attention.

For more about this, see our page on Effective Speaking .

9. Use your Body Too

It has been estimated that more than three quarters of communication is non-verbal.

That means that as well as your tone of voice, your body language is crucial to getting your message across. Make sure that you are giving the right messages: body language to avoid includes crossed arms, hands held behind your back or in your pockets, and pacing the stage.

Make your gestures open and confident, and move naturally around the stage, and among the audience too, if possible.

10. Relax, Breathe and Enjoy

If you find presenting difficult, it can be hard to be calm and relaxed about doing it.

One option is to start by concentrating on your breathing. Slow it down, and make sure that you’re breathing fully. Make sure that you continue to pause for breath occasionally during your presentation too.

For more ideas, see our page on Coping with Presentation Nerves .

If you can bring yourself to relax, you will almost certainly present better. If you can actually start to enjoy yourself, your audience will respond to that, and engage better. Your presentations will improve exponentially, and so will your confidence. It’s well worth a try.

Improve your Presentation Skills

Follow our guide to boost your presentation skills learning about preparation, delivery, questions and all other aspects of giving effective presentations.

Start with: What is a Presentation?

Continue to: How to Give a Speech Self Presentation

See also: Five Ways You Can Do Visual Marketing on a Budget Can Presentation Science Improve Your Presentation? Typography – It’s All About the Message in Your Slides

• Presentation Science

The Complete Guide To Creating A Captivating Professional Presentation

• By: Leslie Belknap

. Do you have a presentation in the near future, but don’t know how to start preparing for it?

You’re in luck!   Included below are 10 steps to help you create a truly captivating presentation, and avoid creating a conference room killer  – the infamous, dreaded  Death By PowerPoint presentation.

If you work through each of the 10 steps below, as well as watch the included videos, and review the embedded resources, you will have all of the information you could ever need to create a stunning, professional presentation, instead of a boring conference room killer presentation.

The key to success is starting early so you have ample time to complete each of the 10 steps thoughtfully. So go ahead and begin immediately; don’t delay. These tips will help you start, and finish your presentation like a presentation professional .

If you have questions about any of these tips, contact us .  We’re here to help you create amazing presentations!

10 Steps To A Captivating Presentation

1. describe your presentation in one sentence.

Simplify your presentation topic to a one-sentence summary before you begin writing or designing your presentation.  If you cannot explain your presentation in one sentence, you are not ready to create your presentation.

The one-sentence description serves as a compass during the content development process, making it easy to explore supporting ideas without getting lost in the sea of possibilities.  

If you think your idea is too big for a one-sentence summary , consider that  Daniel Pink , the chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore from 1995 to 1997, and author of three  New York Times  bestsellers, suggests writing a one-sentence summary for the purpose of your life. If it is possible to define your life in one sentence, it is undoubtedly possible to encapsulate any presentation in one sentence.

Pink derived inspiration for his advice from a story about Clare Boothe Luce,  the  first American woman  to represent her country to a major world power.  In 1962 Luce said to John F. Kennedy,  a great man is one sentence.  Luce advised Kennedy to write a one-sentence summary.  She was telling him to concentrate, to know the great themes and demands of his time and focus on them , according to the  Wall Street Journal  article,   To-Do List: A Sentence, Not 10 Paragraphs .

Summary: Write one sentence that describes your presentation topic. Think of the one sentence as your elevator pitch for your presentation. If you were riding the elevator to go up only one floor, how would you explain your presentation to someone in that short amount of time? This is your one sentence statement, and the heart of your presentation.

The Shocking Secret To Awesome Presentations

The Advice I Give To All TEDx Speakers

The TED staff answers: What Makes A Great TED Talk?

2. Identify the 3 main takeaways of your presentation.

Once you have clearly defined your presentation topic with a one-sentence statement, your next step is to identify the three main ideas of your presentation. These three ideas will be the pillars of your presentation.

To identify the three pillars, ask yourself, “If the audience will only remember three things about my talk, what do I want those three takeaways to be?” Ask yourself this question because most likely audience members will indeed only remember three ideas from your entire presentation.  You will build the rest of your presentation around these three pillars, which ultimately support your core message as defined in your one sentence summary.

Every element of your presentation should, in one way or another, connect to one of your main three ideas. If you are considering including an element that cannot be directly linked to one of your three pillars, ask yourself, “Is this really necessary?” If you decide that you absolutely must include something that seems to not connect to one of your three main ideas, consider reframing the seemingly unrelated point so it can connect to one of your three main ideas, or consider changing your selected three pillars.

Summary: For inspiration, think of the Latin phrase Omne trium perfectum,  which means  everything that comes in threes is perfect, or, every set of three is complete . No matter the topic or length of your presentation, the “rule of three” should be used to structure your presentation content. By only providing three main takeaways, your presentation will be easier for your audience to remember, and your main points will be easier for you to recall when you’re presenting.

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3. Get Real.

After you have sculpted your one sentence summary and three pillars, start developing your content to support your three main ideas. Your supporting content is your opportunity to talk about your research, data, and case studies.

According to a Buffer article ,  one study published in Communication Research  found that a whole week after reading, passages with statistics were  more persuasive  than passages  driven by story . As you will read later, this claim is disputed, and many people think stories are more persuasive than data. Don’t worry about which is more important though because you will need both. Thus, if you have some data to prove your points, select your strongest stats, and use them to add weight to your ideas. Just don’t overdo the data. Get to the point, and keep moving so you don’t lose your audience by wading through unnecessary details.

As you construct your first draft of your supporting content, continually ask yourself, “So what?” Many audience members will listen to a presentation, process the information, consider the points, and then think, “What’s in it for me?” or  “Why does this matter?” Basically, they are thinking, “So what? Why should I care?”

You need to drive home the value of your material throughout your entire presentation . If you would be unable to respond to an audience member who asked, “Why should I care?” in response to a particular piece of your content, delete that point.  Every point should be relevant to your message, and your audience. If you do not answer these questions, some audience members will probably think your presentation was a waste of their time.

When considering your answer, think about what keeps your audience up at night. What are their problems, concerns, and challenges? Can your insights and ideas solve a problem for them?

As you continue to develop the supporting elements of your presentation, keep a “devil’s advocate” mindset . Once you have ensured all of your points will be meaningful to your audience, review your content from perspective of an audience member with an opposing viewpoint.

For example, it might seem like no one could argue with a presentation that proposed the idea of giving away food to prevent hunger. However, don’t forget the saying, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man, feed him forever.” Sharing food is a noble mission however there will still be someone who disagrees with your solution to the problem. Develop your content to sway audience members with opposing viewpoints.

