Ask yourself how many of these simple faux pas have crept into your presentations – you might be surprised.


Think carefully before committing information to a slide. Is it a core message or point that needs to be emphasised. Remember that your presentation media should support what you are saying – not repeat it verbatim. As a general rule avoid having more than five bullet points to a slide, this will not only ensure that there is not too much information on the slide, but also that the information can be displayed large enough to be seen by your entire audience, not just you and the first two rows!

If your company has a corporate style guide then stick to it. Avoid using more than 2 or 3 colours and fonts within your presentation, and avoid overly bright and jarring colours. Use sans serif fonts like Arial, Verdana or Tahoma as these are far more legible when projected on a laptop. Used carefully bold and italics can bring emphasis to key points in your presentation. Used badly they will simply drown out your message. Keep fonts sizes larger than 24pt, this ensures legibility, as well as ensuring that each slide contains a sensibly metered amount of content.

Used sparingly and in context slide transitions, sound and even video can enhance your presentation. Select a single simple wipe or fade transition to use throughout your presentation. Most audience will be familiar with your presentation media’s box of tricks, and unimpressed by them, over using effects will detract from your message, and suggest you are more interested in your presentation tools than your presentation content! Use multimedia to enhance your message and content, not for show. Sound bites of satisfied customer feedback add to your sales presentation in a way that revving motorbike sounds introducing each bullet point do not!

Imagery, graphs and schematics can be key in the successful communication of your message, and it is important that they are sharply produced and presented. If you have the time and resources it is always worth investing in professionally produced graphics, particularly if there are key images and diagrams that are used repeatedly throughout your organisation. Create a slide library where these “boiler plate” slides are stored, and make everyone aware where they are and that they should be used. When creating your own graphs and diagrams use the same colours and typography as you are using in the main body of your presentation. Try to keep diagrams and graphs simple. Remember that they need to be seen from the back of the room. You can always talk in greater detail about key points, whilst overly detailed slides will simply distract your audience. With images, avoid overlapping or combining differently sized images on a single slide, as this will look cluttered and unprofessional. Place single images centrally, and multiple images in a sensible grid formation. Placing a simple border in an appropriate colour, around images will help to cement them on the page.

Nothing is more daunting to an audience than a seemingly endless slideshow presentation. Starting your presentation with a summary provides an audience with an idea of the shape and more importantly the length of your presentation. Suggesting a duration will also reassure you audience that you are not going to make unfair demands on there attention span. Remember that even an attentive and interested audience begins to fade after about 15 minutes, and this should be reflected in your presentation. If you know that your presentation is likely to extend beyond this time, break it up with “show and tell” or questions, bring up the lighting if it has been dimmed, and engage with your audience – a change is as good as a rest.

Try to avoid running too many slides of similar content back to back, it will bore your audience. Move from text slide to image slide to graph, to text, rather than clumping 4 or 5 text slides together, you risk your audience not even noticing that you have even changed the slide!

Make your audience believe you are responding to their specific needs, not the general needs of their industry. This can be as simple as placing the client name, and the name of key attendees at the beginning of presentations, consider having a key word that you always use for “the client” within presentations. This won’t jar if left “generic”, but can easily be replaced with the companies name for instantly tailored content. Even adding the date of the presentation to the front page gives the vital impression that this is an important event to your business, and not “another sales presentation”. Consider your slides carefully, remove slides that you don’t think are relevant to your clients needs, or that they have seen before, don’t get to them in your presentation only to say “Well I think we’ve covered this before”, your clients don’t need to see your company history every time you present to them!

Your audience should be focused on you, not your presentation, the points made on your slide should emphasise the one you are making. Don’t let your slides do the talking, and never rely on a slide as the primary information source. Avoid overly complex slides that will detract your audience’s attention, or slide text that is too detailed or physically difficult to read. Ultimately you are the most important presentation asset, the presentation should be able to go on without your slides, not the other way around!

Make sure you have all the equipment you are going to need, don’t rely on your hosts to supply it. If necessary ring ahead and enquire about the environment you will be presenting in – are there window blinds and controlled lighting, or will you be presenting in broad daylight with sunlight beaming on the projector screen? Perform a dry run of your presentation, then do it again, ask someone to read over your slides to proof the content, its surprising what you may have missed. Backup your presentation to disk or memory stick, and keep a hardcopy – you can never be too careful.