Peeky – 59p

Peeky is essentially a discreet countdown timer for presenters. Rather than constantly check a watch to ensure that he is presenting according to schedule, the presenter can simply set the timer on his device and leave it in his pocket, or on a table. When a specified number of seconds is remaining, the device will flash and/or vibrate a warning, informing the presenter when he should be moving on to the next slide.

The app draws inspiration from the Pecha Kucha and ignite formats, allowing the user to select those formats as defaults for their presentation. The aim of the app is, essentially, to ensure that you do not spend too long speaking on a single slide.

This can be a great help to those who waffle. However, the fact that the user is not able to set a specific time limit for each slide really lets this app down. Very rarely (perhaps only at the events mentioned above) will it prove useful for a presenter to spend exactly the same amount of time on each slide. The app could be greatly improved with this flexibility.

Should I download it?

In short, the app is simple, and does what it promises to do with no extras. At a low price, it could prove useful to presenters who struggle with timing, but doesn’t have much else to offer.

Presenter Pro – £1.19

Presenter Pro contains a wealth of information. With five instructive sections and one ‘rate me’ section, plus a quiz and randomised ‘tips’ that appear if the device is shaken, a presenter could certainly spend a while working through everything. Not only this, but the information is presented in many different formats – depending on the section, the user can watch a video, listen to an audio recording, or select pictures to view the information behind them. If the user finds any point particularly useful, he can save it to a checklist for quick viewing later.

The menu is split into five sections: Structure, Words, Gestures, Visual Aids, and Voice. The rather haphazard organisation results in several overlaps, and it does feel as though the whole application could have been simplified. Message and objectives are underplayed in this layout too – there are a few points in certain sections on the subject, but without its own section, content is not sufficiently emphasised.

The section on words contains what is probably the most useful advice in the application. Presenter Pro advises presenters to use simple, clear language, that won’t confuse the audience, or make things sound more complicated than necessary. Presenters should also use stories to bring a ‘real’ aspect to the presentation – at m62, we encourage presenters to use case studies where possible to outline proof of how the benefits have helped companies in the way they could help the prospect.

The introduction to the ‘Gestures’ section reads: ‘Your gestures proved 55% or more of the impact of your presentation.’ There is no evidence to back this up, and the figure appears to be more than a little exaggerated. Is Presenter Pro really suggesting that an audience will be less influenced by your message and visuals than by the way your hands are clasped?

Gestures are not irrelevant, and using gestures correctly to emphasise your point and react with your slides can prove useful in maximising presentation effectiveness. But presenters should not be focusing all of their attention on their gestures, and certainly should not be spending the majority of preparation time rehearsing them. Spending too much time concentrating on specific gestures can result in the actions looking stilted and fake.

The psychological explanation under ‘Why are visuals more effective?’ (found in Visuals > Facts) is a good explanation, but has not been applied fully. The application of this research that Presenter Pro suggests does not allow for information to be absorbed via the aural and visual channels simultaneously, in the form of animated diagrams and charts. While pictures are better than text on a slide, the psychology can be used further to obtain better results. For more information on this, have a look at our visualisation examples.

In vein of this, the ‘great examples’ found under ‘Think in pictures’ are not the most effective ways of conveying your message to the audience. The visual metaphors used do not emphatically imply the text or message that has been suggested. Forcing your audience to think too much about the way your visual works does not make for an easy assimilation of information. The shot of barbed wire has nothing to do with alienation, and this author instead began thinking about farms and afternoons spent walking the dog in childhood. Visuals can distract as well as aid, and should be clearly relevant to the message – and the message only.

Should I download it?

Essentially, Presenter Pro focuses on what we at m62 refer to as ’soft skills’; body language, tone of voice, and nerve control. While these can be useful to fine-tune your delivery, practising these when delivering a bad presentation will not improve its effectiveness.

This app could be useful if you feel confident that your content and visual aids have been perfected, and you want some specific tips on how to improve your voice or the use of gestures. Perhaps it is not the place for beginners, however: inexperienced speakers may be tempted to focus too much on the finer details, and fail to devote sufficient attention to more integral aspects of presenting, such as messaging and audience engagement.

60 Presentation Tips from Ethos3 – Free

It is immediately clear that this app was made by a design company. The app looks good, and the way you interact with each tip is very neat. The app itself is simply a list of tips, which the user can either read in order, or select from the card-wheel.

The app contains some good tips, such as “make sure you’re using language that everyone in the room will be able to follow” and “pause”, which are great ideas to ensure that your audience remain focused. The advice to “eliminate the weak language from your presentation” is very useful, as is “stand to the left side of the screen”, which many advisors fail to mention. As the Western world reads from left to right, the presenter should stand on the left to ensure no interruption to the audience’s view.

It is odd how little the app focuses on visual aids, considering that it was created by a design agency. Ethos3 quotes that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. Pictures may be more effective than text in a presentation, but using them in this way is still not true visualisation (as explained above).

Should I download it?