Summary: Support your presentation with facts that will resonate with your audience, including any disagreeing attendees. In addition, clearly answer “So what?” for the audience. No presentation is exempt from this requirement. Get real, and cut the fluff.

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4. Find Your Story.

At this point you have defined your presentation with one sentence, identified the three pillars of your topic, and crafted your supporting content to satisfy challenging perspectives.  

Take a good look at all of these elements and then step away from working on your presentation. This is the time to do a little soul searching.  Go for a walk, write in your journal, or engage in other activities that will open your mind to inspiration.

Search your memories until you remember a story that easily relates to your presentation topic. No presentation is complete without at least one story so don’t skip this step.

Storytelling is an important part of all presentations because many credible sources claim stories are easier to recall  than stats or facts. Descriptive tales can activate up to 7 areas of the human brain, while non-narrative information typically activates only two areas of the brain.

With so many areas of the mind engaged, listeners  experience  the story instead of process  it. In addition, a carefully crafted story will likely inspire emotional reactions from audience members.  Emotions, not logic, inspire most actions .

So, not only will audience members remember a story more easily than facts, a story is also more likely to inspire action. Since all presentations need a  call to action , the more you can inspire your audience to take action, the more successful you will be as a presenter.

Learn more about the power of stories for presentations by reviewing the infographic below.

Summary: Tell at least one story during your presentation. Don’t settle for just any story, though. Take the time to select a relevant story that will spark an emotional response within audience members. To inspire action, speak to the heart as well as the mind.

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5. Identify a clear call-to-action.

Now that you have developed content that guides your audience to a new perspective, decide what you want the audience to do next.  

Do you want your audience to use their knowledge to grow their business? If so, quickly reiterate the process to take that action, and then send them on their way with an easy-to-remember homework assignment. Provide your contact information so they can let you know how the process went for them.

Do you want people to follow you on social media? If yes, then at the end of your presentation, ask audience members to pull out their mobile devices and follow you right then and there.  Provide an incentive to encourage engagement.

If you want your audience to purchase your product, how can you simplify that process for them? Perhaps you can sell your goods in the lobby after your talk. If that is the case, your call-to-action should be an exciting request to join you in the lobby to check out your product firsthand.  

No matter your topic, your presentation should be structured so that audience members are not left hanging, wondering what to do with their newly acquired insights.

If you choose to include a Q&A session in your presentation, do not end with the Q&A. You always want to end with a quick summary of your most important points followed by your call-to-action. To insert a Q&A before your conclusion, say something like, Before I wrap-up by telling you how to utilize these insights, I would like to open the floor to questions for two-minutes. Does anyone have any questions?

To persuade your audience to complete your call-to-action, try some of these persuasion techniques :

Summary: Use the last sentences of your presentation to deliver a clear call-to-action. Tell your audience what they should do after your presentation. In addition, offer an incentive, and create a sense of urgency.

The Best Way To End A Professional Presentation

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6. Outline your slides as a storyboard.

At this point, you have done most of the heavy lifting in regards to content development. Your content might be a collection of notes and ideas, or perhaps it looks like a college essay. Either way, now is the time to organize your content in a storyboard. A storyboard is an outline that lists the words and numbers you will include on each slide, as well as notes about the design for the slide. You don’t need to start designing yet, however this is a great time to start thinking about your presentation design since that will be the next step once your storyboard is finalized.

To begin the first draft of your outline, list your three main ideas, your stories, and your call-to-action. By first jotting down these elements, you ensure that these critical components will be the focus of your presentation. Leave room in your outline to fill in the supporting ideas later.  

Also, have your one sentence summary nearby and reference it regularly throughout the storyboard process. Even if you don’t state your one sentence verbatim during your talk, your audience should be able to easily grasp the central idea of your presentation.  If it is appropriate to feature your one sentence summary on a slide as-is, go for it!

With these items roughly in place, focus on the content for the first few slides of your presentation. These slides are significant because you need to have a strong start to your presentation. Easing an audience into a presentation, and slowly building towards a conclusion is a recipe for mediocrity. Instead, hook your audience’s attention immediately, or risk losing them forever.

To engage your audience at the beginning of your talk, consider asking a question – either a rhetorical question, or a genuine question that includes a request for a show of hands. If you have mastered the art of humor, get your audience smiling by telling a funny story at the beginning of your presentation.

In addition, you can wake up the audience during the beginning of your presentation by revealing a shocking fact. For example, you could say, “10 years from now your job will not exist.” If you’re speaking to a group of ambitious professionals, this information will surely spark their interest.

Now that you have some ideas for the beginning of your presentation, pick a solution that seems like the best fit for your speaking style, your topic, and your audience. If you’re not sure how to start your presentation, you might need to continue researching your audience. The more you know about your audience, the easier it will be to edit and refine your slide outline.

After you develop the first few slides, continue to move through your outline by filling in the supporting ideas for your three main points . Remember that your outline should inspire the audience to take a specific action at the end of your talk. Craft your slide outline so that it builds towards your call-to-action.

In addition, when you arrange your content, try to include only one idea per slide.   Keep your ideas succinct since you will need to enhance your message with a visual on each slide. This might seem excessive if you typically use bullet points or numbered lists to cram a lot of information on one slide. You might save some time on your presentation development by using bullet points, but your audience will likely be bored to tears during your presentation, and you will not be as successful with your presentation as you could be.  

In 2014, the  International Journal of Business Communication  published the results from  The Use of Visualization in the Communication of Business Strategies , an experiment conducted to gather empirical evidence regarding whether the use of visualization is better than text in the communication of a business strategy.  

The results of that study confirmed that lists of text and bullet points should be avoided for presentations . Specifically, the study concluded : Subjects who were exposed to a graphic representation of the strategy paid significantly more attention to, agreed more with, and better recalled the strategy than did subjects who saw a (textually identical) bulleted list version.

In summary, bullet point lists kill presentations because your audience will struggle to pay attention to your lists, agree with your lists, and recall your lists.  Those three reasons should be enough to convince you to never use bullet points again.

Once the first draft of your outline is complete, step away from your storyboard. When you are refreshed, return to your content outline and look for holes in your logic, as well as unnecessary information, or lulls in the energy of your talk.

Edit, edit, and edit again . Don’t be afraid to alter some of the foundational elements of your talk, as long as you ensure all of the critical pieces are included after your edits are complete. Also, check to make sure all of the required content pieces still fit together appropriately after your revisions to the storyboard. For example, if you decide to change one of you three pillars because it no longer resonates with you, make sure your revised pillar still fits with your one sentence summary, as well as the other two pillars and your call-to-action.