The application contains some good tips, but a lot of common sense. Ethos3 reminds presenters to “smile” and “visit the restroom before you present” – tips that one would hope the presenter would already be aware of! The app reads like an ad for the company, for which it serves quite well, but otherwise it is just a list of tips that could be found anywhere on the internet.

CueMe – 59p

CueMe is an app for presenters to use when making their own notes. The application allows the user to colour code his notes, as well as changing the font and size. CueMe is designed to be simple and easy to use, with the added benefit of a timer to help the presenter stay on schedule.

The structure of the presentation format is not immediately obvious, but once it becomes clear the app is very simple to use. The functions utilise standard keys that an iPhone or iPod touch user would be familiar with, and one touch buttons make it easy to edit notes to make important points stand out.

The application also allows the user to input text directly from his computer. The process is a little awkward, involving visiting a URL on your computer browser, but is a great added piece of functionality that saves the user a lot of time in the long run.

When in presenter mode, there is a timer in the top left corner that flashes red when there are less than thirty seconds remaining on a section. This can be very useful for those who have timing issues, as it stops the presenter waffling. Different times can be set for each section (or each slide) enabling the presenter to have a very exact control over the schedule of his presentation.

Should I download it?

In all, the application is well designed, and should help presenters a great deal. While there is no substitute for rehearsal, organising speaker notes in such a way will enable the presenter to deliver a much smoother performance.

Prepare Any Presentation in 10 Minutes or Less – Free

This application promotes what it refers to as the ‘3-D Outline’ to presenting, which is essentially a table the presenter users to plan his preparation. The app contains notes detailing this technique and a video explaining it, as a phone-in caller is talked through his presentation live.

The issue with the ‘3-D Outline’ structure is that it is not audience focused. No consideration is taken of audience attention span, or of what they might like to hear. While the presentation is rightly focused on ‘objectives’, there is not enough emphasis on selling benefits in the rest of the presentation. Benefits are useful in all presentations – in every presentation the presenter wants the audience to do something at the end of it, and in order for them to do this, you need to tell them the benefits for them of doing so.

Additionally, the ‘How’ section is not fully explored. The approach sees each type of media separately, and doesn’t consider linking them together. The implication is that slides and presenting are not good for the audience. The app fails to realise that slides do not have to be awful, and that other forms of media can be included in the slides, instead of just text.

The worst piece of advice in the app is that on timing. Tony Jeary says, “Sometimes when you’re going through your presentation you think you need thirty minutes, but then you realise that you really need an hour.” He goes on to suggest that the presenter should ask for a longer time slot. This is poor advice for three reasons:

1. Audience attention spans wane after twenty minutes, so the longer your presentation, the more they will struggle to pay attention
2. Presentations should be all about the audience and what they want. If they’ve given you a certain time slot, you should respect that – people are busy!
3. Simplifying your information is the best way to better it. Anyone can present for an hour on a topic he is enthusiastic about; it is harder, but much more rewarding, to cut this down.

If your audience has given you a certain amount of time – stick to it. Even better: Allow time for Q&A, and finish early.

Should I download it?

The claim in the title is a little misleading. The preparation isn’t prepared in ten minutes – the presenter just plans how you’re going to prepare it. This claim is the presentation equivalent of drawing up a revision timetable for exams, and then expecting that table to get you an A.

The 3-D Outline is a reasonable place for the presenter to start when preparing for a presentation, but the process doesn’t really take the user anywhere. For a free download, the table can be useful – but, ultimately, there is far more to preparing for a presentation than that explained in the 3-D Outline approach.

Problem Solving

Consider using mystery, and the common desire to solve problems, to engage your audience. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming that the audience will want to know what you have got to say – attention must be earned. Use twists, questions, and puzzles to leave the audience wanting to hear more. Even a simple multiple-choice question can engage the audience, if the answer is surprising.

Hyperlinks

In their book Selling Visually with PowerPoint, Robert Lane and Andre Vleck make the case for non-linear, interactive sales presentations. ‘The standard way of using PowerPoint – a strictly linear movement from slide to slide from the beginning of a presentation to its bitter end – forces people to be lecturers rather than conversationalists.’ Better, they argue, to allow the audience to share in setting the agenda, using hyperlinks to move seamlessly between slides as required by the audience.

Dialogue

Allow your audience to engage in dialogue. By having the audience ask questions and think about the implications of what you present, a presenter increases audience engagement and helps brings objections to the surface. Advertising guru Jon Steel (of ‘Got Milk? fame) tells of a time when this idea was implemented in a rather extreme way – ‘a client was simply asked to pick which question he was most interested in hearing [Steel’s team] answer… The presentation became a conversation.’ Just remember the need to present a memorable value proposition too – which might be difficult without presenting at least some material in a coherent and pre-planned way.

Attention Span

With this in mind, don’t spend too much time talking with your audience. When audience attention span is taken into consideration, you only have 20-25 minutes to make your point. If a large part of this is spent debating over one small issue, you’ve missed your chance. There are subtle ways to help your audience feel that they’re involved: ask rhetorical questions and allow a three second pause, or refer to audience members by name. Just be careful not to overdo it!