Summary: When you organize your content in a storyboard format, stay focused on your one sentence summary, your three main points, and your call-to-action. Only include supporting content that relates to these critical components. Also, craft an exciting introduction, and remember to include only one idea per slide.

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7. Create a mood board to guide your design.

Since your content is now rock solid, you can start planning your presentation design . To ensure your design is consistent and intentional, don’t launch into designing slides without first creating a mood board.

What is a mood board? A mood board is a curated collection of influences that form a map for you to follow during the design process.  

Mood boards typically include a color scheme, your few selected fonts, photography style samples, icons, and a few design samples that match your ideal look and feel.

When developing your color scheme, take your time. Colors can dramatically influence the emotions and behaviors of viewers, so don’t rush and select colors impulsively.  Since reactions to colors vary across cultures, genders, and ages, do your homework to know what colors are the most appropriate for your presentation, and your specific audience.

For presentations, fonts are just as important as color scheme, images, and layout.   Limit yourself to using one or two fonts throughout the presentation. Too many different fonts might distract the audience, and effective fonts are something that should live in the background of your presentation. The audience shouldn’t necessarily notice them in any particular way; they should simply work with the content presented. Choose fonts that flow with the theme, narrative and content of your presentation.

Tools to Help Create Mood boards:

1.  Adobe Suite   (In-Design, Illustrator, Photoshop) Adobe Suite can be time intensive to learn, but allows you play with layouts and bring some of the proposed elements/inspiration into the design of the moodboard.

2.  Evernote – A quick and easy way to store thoughts and images through text, recordings, and images. Both mobile and desktop versions are available.

3.  Pinterest – A highly visual moodboard where you can save images from the internet to their respective “boards” or upload your own.

4.  Sampleboard – An online concept creation tool that is basically a Pinterest board on steroids. It allows users to search by color, palette, or pattern and share with ease.

5.  Adobe Color CC : To design with a unified color scheme, start by visiting Adobe Color CC; it is one of the best tools available for presentation designers when selecting color schemes. Both a web-based tool and a free app, Adobe Color CC allows you to explore and create infinite color schemes.

If you’re not sure how to devise a mood board with a look and feel that will resonate with your target audience, create a few mood boards and share them with colleagues who are similar to the demographic of your presentation audience.   Let their preferences guide your design decision.

Summary : Just like most people create a Pinterest board before remodeling a room in their house, you need to create a mood board before designing your presentation.  Carefully select fonts, colors, and inspiration pieces to build a mood board that can guide your design process.

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8. Design your slides.

The slide design stage is exciting because you finally get to see your presentation blossom into a beautiful masterpiece of visual communication.  

If you’re tired of working on your presentation, this is another great time to take a break and replenish your personal creative resources. If you get sloppy during the design process, you are essentially throwing away all of your hard work.

For example, if you select visuals that don’t directly support your message, your audience members will exert unnecessary mental energy trying to connect the visuals to your concept. All of the time you spent refining your content will be wasted because your audience will not be listening to you if they are too busy trying to understand your seemingly unrelated design . Visuals should simplify your message for your audience, not muddy the meaning of your presentation.

So, how can you design slides that enhance your message?  Think BIG. Big visuals and big text are ideal for presentations because they keep your audience from straining to view the elements on your slides.

The slides below are good examples of big visuals and big text.

To create slides with big visuals, aim to use visual elements that can cover the entire slide. Never place a small visual in the center of your slide, and leave the rest of your slide empty. If your visual elements are low resolution and will pixelate if stretched to fill the slide, use the rule of thirds to find an appropriate place for your visual on the slide. However, if possible, avoid low-resolution elements at all costs.  Low resolution visuals can quickly kill your credibility.

In addition, question every design element you choose to include. Look at your slides from the perspective of an audience member who is unfamiliar with your presentation topic. Will they understand your choice of visual elements? For example, if you want to use a photo on a slide about the power of storytelling , you might want to skip over stock photos that show someone reading a book in a library, and instead opt for a picture featuring a group of people laughing around a campfire. Yes, the images that feature someone reading in a library relate to storytelling , but they do not relate to the power of storytelling. However a photo of people telling stories around a campfire demonstrates the bonding that occurs as a result of storytelling.  You need to be this nit-picky when selecting visual elements. Every detail matters when it comes to slide design .

Before you declare your presentation design complete, show your slides to a few unbiased friends who are similar in demographic to your target audience. Take their feedback seriously. If your slides don’t resonate with them, you need to make changes until the feedback is positive.

Summary : To stay on track during the design process, revisit your mood board and storyboard as you create every slide. Check to make sure you are using the correct content, fonts, colors, as well as visual elements that match your intended look and feel. Every detail matters.

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9. Practice with purpose.

Congratulations! If you’ve reached the practice stage, that means you have successfully written and designed your presentation.

Since there are many ways to practice for a talk, you should experiment with the different suggestions below. Find one that works for you and stick with it, or mix and match techniques to create your own unique approach. Whatever you do, don’t try to wing it. Some speakers worry that practice will decrease their authenticity on stage, however the opposite is true. A prepared speaker can focus on the audience, walk around the stage, and enjoy the moment, instead of focusing all of their attention on developing and delivering a structured and meaningful presentation on the fly.

The more you practice, the more authentic you can be on stage.  

For example, if you notice that audience members are falling asleep, you can spontaneously add an interactive element to your talk, and then get back on course, because you know your material that well.   If you do not know your material, being present in the moment will be nearly impossible.

As you practice your talk, don’t rehearse your content verbatim.  By practicing repeatedly in a conversational style, you will naturally learn your presentation in its entirety, however you will not feel pressured to recite your talk word-for-word when you present.

If you are only practicing in front of a mirror at home, or reading your slides from the comfort of your couch, your efforts are not going to yield impressive results. Don’t hide away when you practice your presentation.  Bring your presentation into the real world by practicing in front of real people, not the audience in your mind.   Try to make your practice feel like the real thing, as much as possible. Do not be offended by any of the given to you during the practice sessions. Remember, you are rehearsing to work out any kinks in your talk, not to collect compliments.

To prepare for presenting in front of a mentor, colleagues, or friends and family members, first  record videos of some of your private practice sessions.  Remember to stand up, use your slides, and take your practice seriously.

Try to make your practice sessions feel as much like the real thing as possible. By watching recordings of your talk you can eliminate any glaring problems with your content, slide design , or delivery.

Also, take advantage of all of the benefits of your recordings by listening to some of your practice sessions when you commute to work, or walk around your neighborhood. Listening to your presentation, instead of only reading or speaking it, will give you a fresh perspective on your material.