Questions

Inform your audience that they would get a clearer picture of what you do if they let you carry your presentation through to the end, but if a question is asked, don’t ignore it. Instead, make sure you really listen to any question raised. Identify it: is it an objection? Could it be a further selling opportunity? Take your time understanding the query and thinking about your answer. Interactivity is about really engaging with your audience, and building a relationship.

Emotions

In Brain Rules, developmental molecular biologist John Medina explains the rules of attention, allowing us to apply this understanding to sales presentations. His top tips? Use emotions and meaning to get attention – don’t present detail until the audience care. Don’t present text while reading it aloud – the brain can’t multi-task well. And, finally, don’t overload the brain – present less information, and devote time to connecting the dots.

Company Needs

If you really want your audience to take notice, don’t talk about what your company offers – talk about their company and their needs. People are naturally more inclined to listen to things about themselves, and you will be demonstrating how you can help them directly – something that is difficult to ignore.

Credentials

Be careful when creating a credentials presentation. Different audiences have different needs, and different interests. As Jerry Weisman, author of Presenting to Win points out, ‘the same story that excites and inspires your own employees may bore your customers and actually alienate and anger your suppliers, or vice versa’.

Listen

As Joey Asher notes in How to Win a Pitch, a successful sales presentation should involve listening, as well as talking. Use active listening techniques to connect with your prospect. Listening isn’t the same as waiting to talk – so be patient, make good eye contact, use body language to demonstrate attention, clarify points where needed, and take notes as necessary.

Projectors

Don’t feel that you always need to use a projector. In a small room, with a small audience, projecting slides can feel overly-formal and impersonal. Sometimes presenting from a laptop screen is the most appropriate option.

Audience Trust

Ensure that you have your audience’s trust. Olivia Mitchell, well known blogger on presentation theory and practice, draws on the work of psychologist Robert Cialdini to explain the importance of social proof in sales presentations. People are strongly persuaded by what people who are similar to them do. So, to persuade an audience using social proof,  ‘find an endorsement from a credible expert that your audience knows and trusts, use testimonials from people similar to your audience, develop case studies of people/organisations that are similar to your audience, [or] use statistics to show how many people are using your product’.

Conversational Presenting

Olivia Mitchell also extols the benefits of what she calls ‘conversational presenting’. Present in a natural conversational style. One way to achieve this is to ‘talk to one person at a time… imagine that you’re having a one-to-one conversation with that person… [and] look for their reaction to what you’re saying before you carry on.’ Presenting in a conversational style actually helps an audience to take-in content better.

Presentation Style

Don’t stray too far from your normal casual conversational style when presenting. But at the same time, don’t make the mistake of thinking that only “natural” presenters can pull this off. As Carmine Gallo notes in The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, hard work is the key – ‘Steve Jobs is an extraordinary presenter because he works at it’. In other words, practice presenting in a relaxed style. Being “natural” is a skill that can be learnt.

Audience Imagination

Conservative campaign expert Frank Luntz knows a thing or two about persuasion (Vader or Skywalker – you decide…). In his book Words that Work, Luntz examines the role of language in persuasion. Sales people should not be afraid to ask their audience to imagine things – ‘the word imagine is perhaps the single most powerful communication tool because it allows individuals to picture whatever personal vision is in their hearts and minds’.

Personalised Communication

Ask rhetorical questions. As Frank Luntz also writes in Words that Work, ‘When you assert … the reaction of the listener depends to some degree on his or her opinion of the speaker. But making the same statement in the form of a rhetorical question makes the reaction personal – and personalised communication is the best communication.’

Audience Suspicion

It’s amazing what those writing presentations can glean from other disciplines, particularly those in related areas such as design, marketing, sales, and psychology. One website with a lot to teach about presentations is copyblogger. In one article ‘12 Tips for “Psychological Selling”‘, Dean Rieck explains why claims in any sales material must be backed up with evidence – ‘People are naturally suspicious. It’s true that there’s a sucker born every minute, but most people are moderately skeptical of any offer. They seek to avoid risk. You can never predict the level of suspicion any particular person has, so it’s usually best to back up all claims with evidence, such as testimonials, survey results, authoritative endorsements, test results, and scientific data.’ Don’t just tell the audience what you’re capable of – prove it.

Answering Difficult Questions

Many a sales presentation comes unstuck when questions are fielded badly. David Kean recommends listing ‘the worst question the client could ask you’, then ‘the second nastiest question clients could ask’, and so on. The group should ‘work out what the answer is and who should answer’. It is far better to assume that the client will ask difficult questions and to prepare strong answers, than to be caught off-guard. We’ve written extensively about successful presentation Q&A on this site.

Weaknesses

Don’t try to ignore possible weaknesses – address them instead. As well-known presentation blogger Jan Schultink points out ‘highlighting weaknesses does not mean shooting yourself in the foot… If you don’t address them, the questions will remain’. Don’t identify obscure weaknesses that your audience would never think of for themselves, but do ‘think what questions any intelligent human being would have when listening to your story’.

Case Studies

Turn case studies into success stories. As Joey Asher writes: ‘Success stories can give your prospect something that is very hard for them to get, a taste of the intangible thing that they’re buying – a satisfactory result.’  So, go beyond lists of client names or logo slides, and bring your successes to life by telling stories; they can be really memorable, particularly if an element of suspense can be introduced.

Ask for the Order

Don’t forget to ask for the order. As presentation coach and author Jerry Weissman explains – ‘if you’re a sales professional, how can your customer reach the point of making a purchase unless you ask for the sale? … Ask for the order! Call your audience to action!’

How to Conduct a Successful Online Presentation

With more and more business being conducted over the internet, many companies are looking to use online presentations for marketing and business development activities. Yet, as a relatively new concept, there are fewer resources available for presenters wishing to improve their online presenting skills. Here we offer some tips on how to go about preparing and delivering an online presentation, from the initial planning stages to delivery.

Software and Technical

There are a lot of technicalities involved in conducting a presentation over the internet, and many decisions to be made regarding these. It is important to make the choices that are right for your particular presentation; and to be aware of the difficulties that could arise in this situation.

1. The first question to be considered when preparing for an online presentation is whether the presentation is to be live, pre-recorded, or to be used for both? This decision affects the way you will conduct your presentation, and which hosting sites or software you will use. Both have their merits, and it depends on your target audience: for example, a presentation that is designed for use as a general marketing tool will need to be pre-recorded as a webcast, for viewers to peruse at their own leisure; whereas a sales presentation directed at a specific company will need to be live, to ensure the best chances of interactivity, and of closing the deal.
2. Choose the right software. We have reviewed various online meeting software applications for hosting a presentation online, and have also conducted a slide sharing websites review.  Consider the overall capabilities of each, but also how suited the software is to your individual purposes. Would it benefit you to use screen sharing software? Or to record the presentation as a PowerPoint file and send it remotely? Each has its benefits and limitations, and they should be taken into account.
3. Is it worth asking your service provider to host and manage the event? For larger webinars, many providers tend to offer this for a fee. It can remove a lot of the stress and difficulties of organising such an event, especially if you are not familiar with the process.
4. Check your animation. Hosting anything over the net tends to produce a small delay, but certain animations can look awful (if they function at all). On top of this, many slide sharing websites and programs do not support several common animations. Incorrectly functioning animation could distract and irritate your audience; which does not bode well for a successful presentation. Similarly, watch out for video – streaming a video live will not work well, especially if you are using screen sharing. Be prepared, and check that everything you are using works remotely beforehand.
5. Remember Murphy’s Law: if it can go wrong, it will. Prepare for connectivity issues, incorrect access codes, and set up a live meeting ten minutes early. Ensure that everyone has the right details, and an alternative method of contacting you if they experience problems.

Message

In any presentation, it is important to ensure that your message is sound. Every presentation has a purpose, and everything that is said should be focused on conveying this message. In a remote presentation, this is even more important. As an example, if you don’t think your prospects would ever agree a deal over the web, the focus in an online sales presentation might be to generate a face-to-face appointment.

1. The first thing to do when beginning to write a presentation is to consider your audience. Even an anonymous audience can be understood in terms of personas. If you are inviting certain people to your presentation, ensure that everything is tailored specifically to them. If your presentation is being pre-recorded for anyone to find, think of the types of people you are hoping to get watching it. Will they appreciate a serious presentation, or a light-hearted one? Do you want your audience to be taught or persuaded (usually both)? There is always a question to be answered, and this should be your first point of call in considering your message.
2. Simplicity is the key. The human brain can only hold a limited amount of information at any one time, and this is significantly reduced if attention spans are waning. In turn, too much information can reduce attention levels: it becomes a vicious circle. When aspects such as body language and eye contact do not come into the play, it can difficult to keep your audience engaged remotely. Audience members feel free to check their email and surf the web, and find it easier to drift off into their own thoughts. Don’t overload your audience: whittle your presentation down to its most important points, and they will find it much easier to pay attention, and to remember.
3. Have a clear structure. Pre-recorded presentations are, by nature, linear; but presentations conducted live have the option of being interactive. Consider providing a (small) live audience with a list of possible topics, and asking them to choose those that they feel most relevant to them. You’ve instantly created respect, as they believe that you truly care about what they want; and you need not bore them with aspects they are not interested in.
4. Use stories. This goes beyond using the familiar anecdote to get a few laughs before you plough into the heavy stuff: use the stories to tie into your material; to explain it; to keep it interesting; and to better enable your audience to remember. A more formal version of this is the corporate case study, but any story appropriate to the audience and relevant to the material can aid retention. A remote audience will struggle to listen to continuous patter: link it all together, and they will find it much easier to follow.