In order to see positive results,  studies have also shown  that your brain must engage in “mindful” practice. This means avoiding doing the same thing over and over on autopilot without actively trying different techniques and slowly working through problems.

Summary : Practice, and then practice again and again. If you know your material inside and out, you will be able to improvise to respond to unexpected occurrences or to add a conversational tone to your presentation.

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10. Own the stage.

To be a great public speaker, you need to be present in the moment during your presentation. You should be tuned into the reactions and cues from the audience, as well as focused on your material.  

To be present in the moment, prepare for worst-case scenarios such as spilling coffee on your shirt before your presentation, or your laptop malfunctioning during your talk.  Think through a plan for your worst fears, and bring supplies to help you survive any technical or logistical emergencies. Once you have addressed your greatest fears, let them go, and focus on being happy, confident, and focused on the present moment.

Before you take the stage, practice some power poses to raise your testosterone and lower your cortisol.  

For example, stand like superman with your fists on your hips, and your chest expanded. Hold this pose for a few minutes to get the maximum effect. Power poses are proven to help you reduce stress, and increase confidence.

When you’re on stage, loosen up. Let your hands gesture naturally during your presentation. Research has shown that presenters are judged as more effective and competent when they make hand gestures compared with when they keep their hands still , according to  The 4 Ways You Can Use Body Language To Influence Success  by Christian Jarrett.

While gesturing, be especially aware of how you use your palms.  In his TEDx talk,  Body Language, the power is in the palm of your hands ,  Allan Pease uses humor, stories, case studies, and audience interaction to deliver a compelling case for the importance of using your palms wisely when speaking.  There are more connections between your brain and the palm of your hands than any other body part , according to Pease.  So clearly, the palms have evolved as an important part of human brains,  Pease concludes. In one of the case studies mentioned by Pease, palm orientation was tested; the study concluded  the palm up speaker had up to 40% more retention of the deal than the palm down speaker . Speaking with your palms up will make you more likable and persuasive. If you speak with your palms down, you will be perceived as threatening and controlling.

In addition, remember to smile.  A recent study at Penn State University found that when you smile, you don’t only appear to be more likable and courteous, but you actually appear to be more competent ,  according to the TED talk,  The Hidden Power of Smiling , by Ron Gutman.

Also, since you should never read from you slides, your body should be open to the audience, and your eyes should be scanning the audience. When you make eye contact with someone in the crowd, hold their gaze for a few seconds to let them know you see them, and want to connect with them. Don’t overdo it though. Keep eye contact as long as it feels natural, and then move on.

If your presentation is being filmed, look into the camera. A study between the University of Wolverhampton and Stirling discovered that viewers remembered a speaker better if they looked into the directly into the camera  at least 30% of the time  during a speech.

Lastly, move and pause during your presentation. Own the stage, and never stand frozen behind a podium. Adding movement to your presentation will help you keep the attention of your audience, and will also help you shake off any nerves.  

Summary: Prepare for the worst-case scenarios, and then let go of your fears. When you’re on stage, be happy, enthusiastic, and connect to the audience with your eyes and body language. Whatever you do – don’t just stand there . You’re presentation matters. This is YOUR time to shine.

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Final Thoughts: 33 Presentation Tips

If, after reviewing the information above you still have questions or concerns about your presentation, don’t fret – we are here to help you!  Send us your questions on Twitter , or contact us via email or phone .

And if you want us to come teach your team how to create and deliver captivating presentations , we would be honored to schedule a training workshop for you and your staff.

The bottom line:   We are here to help you create amazing presentations!

Leslie Belknap

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What are presentation skills?

The importance of presentation skills, 6 presentation skills examples, how to improve presentation skills.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety

Learn how to captivate an audience with ease

Capturing an audience’s attention takes practice. 

Over time, great presenters learn how to organize their speeches and captivate an audience from start to finish. They spark curiosity, know how to read a room , and understand what their audience needs to walk away feeling like they learned something valuable.

Regardless of your profession, you most likely use presentation skills on a monthly or even weekly basis. Maybe you lead brainstorming sessions or host client calls. 

Developing effective presentation skills makes it easier to contribute ideas with confidence and show others you’re someone to trust. Although speaking in front of a crowd sometimes brings nerves and anxiety , it also sparks new opportunities.

Presentation skills are the qualities and abilities you need to communicate ideas effectively and deliver a compelling speech. They influence how you structure a presentation and how an audience receives it. Understanding body language , creating impactful visual aids, and projecting your voice all fall under this umbrella.

A great presentation depends on more than what you say. It’s about how you say it. Storytelling , stage presence, and voice projection all shape how well you express your ideas and connect with the audience. These skills do take practice, but they’re worth developing — especially if public speaking makes you nervous. 

Engaging a crowd isn’t easy. You may feel anxious to step in front of an audience and have all eyes and ears on you.

But feeling that anxiety doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t worth sharing. Whether you’re giving an inspiring speech or delivering a monthly recap at work, your audience is there to listen to you. Harness that nervous energy and turn it into progress.

Strong presentation skills make it easier to convey your thoughts to audiences of all sizes. They can help you tell a compelling story, convince people of a pitch , or teach a group something entirely new to them. And when it comes to the workplace, the strength of your presentation skills could play a part in getting a promotion or contributing to a new initiative.

To fully understand the impact these skills have on creating a successful presentation, it’s helpful to look at each one individually. Here are six valuable skills you can develop:

1. Active listening

Active listening is an excellent communication skill for any professional to hone. When you have strong active listening skills, you can listen to others effectively and observe their nonverbal cues . This helps you assess whether or not your audience members are engaged in and understand what you’re sharing. 

Great public speakers use active listening to assess the audience’s reactions and adjust their speech if they find it lacks impact. Signs like slouching, negative facial expressions, and roaming eye contact are all signs to watch out for when giving a presentation.

2. Body language

If you’re researching presentation skills, chances are you’ve already watched a few notable speeches like TED Talks or industry seminars. And one thing you probably noticed is that speakers can capture attention with their body language. 

A mixture of eye contact, hand gestures , and purposeful pacing makes a presentation more interesting and engaging. If you stand in one spot and don’t move your body, the audience might zone out.

3. Stage presence

A great stage presence looks different for everyone. A comedian might aim for more movement and excitement, and a conference speaker might focus their energy on the content of their speech. Although neither is better than the other, both understand their strengths and their audience’s needs. 

Developing a stage presence involves finding your own unique communication style . Lean into your strengths, whether that’s adding an injection of humor or asking questions to make it interactive . To give a great presentation, you might even incorporate relevant props or presentation slides.