Visual Aids

Without the physical presence of a presenter, it can be even more difficult to retain interest. If an audience has nothing to watch, they become more easily distracted by their surroundings. Not only are visual aids necessary, but they should animate in the correct places to draw the audience’s attention to the focus of the message.

1. Again, the most important rule to follow here is that of simplicity. This is important in any presentation, but especially in one being conducted remotely, as attention is already more difficult to attain. If your slides have too much content, the audience will not know where to direct their attention. Keep them simple and reduce your text significantly. There should be a clear focus to each slide, and visual aids should support your points made, without distracting from them.
2. In a remote presentation, everything needs to move faster to ensure that your audience stay focused. Keep your visuals moving: switch between images and diagrams, and make sure that every point builds. Leaving a static slide up for too long will encourage your audience to look elsewhere.
3. Ensure that your most important points are emphasised. Use animation, such as a growth or colour change, to draw the audience’s attention to specific details. With the presenter unable to direct the audience to the right places with gestures, it is important to do so using effective slide design.

Delivery

The most noticeable drawback in a web presentation is the lack of the presenter’s physical presence. Using eye contact to engage the audience, and being able to see whether they are paying attention, prove invaluable in face-to-face presentations. In a remote presentation it is important to engage your audience by other means, and to devise methods of checking that they are still following you.

1. Ask questions. If you are conducting your presentation live, use polling facilities to gather feedback. If your presentation is pre-recorded, ask hypothetical questions, or pose challenges, designed to make the audience think. This method of including and involving your audience helps to bridge the gap between presenter and audience (however far in miles!).
2. Emphasise important points with your tone of voice. Without body language to show your enthusiasm, it is important to exaggerate this. Similarly, pause for effect: it is a sure way to make your audience pick up their attention.
3. Be careful with your use of humour. This can be risky in a normal presentation, but it can be even more difficult to convey a joke over the internet. Irony especially is less likely to work in this situation.
4. In a live presentation, if your software allows it, the use of a pointer can be extremely useful. Use the meeting software pointer to gesture at parts of the screen when presenting, as this can translate across the internet.

Watch your timing. Don’t go over the attention span limit (20 minutes) unless absolutely necessary. Use soft breaks such as quiz questions, polls, Q&A, and changes of presenter to reset attention levels. In a remote presentation more than any other, this is important. Nobody likes sitting in front of a computer screen for too long, and minds will start to wander. If you do make your presentation that little bit longer, make sure it is really worthwhile.

SlideShare

Animation – SlideShare was the weakest site in terms of enabling animation. In fact – it doesn’t. Each slide is presented as a static image – presumably it is meant to display the final build of each slide, but it couldn’t even host certain graphics on our test presentation.

Audio – PowerPoint has the easy option of recording narration as you present, saving directly as your PowerPoint file. Unfortunately, SlideShare does not enable this, and thus does not recognise narration, or slide timings. To add audio, the user has to record the narration as a separate sound, save it to an mp3 file (which could involve having to convert the original file), upload it to SlideShare, and then go through the whole presentation and adjust the timing for each slide change, so that the narration corresponds to the visual. The whole process is long, slow and tedious. 

Ease of Use – The site is cluttered, with many advertisements dotted around the page. That said, the site is fairly straightforward to use – except for the hassle in uploading audio. For this reason, for ease of use SlideShare scores two stars. 

Control – There are several different privacy settings to choose from: public; private (enabling those the user follows to see); and private (only the user can see). There is also the option to allow viewers to download, or to send the presentation via email to a recipient of the user’s choosing. 

Suitability – There are some random presentations placed next to our animation test, such as ‘PowerPoint Animals’ and ‘Animal Testing’. Mostly, however, the selection is relevant, with PowerPoint tests displayed in the ‘related presentations’ box.

Overall – SlideShare’s strong points are in the control over privacy options. Unfortunately, its lack of technical capabilities let it down when actually viewing slides. Adding audio is difficult and time consuming, and the lack of animation, combined with substandard graphics, give the effect that the viewer is looking at a series of badly-designed posters. 

authorSTREAM

Animation – authorSTREAM supports more animations than SlideShare, but still misses most – and those that it does enable are largely incorrect. For the basic animations it permits, authorSTREAM is awarded two stars.

Audio – Audio is uploaded automatically with the PowerPoint file, saving a lot of time and effort. Lack of control over audio once uploaded, (and no volume control) means that authorSTREAM scores three stars.

Ease of Use – AuthorSTREAM is a little complicated to use, and seems to lack some of the basic functions; I am still unable to find a ‘replay’ button after a presentation has been watched. With the fact that it is not immediately clear how to edit your presentation either, for ease of use authorSTREAM scores one and a half stars.

Control – authorSTREAM had perhaps the best options for privacy control. The user is given the option to keep the presentation private or public, and to enable download if wished. An email can be sent with a link to those you wish to share it with, and the premium version of the site allows the user to create a pass code for access to the slides. The fact that this pass code is not available for free means that authorSTREAM scores four and a half stars.