4. Storytelling

According to Forbes, audiences typically pay attention for about 10 minutes before tuning out . But you can lengthen their attention span by offering a presentation that interests them for longer. Include a narrative they’ll want to listen to, and tell a story as you go along. 

Shaping your content to follow a clear narrative can spark your audience’s curiosity and entice them to pay careful attention. You can use anecdotes from your personal or professional life that take your audience along through relevant moments. If you’re pitching a product, you can start with a problem and lead your audience through the stages of how your product provides a solution.

5. Voice projection

Although this skill may be obvious, you need your audience to hear what you’re saying. This can be challenging if you’re naturally soft-spoken and struggle to project your voice.

Remember to straighten your posture and take deep breaths before speaking, which will help you speak louder and fill the room. If you’re talking into a microphone or participating in a virtual meeting, you can use your regular conversational voice, but you still want to sound confident and self-assured with a strong tone.

If you’re unsure whether everyone can hear you, you can always ask the audience at the beginning of your speech and wait for confirmation. That way, they won’t have to potentially interrupt you later.

Ensuring everyone can hear you also includes your speed and annunciation. It’s easy to speak quickly when nervous, but try to slow down and pronounce every word. Mumbling can make your presentation difficult to understand and pay attention to.

6. Verbal communication 

Although verbal communication involves your projection and tone, it also covers the language and pacing you use to get your point across. This includes where you choose to place pauses in your speech or the tone you use to emphasize important ideas.

If you’re giving a presentation on collaboration in the workplace , you might start your speech by saying, “There’s something every workplace needs to succeed: teamwork.” By placing emphasis on the word “ teamwork ,” you give your audience a hint on what ideas will follow.

To further connect with your audience through diction, pay careful attention to who you’re speaking to. The way you talk to your colleagues might be different from how you speak to a group of superiors, even if you’re discussing the same subject. You might use more humor and a conversational tone for the former and more serious, formal diction for the latter.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to presenting. Maybe you’re confident in your use of body language, but your voice projection needs work. Maybe you’re a great storyteller in small group settings, but need to work on your stage presence in front of larger crowds. 

The first step to improving presentation skills is pinpointing your gaps and determining which qualities to build upon first. Here are four tips for enhancing your presentation skills:

1. Build self-confidence

Confident people know how to speak with authority and share their ideas. Although feeling good about your presentation skills is easier said than done, building confidence is key to helping your audience believe in what you’re saying. Try practicing positive self-talk and continuously researching your topic's ins and outs.

If you don’t feel confident on the inside, fake it until you make it. Stand up straight, project your voice, and try your best to appear engaged and excited. Chances are, the audience doesn’t know you’re unsure of your skills — and they don’t need to.

Another tip is to lean into your slideshow, if you’re using one. Create something colorful and interesting so the audience’s eyes fall there instead of on you. And when you feel proud of your slideshow, you’ll be more eager to share it with others, bringing more energy to your presentation.

2. Watch other presentations

Developing the soft skills necessary for a good presentation can be challenging without seeing them in action. Watch as many as possible to become more familiar with public speaking skills and what makes a great presentation. You could attend events with keynote speakers or view past speeches on similar topics online.

Take a close look at how those presenters use verbal communication and body language to engage their audiences. Grab a notebook and jot down what you enjoyed and your main takeaways. Try to recall the techniques they used to emphasize their main points, whether they used pauses effectively, had interesting visual aids, or told a fascinating story.

3. Get in front of a crowd

You don’t need a large auditorium to practice public speaking. There are dozens of other ways to feel confident and develop good presentation skills.

If you’re a natural comedian, consider joining a small stand-up comedy club. If you’re an avid writer, participate in a public poetry reading. Even music and acting can help you feel more comfortable in front of a crowd.

If you’d rather keep it professional, you can still work on your presentation skills in the office. Challenge yourself to participate at least once in every team meeting, or plan and present a project to become more comfortable vocalizing your ideas. You could also speak to your manager about opportunities that flex your public speaking abilities.

4. Overcome fear

Many people experience feelings of fear before presenting in front of an audience, whether those feelings appear as a few butterflies or more severe anxiety. Try grounding yourself to shift your focus to the present moment. If you’re stuck dwelling on previous experiences that didn’t go well, use those mistakes as learning experiences and focus on what you can improve to do better in the future.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety 

It’s normal to feel nervous when sharing your ideas. In fact, according to a report from the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, public speaking anxiety is prevalent in 15–30% of the general population .

Even though having a fear of public speaking is common, it doesn’t make it easier. You might feel overwhelmed, become stiff, and forget what you were going to say. But although the moment might scare you, there are ways to overcome the fear and put mind over matter.

Use these tactics to reduce your stress when you have to make a presentation:

1. Practice breathing techniques

If you experience anxiety often, you’re probably familiar with breathing techniques for stress relief . Incorporating these exercises into your daily routine can help you stop worrying and regulate anxious feelings. 

Before a big presentation, take a moment alone to practice breathing techniques, ground yourself, and reduce tension. It’s also a good idea to take breaths throughout the presentation to speak slower and calm yourself down .

2. Get organized

The more organized you are, the more prepared you’ll feel. Carefully outline all of the critical information you want to use in your presentation, including your main talking points and visual aids, so you don’t forget anything. Use bullet points and visuals on each slide to remind you of what you want to talk about, and create handheld notes to help you stay on track.

3. Embrace moments of silence

It’s okay to lose your train of thought. It happens to even the most experienced public speakers once in a while. If your mind goes blank, don’t panic. Take a moment to breathe, gather your thoughts, and refer to your notes to see where you left off. You can drink some water or make a quick joke to ease the silence or regain your footing. And it’s okay to say, “Give me a moment while I find my notes.” Chances are, people understand the position you’re in.

4. Practice makes progress

Before presenting, rehearse in front of friends and family members you trust. This gives you the chance to work out any weak spots in your speech and become comfortable communicating out loud. If you want to go the extra mile, ask your makeshift audience to ask a surprise question. This tests your on-the-spot thinking and will prove that you can keep cool when things come up.

Whether you’re new to public speaking or are a seasoned presenter, you’re bound to make a few slip-ups. It happens to everyone. The most important thing is that you try your best, brush things off, and work on improving your skills to do better in your next presentation.

Although your job may require a different level of public speaking than your favorite TED Talk , developing presentation skills is handy in any profession. You can use presentation skills in a wide range of tasks in the workplace, whether you’re sharing your ideas with colleagues, expressing concerns to higher-ups, or pitching strategies to potential clients.

Remember to use active listening to read the room and engage your audience with an interesting narrative. Don’t forget to step outside your comfort zone once in a while and put your skills to practice in front of a crowd. After facing your fears, you’ll feel confident enough to put presentation skills on your resume.

If you’re trying to build your skills and become a better employee overall, try a communications coach with BetterUp. 

Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

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19 Tips to Make A Professional-Looking PowerPoint Presentation

Creating impactful presentations is no easy task. It comes with rigorous practice over the years. Get expert guidance and professional presentation tips on how to make a professional PowerPoint and Google Slides presentation.

A PowerPoint presentation is a fantastic tool to communicate vital information. Even though people think it’s simple to put all of your material together and make a presentation, arranging and preparing the template and design takes time to ensure it is impactful and professional. But how to make PowerPoint look professional?

Well, an engaging PowerPoint presentation goes beyond simply exchanging information; it connects with the audience . It must transport the listener on a journey, induce emotions, and leave an unforgettable impression. Lets understand more on how to make a professional presentation with little preparation and ace it!

What Is A Professional Presentation?

A professional presentation is a well-structured and effectively delivered communication that conveys information, ideas, or proposals in a business or formal context. It typically adheres to certain standards and practices to effectively engage and inform the audience. As a result, such presentations can be fairly diverse, and they may be necessary to complete job interviews, provide sales pitches to potential clients, or present project proposals to top management. 

EXPLORE: 7,000+ PROFESSIONAL POWERPOINT TEMPLATES

How to Make A Professional PowerPoint Presentation? 

Here are some tips for making a professional presentation. Below, we have divided the PowerPoint presentation tips into 3 main parts :

• Content and Slide-Related Tips
• Design-Related Tips
• Delivery-Related Tips

Content and Slide-Related Tips for PowerPoint Presentations

Follow the steps below to make your PowerPoint look professional :

• Start with a title slide
• Add an agenda slide
• Logically arrange the middle slides
• Include a call-to-action slide at the end of your presentation
• Conclude with key takeaways

READ MORE: How to Write A Good Presentation ?

1. Start with a title slide

An eye-catching first slide serves as an introduction to your subject. To make it clear to read across the room, place the title of your presentation in huge letters in the middle of the slide. If your audience doesn’t know you, you can also include your name and title on the slide, depending on the sort of presentation. One of the most underrated and important presentation tips – On the title slide, keep the background simple to avoid drawing attention away from you as you speak. 

2. Add an agenda slide

List what the audience can anticipate. Label your slide with “Presentation Agenda” or a phrase to that effect. List the key lessons you want your audience to take away from the presentation. It not only makes it easier for your audience to follow along, but it also clarifies your main objective.

3. Logically arrange the middle slides

For more clarity, identify the presentation’s beginning, middle, and end. Make a list of the facts you want to provide and important points you want your audience to take away from your presentation. Take what you’ve written and arrange the ideas in an outline so that each idea leads naturally into the next. For instance, if you’re making a persuasive presentation, you might begin by providing background information on the subject and then discuss potential solutions before concluding by outlining actions an audience member can take to contribute.

4. Include a call-to-action slide at the end of your presentation

After you finish, inform your audience of the next steps. After reviewing the key points of your presentation, provide a list of actions your audience may take to advance the project. So that your audience has several options for what to do next, try to come up with some concrete ideas.

5. Conclude with key takeaways

Make a summary of your important points so your audience will remember them. Start the last slide with a header at the top that reads “Takeaways” or “Key Points”. Make a final list of bullet points containing the most crucial information you have covered. Ensure to emphasize your previous presentations’ key ideas and speak them aloud to your audience. In this manner, your presentation will leave a lasting effect on the audience, making them more likely to recall what you say.

Content forms the foundation of any presentation. But, if not designed correctly, it can lead to a boring presentation. That’s where an impactful design for a presentation comes into the picture.

Design-Related Tips for PowerPoint Presentations

Now that you know some content and slide-related tips, let’s read about the top design-related tips to make a professional presentation :

• Aim to have about 10 slides
• Make your presentation background consistent
• Select readable fonts
• List the important points in brief bullets
• Include relevant graphics

1. Aim to have about 10 slides

More than 10 concepts at once will be difficult for your audience to recall. Count your slides once you’ve organized your data to check if you have 10 or fewer slides. If you have more than 10, review the content once more to see if you can squeeze anything onto one slide. Decide which ideas need to be covered the most, and eliminate anything that doesn’t seem appropriate or doesn’t fit the style of your presentation.

2. Make your Presentation background consistent

Keeping the same straightforward theme and style for each slide can help you create professional PowerPoint presentations. You can create a background in PowerPoint or explore PowerPoint backgrounds from SlideUpLift. Use easy-to-read layouts that don’t draw attention away from the text or graphics you want to use.

3. Select readable fonts

Keep your fonts large and sans-serif so they can be read across the room. Keep your content between 28 and 40 points because small fonts might be quite difficult to see from a distance. Choose Proxima Nova or Arial rather than Times New Roman or another serifed font to show your content because sans-serif is simpler to read on a screen. Bold, italicize, or highlight the words you want to stand out as particularly important. Throughout the slide, change the font size. For instance, the slide’s headline should be larger than the body content.

READ MORE: Best Presentation Fonts

4. List the important points in brief bullets

Your slides will be easier to follow if they have pointers. On a slide, paragraphs can be very intimidating, and your audience could choose to read them rather than pay attention to you. Keep your slide to a bulleted list of essential phrases or terms rather than writing out every word you plan to speak. Keep your slides to a maximum of 6 bullet points, each with a maximum of 6 words.

5. Include relevant graphics

Select charts and photos of the highest quality to highlight your content. Visuals should only be used if they are essential to the argument you are attempting to make. You can use illustrations, images , infographics , graphs, or charts to display facts or make your point more obvious. To avoid making your presentations appear cluttered, ensure all the images are the same size and resolution, and arrange them in the same spot on each slide. Charts and graphics that are challenging to interpret should have captions. Make one image on a slide stand out by giving it a different hue from the rest of the presentation.

Your PowerPoint presentation is all set once you have the content, and it’s designed to create impact. How you create an impact and engage the audience depends entirely on how you deliver presentations.

Delivery-Related Tips for PowerPoint Presentations

The way you deliver your PowerPoint slides can either make or break your overall presentation. Let’s see some professional presentation tips to help you with presentation delivery:

• Keep your transitions simple
• Practice your presentations out loud
• Practice in front of the crowd

1. Keep your transitions simple

Animations and transitions draw attention away from the material. While adding animations to your slideshow may seem creative to make it stand out, doing so might add a lot of extra time and distract the audience. Have the slides change as soon as the mouse clicks, rather than having the text fly in or the slides animate. Provide the information quickly and simply to make your presentation look stronger and more formal.