Suitability – There were a couple of files in ‘Related Presentations’ that were actually related, but most were random.

Overall – authorSTREAM has potential, but it is let down by its lack of simplicity, and the inadequate nature of its animations. 

SlideBoom

Animation – SlideBoom allows more complicated animation than the two sites reviewed above. The site managed to animate everything except the headlines and the live graphs, and graphics were of a good standard. 

Audio – If a narration of the slides has been made in PowerPoint, this is uploaded with the slides in the file, and automatically plays. Once uploaded however, there is nothing that can be done with the audio. Still, the ease of uploading and the fact that SlideBoom allows volume control score SlideBoom four stars.

Ease of use – SlideBoom is straightforward to use, and features a handy toolbar on the viewing screen enabling the remote audience to do things such as view as full screen, or jump to a particular slide. The options are easily accessible and the page layout is clear and uncluttered.

Control – SlideBoom allows the user to control whether everyone can see the presentation, or whether just the user has access. Sharing via email is allowed. Control over embedding in other websites is also given, as is control over downloads. More detailed control over who has access directly on the site (rather than just everyone or no one) would score SlideBoom higher.

Suitability – SlideBoom doesn’t place the presentation next to a completely unrelated one – but it doesn’t give many relevant options. Even with the tags removed, our ‘PowerPoint Animation Test’ only had one set of slides in ‘Related Presentations’. It was definitely related, but lack of choice means that for suitability SlideBoom scores two stars.

Overall – SlideBoom has all the makings of a quality slide sharing site, with good animation and a pleasant, uncluttered screen layout. Having more control over viewing would score higher, as would enabling more options once the presentation is uploaded, such as the ability to add or edit audio. SlideBoom is a good site for most basic needs, for which it scores four stars.

myBrainshark

Animation – myBrainshark has the potential to be very good at animation, and is better than most. It was the only site reviewed that managed to correctly animate the headlines, although it failed to enable the motion path and live graph, and the colour change was there, but not correct. With these adjustments made myBrainshark would score higher, but for the present animation capabilities the site is awarded three and a half stars.

Audio – myBrainshark was the strongest site in the audio category. As with the other sites that score highly in this section, myBrainshark allowed slide narration to be uploaded easily in the PowerPoint file. However, myBrainshark surpassed this in enabling many options in terms of audio once the file was uploaded. A narration can be recorded directly onto the site via a telephone call; a background audio (such as music) can be uploaded from an mp3 file; and audio can be downloaded by viewers as a podcast. If volume control was included in the viewing window, myBrainshark would score five stars; as it is, the site is awarded four and a half stars.

Ease of use – myBrainshark is simple, ad-free, and straightforward to use. Drop down options on the ‘Edit Presentation’ page enable the user to clearly choose from available functions, and ‘helpful hints’ and ‘stages to follow’ throughout cumulate to award myBrainshark five stars.

Control – All slides are publicly available when active. Content can be made inactive, which means that it cannot be found on the site, but users to whom the slides are sent by the user will still be able to view them. More options to users as to who can interact with the file on the website would score myBrainshark higher, but the present control capabilites award the site three stars.

Suitability – The ‘Related Presentations’ box offers the viewer a large number of slides to view, and the majority are directly related. Those that are not directly related are not far off the mark, and there are no random presentations recommended.

Overall – While improvements could be made on myBrainshark’s animation capabilities, the range of functions offered for uploaded content (particularly audio) and its simple interface score the site well. On top of this, myBrainshark hosts a wide range of extra functions, from detailed viewing reports (including location and percentage watched) to the ability to ask viewers questions.

Disclosure: m62 uses Brainshark’s enterprise-level platform, and recommends it to clients. m62 also makes use of iSpring software, which is the PowerPoint to Flash conversion tool used by SlideBoom.

Whilst only using a single pen type on the paper, the PAPERSHOW electronic functionality allows users to create a reasonable variety of appearances for the pen markings on the screen. There are different pen sizes (three different widths) and different colours, (black, yellow, red, blue, green, white). The tool can also be used to create perfectly straight lines or arrows, rather than hand drawn ones along with squares, rectangles, circles or ovals, each either as an outline or as a colour filled shape.

Other functions include an eraser to remove any items previously drawn, completely or in part (this only works for the electronic version though and not the paper) and undo options to remove specific actions.

Accuracy

PAPERSHOW translates the pen strokes to the screen with excellent accuracy. The dot matrix on the paper controls the translation of pen strokes to electronic images and the resolution is high, resulting in almost all the fine detail of the pen stroke being captured electronically. When enlarged onto a projector screen, the overall effect still looks relatively natural, rather than too blocky or pixelated. With PAPERSHOW, users have the added benefit of being able to see what they are drawing either on the screen or, often more usefully, on the drawing pad itself (i.e. the PAPERSHOW paper), which makes it quick and easy to get accurate sketches and annotations on the screen in the correct relative positions to other items that have been drawn.