2. Practice your presentation out loud

Run the complete presentation to increase your confidence. After practicing your presentation a few times, you’ll feel much more at ease giving it. Practice as if you were presenting to a group of people; raise your voice to the appropriate pitch and volume. Ensure the slides flow together by practicing clicking through them as you speak. Go back and change your slides to make any necessary corrections if you encounter issues. Consider recording your speech to see or listen to it later. You will be able to identify what needs to change as a result.

3. Practice in front of a crowd

Request some early feedback to determine the success of your presentation. Take a group of friends or coworkers and walk them through the full presentation. When you’re done, ask them what they thought of the presentation and whether any points you tried to express confused them. Asking them questions you anticipate your audience will have will allow you to practice providing succinct responses.

Now that you have more than 10 tips for creating professional PowerPoint presentations, knowing how to present your ideas professionally is also vital.

How to Professionally Present Your Ideas?

The professional PowerPoint tips provided below will help you professionally present your ideas:

• Inspire participation from audience
• An emotional connection
• Visual tools
• Images and graphics

One of the most important professional PowerPoint presentation tips is timing. Choosing the right time slot is very important while giving a presentation. It would be preferable to select a mid-morning time slot if you have the option to determine your presentation timetable. The attention of people is better captured in the morning.

2. Be brief

Typically, audiences have a limited attention span. When given lengthy materials to read, people rapidly become bored. Be direct if you want people to pay attention and continue to listen. Avoid including unrelated material because this will just make the presentation longer.

3. Inspire participation from the audience

Keeping the audience interested in what you say is a difficult task. You may engage the audience and get them involved in the topic by making a good first impression in the first 30 seconds. Keep them engaged by injecting humor as you change the slides.

4. An emotional connection

Any professional presentation must emotionally engage the audience, much like in advertising. When communicating your message, use feelings. By doing this, you give the visual aids a human face and make your point more understandable to the audience. Encourage them to act by awakening their emotions.

5. Visual tools

Most people learn best visually. Presenters must be aware that their audience needs visual aids to grasp what they are saying. Make sure that visuals are used to support your claims. The audience will understand your message more clearly if they can visualize it.

6. Images and graphics

Graphics and images back you admirably as you give your speech. Charts and other complex data points can make it difficult to design visualizations. To ensure precise and simple-to-understand details, you can create simple templates. However, if you find it difficult to create to-the-point, detail-oriented graphics, and templates that create an impact, you can outsource your presentations. 

When presenting, you are all alone. But you can get help from experts when you are creating one, thanks to Presentation Service providers.

Why Should Organizations Outsource their Presentations to Specialists?

Here are some reasons why outsourcing presentations to professionals is a great idea:

• Improving presentations for external clients
• Assisting graphics team
• Manual efforts and time saved
• Cost saving
• Elevating design excellence
• To support your marketing team with presentations

ALSO READ: Why Consultants Choose to Outsource Presentations ?

1. Improving Presentations For External Clients

Your PowerPoint presentation acts as a virtual handshake with your clients, which makes it an important factor in determining how they will perceive you or your company. For this reason alone, many professionals choose to have their external presentations outsourced.

2. Assisting Graphic Team

It’s likely that your devoted graphic team is always creating different types of visual content. Your in-house designers probably already have their hands full with daily design work. When this happens, outsourcing presentation design seems appealing because it relieves your graphic team’s workload and frees them up to succeed in their primary duties. 

3. Manual Efforts and Time are Saved

The possibility of saving time strongly motivates professionals to choose presentation outsourcing. As anybody who has struggled with slides knows, creating an engaging PowerPoint presentation takes time. Professionals can free up their time to work on more important duties or, better yet, to thoroughly rehearse and perfect their message by delegating the creation of presentations to external professionals.

4. Cost Saving

Consulting firms might cut costs by outsourcing presentations to specialists. Outsourcing presentations to an agency costs less than hiring an internal presentation designer. This saved money can be utilized toward other important business objectives while reducing labor expenditures.

5. Elevating Design Excellence

True masters of their trade are presentation designers who work professionally. Their knowledge spans more than just visuals; it also includes the complex art of slide layout and the crucial components that turn a presentation from good to spectacular. For instance, our team at SlideUpLift is proud of its design and presentation services after working with businesses from a variety of industries throughout the world. When creating excellent PowerPoint presentations, this abundance of knowledge is priceless. Beyond just improving the aesthetics, the goal is to use this knowledge to make visually striking presentations that instantly connect with your audience.

6. To Support Your Marketing Team with Presentations

Presentations are in high demand, particularly among marketing consultants. They have to unite their staff, discuss their marketing strategy with the rest of the organization, and win new clients for their enterprises. PowerPoint presentations are a fantastic tool for all of this! A smart marketing presentation can improve communication inside and outside your firm; outsourcing is the best option to achieve that.

In today’s competitive landscape, outsourcing presentations to professionals gives firms a strategic advantage. Outsourcing is appealing due to its time efficiency, access to cutting-edge equipment, brand consistency, new ideas, scalability, and cost savings. Outsourcing presentation companies can make effective presentations that create a lasting impression on the audience by consulting with you.

READ MORE: 10 Best presentation companies and design agencies

The ability to generate professional-looking slides is a skill that may take your message to new heights in the dynamic world of presentations. SlideUpLift has materials and tools to assist you in every aspect of creating presentations:

• If you want to create presentations by yourself, but do not have a starting point, you can download any template from our collection of 40,000+ PowerPoint templates and Google Slides themes . Just download the template you like and make the changes to the content as you need.
• In case you don’t want to make changes to the templates, you can ask us to customize the templates through our custom-slides service. You can expect fast delivery within 1 Business Day.
• If you have multiple presentation needs on a weekly basis, you can try our Presentation Services .

Schedule a call with us if you have any questions or would like to know more.

How do you get ready for your first professional presentation?

With thorough preparation, you can confidently deliver a polished and impactful presentation. Begin by thoroughly researching your topic and understanding your audience’s needs and expectations. Organize your content logically, creating a clear structure with a compelling introduction, main points, and a strong conclusion. 

How to design a professional powerpoint presentation?

Some tips for professional PowerPoint presentations include:

• Focus on clear content organization
• Use a consistent and appealing design template
• Incorporate high-quality visuals
• Practice your delivery to ensure a smooth and engaging presentation
• Keep slides concise and avoid clutter to maintain audience interest and understanding.

What are the key elements of a professional-looking presentation?

A professional-looking presentation typically includes well-structured content, visually appealing slides, clear typography, cohesive design elements, and effective use of visuals.

What are some effective strategies for effectively rehearsing and delivering a professional presentation?

Effective rehearsal involves practicing your presentation multiple times, focusing on your tone and pacing, and anticipating questions from the audience.

What are the best professional PowerPoint tips to follow while presenting?

These are the top 10 PowerPoint tips for preparing a professional presentation:

• Add key takeaways and include CTA at the end
• Do not have more than 10 slides
• Add a consistent presentation background
• List important points in bullets
• Keep simple transitions
• Practice your presentations loudly and in front of the crowd.

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How-To Geek

8 tips to make the best powerpoint presentations.

Want to make your PowerPoint presentations really shine? Here's how to impress and engage your audience.

Quick Links

Table of contents, start with a goal, less is more, consider your typeface, make bullet points count, limit the use of transitions, skip text where possible, think in color, take a look from the top down, bonus: start with templates.

Slideshows are an intuitive way to share complex ideas with an audience, although they're dull and frustrating when poorly executed. Here are some tips to make your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations sing while avoiding common pitfalls.

It all starts with identifying what we're trying to achieve with the presentation. Is it informative, a showcase of data in an easy-to-understand medium? Or is it more of a pitch, something meant to persuade and convince an audience and lead them to a particular outcome?

It's here where the majority of these presentations go wrong with the inability to identify the talking points that best support our goal. Always start with a goal in mind: to entertain, to inform, or to share data in a way that's easy to understand. Use facts, figures, and images to support your conclusion while keeping structure in mind (Where are we now and where are we going?).

I've found that it's helpful to start with the ending. Once I know how to end a presentation, I know how best to get to that point. I start by identifying the takeaway---that one nugget that I want to implant before thanking everyone for their time---and I work in reverse to figure out how best to get there.

Your mileage, of course, may vary. But it's always going to be a good idea to put in the time in the beginning stages so that you aren't reworking large portions of the presentation later. And that starts with a defined goal.

A slideshow isn't supposed to include everything. It's an introduction to a topic, one that we can elaborate on with speech. Anything unnecessary is a distraction. It makes the presentation less visually appealing and less interesting, and it makes you look bad as a presenter.

This goes for text as well as images. There's nothing worse, in fact, than a series of slides where the presenter just reads them as they appear. Your audience is capable of reading, and chances are they'll be done with the slide, and browsing Reddit, long before you finish. Avoid putting the literal text on the screen, and your audience will thank you.

Related: How to Burn Your PowerPoint to DVD

Right off the bat, we're just going to come out and say that Papyrus and Comic Sans should be banned from all PowerPoint presentations, permanently. Beyond that, it's worth considering the typeface you're using and what it's saying about you, the presenter, and the presentation itself.

Consider choosing readability over aesthetics, and avoid fancy fonts that could prove to be more of a distraction than anything else. A good presentation needs two fonts: a serif and sans-serif. Use one for the headlines and one for body text, lists, and the like. Keep it simple. Veranda, Helvetica, Arial, and even Times New Roman are safe choices. Stick with the classics and it's hard to botch this one too badly.

There reaches a point where bullet points become less of a visual aid and more of a visual examination.

Bullet points should support the speaker, not overwhelm his audience. The best slides have little or no text at all, in fact. As a presenter, it's our job to talk through complex issues, but that doesn't mean that we need to highlight every talking point.

Instead, think about how you can break up large lists into three or four bullet points. Carefully consider whether you need to use more bullet points, or if you can combine multiple topics into a single point instead. And if you can't, remember that there's no one limiting the number of slides you can have in a presentation. It's always possible to break a list of 12 points down into three pages of four points each.

Animation, when used correctly, is a good idea. It breaks up slow-moving parts of a presentation and adds action to elements that require it. But it should be used judiciously.

Adding a transition that wipes left to right between every slide or that animates each bullet point in a list, for example, starts to grow taxing on those forced to endure the presentation. Viewers get bored quickly, and animations that are meant to highlight specific elements quickly become taxing.

That's not to say that you can't use animations and transitions, just that you need to pick your spots. Aim for no more than a handful of these transitions for each presentation. And use them in spots where they'll add to the demonstration, not detract from it.

Sometimes images tell a better story than text can. And as a presenter, your goal is to describe points in detail without making users do a lot of reading. In these cases, a well-designed visual, like a chart, might better convey the information you're trying to share.

The right image adds visual appeal and serves to break up longer, text-heavy sections of the presentation---but only if you're using the right images. A single high-quality image can make all the difference between a success and a dud when you're driving a specific point home.

When considering text, don't think solely in terms of bullet points and paragraphs. Tables, for example, are often unnecessary. Ask yourself whether you could present the same data in a bar or line chart instead.

Color is interesting. It evokes certain feelings and adds visual appeal to your presentation as a whole. Studies show that color also improves interest, comprehension, and retention. It should be a careful consideration, not an afterthought.

You don't have to be a graphic designer to use color well in a presentation. What I do is look for palettes I like, and then find ways to use them in the presentation. There are a number of tools for this, like Adobe Color , Coolors , and ColorHunt , just to name a few. After finding a palette you enjoy, consider how it works with the presentation you're about to give. Pastels, for example, evoke feelings of freedom and light, so they probably aren't the best choice when you're presenting quarterly earnings that missed the mark.

It's also worth mentioning that you don't need to use every color in the palette. Often, you can get by with just two or three, though you should really think through how they all work together and how readable they'll be when layered. A simple rule of thumb here is that contrast is your friend. Dark colors work well on light backgrounds, and light colors work best on dark backgrounds.

Spend some time in the Slide Sorter before you finish your presentation. By clicking the four squares at the bottom left of the presentation, you can take a look at multiple slides at once and consider how each works together. Alternatively, you can click "View" on the ribbon and select "Slide Sorter."

Are you presenting too much text at once? Move an image in. Could a series of slides benefit from a chart or summary before you move on to another point?

It's here that we have the opportunity to view the presentation from beyond the single-slide viewpoint and think in terms of how each slide fits, or if it fits at all. From this view, you can rearrange slides, add additional ones, or delete them entirely if you find that they don't advance the presentation.

The difference between a good presentation and a bad one is really all about preparation and execution. Those that respect the process and plan carefully---not only the presentation as a whole, but each slide within it---are the ones who will succeed.

This brings me to my last (half) point: When in doubt, just buy a template and use it. You can find these all over the web, though Creative Market and GraphicRiver are probably the two most popular marketplaces for this kind of thing. Not all of us are blessed with the skills needed to design and deliver an effective presentation. And while a pre-made PowerPoint template isn't going to make you a better presenter, it will ease the anxiety of creating a visually appealing slide deck.