The pen is easily able to write over existing sketches without interruption to the electronic translation, although the paper needs to be flat at all times as wrinkles or folds in the paper can cause a few minor issues

Whiteboard Function

Possibly the main feature of PAPERSHOW is the whiteboard function, which allows users to write on the paper whilst projecting the PAPERSHOW whiteboard application, creating ‘interactive’ presentations. In reality, the presentation is not much more interactive than the flip chart that PAPERSHOW replaces, however, it is an easy system to use, that can be projected at a far larger size than flip charts and so is accessible to a larger audience. Full screen mode is available to ensure that the audience see only the whiteboard area with no additional buttons, functions or menus.

Multiple electronic whiteboard pages can be created during a presentation, giving the presenter the opportunity to move between each very easily using either the keyboard or action areas built into the PAPERSHOW paper. The same sheet of PAPERSHOW paper can be used for multiple pages, although after three or four whiteboard pages, the paper starts to get very crowded.

Overall the functionality is neat and simple and should facilitate effective whiteboard style presentations.

These images show the actual PAPERSHOW paper used during the PAPERSHOW overview video. There is a close match between the pen markings and electronic transcripts. The images also show PAPERSHOW control tools on each sheet.

PowerPoint Function

Users can also import PowerPoint presentations into PAPERSHOW and directly annotate PowerPoint slides. As with the whiteboard, the PowerPoint slides can be viewed full screen as with any standard presentation.
PowerPoint presentations have to be imported into PAPERSHOW in order to work with the annotation functions and cannot run in parallel with PowerPoint (PowerPoint needs to be closed in order to use PAPERSHOW). This creates a significant problem in that PAPERSHOW does not support animations on slides, so only static slides are shown. For many presentations and presenters, this probably means that PAPERSHOW is a useful tool for summary discussions at best as it does not compliment the presentation that needs to be delivered with animations in PowerPoint.

However, if created as an interactive presentation where key elements of the presentation are removed from the slides, PAPERSHOW does give the presenter an opportunity to engage with an audience in an interactive way and use the PAPERSHOW tool to complete the slide and deliver presentation content specifically for the audience. This type of presentation is not for all situations, but can be effective if delivered correctly and PAPERSHOW is certainly the tool to facilitate it.

Presenters can either use blank PAPERSHOW paper to annotate slides, which, whilst possible, is not easy, or print out their slides on PAPERSHOW paper and so easily and accurately annotate the slides

Saving And Exporting Presentations

All presentations that are created, either through the whiteboard or PowerPoint functions can be saved in the PAPERSHOW format directly to the PAPERSHOW USB drive. The standard USB drive has 250MB of available space to store presentations, with each whiteboard presentation taking up no more than a few KB of space. The PowerPoint presentations uploaded into PAPERSHOW are also saved on the USB drive, but with images, these can fill up the drive rather more quickly. Any files can be easily deleted or stored elsewhere if space becomes an issue.

Once the presentation is over, PAPERSHOW provides users with a number of other options to keep the copies of their presentations.

The contents of the whiteboard or annotated PowerPoint slide can be printed out to any printer and kept as a hard copy as required.

Each whiteboard or slide can be exported to PowerPoint with each page or slide saved as a new slide in PowerPoint. This function only exports a single image for all annotations on the whiteboard or slide and so once exported, users can’t edit any of the elements within the sketch, unless it is exported further to a graphics package for further manipulation. The exported image also includes the background of the sketch, which is either the whiteboard background, in which the default background includes PAPERSHOW logo, but this can be removed, or the content of the original PowerPoint slide that was annotated.

In the same way as exporting to PowerPoint, the contents of PAPERSHOW can be exported into a pdf file.

Installation

Installation of PAPERSHOW is relatively easy as everything runs straight from the PaperShow USB key. This means that PAPERSHOW can be transferred between multiple computers and with the presentations stored on the same USB key, there is no need to rely on other devices, although a back up is always recommended.

First time users have to connect to the internet to activate the system and also pair the PAPERSHOW pen with the USB counterpart. These tasks are very quick and within a few minutes, everything is running OK, with minimal input from the user.

Compatibility

Currently, PAPERSHOW is only compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista, meaning that Windows 7 or Mac users have to miss out for now. There are notes on the PAPERSHOW website about support for Mac coming soon, but this has been the case for a while, meaning either Mac support is imminent or still a long way off.

PAPERSHOW is also not fully compatible with PowerPoint 2007 or 2010. Any .pptx presentation files will need to be converted into .ppt (PowerPoint 2003) files in order to work correctly. Although this is easily achieved in the newer versions of PowerPoint it can limit some of the graphics and functionality of the presentation, so ensure that a copy of the original presentation is kept in .pptx format.

Summary

PAPERSHOW is a great tool for getting hand drawn sketches into an electronic format that can be used during presentations. The accuracy is good with the resulting images easy to see with excellent clarity (dependent upon the presenter’s own abilities!). As a replacement for a flip chart or whiteboard or for use with static PowerPoint slides, the tool is excellent. However, the lack of support for annotating animated slides means that PAPERSHOW has very limited use as a tool to support engaging and effective presentations and users should consider very carefully before using PaperShow whether it is the right tool for the job.

Rating

3/5 stars

Details

Web: www.papershow.com
Price: From about £110

Now, instead, imagine taking a rather more expensive and fully-featured piece of hardware – the iPhone 3G (or iPhone 3GS for this review), and creating an application that turns the entire thing into a high-end presentation clicker. That’s what one company, Senstic, has done. What difference does having a mini-computer and touch-sensitive screen make? Here, we review i-Clickr when used with a PC.

i-Clickr is available from Apple’s App Store for £5.99. (If you know what it costs in US dollars, please leave a comment below.) Download and installation of the actual iPhone application is simple, but there is also an additional bit of software from Senstic that needs to be installed on any PC one intends to use i-Clickr with. Apple’s Bonjour software, which discovers devices on a local network, is also required. Not entirely surprisingly, there’s a tiny bit of work to do in allowing this PC software to get through one’s PC firewall.

Once everything is installed and the correct permissions are granted, the easiest way to get i-Clickr working is to connect PC and iPhone to the same network. (Documentation suggests that this must be a wireless network, but the PC can be connected using wires.) Then, start i-Clickr on the PC, and then on the iPhone. Select the computer to control with the iPhone (assuming everything is working), and then on that PC select a PowerPoint file to open. (Yes, this does involve going from PC to iPhone to PC and then finally to iPhone once the presentation is running, and yes, it is mildly annoying.) After a short pause, the presentation opens in showmode on the PC, and the iPhone turns into a fully-featured presentation remote.

Once the presentation is opened in showmode, it can’t be used in any other way. Closing either the presentation or iClickr will crash or close the other parts of this software ‘jigsaw’ – although as this is predictable and entirely avoidable, it wasn’t a deal-breaker for me.

i-Clickr allows slides to be advanced or reversed using either buttons or a simple finger-swipe across the screen. There are four simple screen views for use when presenting – view the final build of the current slide, view the final build of the next slide, view the speaker notes of the current slide, or view the speaker notes of the next slide. Each of these views has different uses; I particularly like the ability to see the next slide, and to be able to glance at speaker notes. Toggling between slide and note view is achieved with one click. Changing settings between viewing the current slide and the next slide is a couple of clicks away. Clearly, a typical presentation clicker can’t match this functionality.

A number of features are available from the menu screen. A single click from the menu will blank the presentation – whether this is done in black or in white (think “B” or “W” on a keyboard) can be selected in advance from options. Another option brings up a list of slides, and a single click will jump directly to a chosen slide. A trick that we feel is important for making PowerPoint presentations interactive, and one that can’t be obtained with many clickers.

Perhaps making even greater use of the iPhone’s capabilities is the ability to annotate slides directly from the iPhone. Annotation mode is available by holding the iPhone horizontally, at which point four symbols (a tick, arrow, question mark, and star) appear at the right of the screen, as does a text icon. Touching a symbol sets the drawing mode, and then touching the image of the slide annotates the slide show. (So, for example, touch the question mark and then the slide on your iPhone to draw a question mark onto the slide show on your PC.) Annotations are not saved. Clicking the text icon and then the screen brings up the iPhone’s keyboard. A few minutes later and it’s possible to write a word, although probably not the one you intended (your mileage may vary). An ‘X’ icon selects delete, and annotations can be erased. For some reason, this icon appeared slightly off the bottom of the screen on my phone. Still accessible, but a minor bug.

Because rotating the iPhone launches annotation mode, it isn’t possible to read speaker notes in landscape view. It is possible to disable annotation mode, but with this selected, rotating the phone simply shows speaker notes at an angle. It would have been nice to be able to use the iPhone almost as a continually-updating index card, held subtly in the palm. In reality, holding the phone vertically and continually glancing down at the screen risks encouraging a presenter to avoid proper eye contact. Font size can be altered though, and if the iPhone is used as occasional reminder and not as script, the functionality can be truly helpful.

Some reviews on the App Store claimed that lag between iPhone and PC made iClickr unusable. I didn’t experience any lag at all – responsiveness was almost perfect. That doesn’t mean I would encourage presenters to throw away their clickers and attempt to buy iPhones on expenses just yet, though.

With practice, iClickr makes a great clicker. But connection between iPhone and PC isn’t entirely reliable. At home or in the office, getting iPhone and PC onto the same network isn’t that hard. But go to a client’s office where a shared Wi-Fi network isn’t available and things become harder.

In theory, it’s possible to set an ad-hoc wireless connection between laptop and iPhone. Senstic provide step-by-step instructions. After following the instructions, and a minute or so waiting for the connection to be established, I had everything set up the right way. But then, after launching i-Clickr on my iPhone, I wasn’t prompted to open a presentation on my PC. The infrastructure seemed to work, but I couldn’t launch a presentation. I also tried to connect using my PC’s built-in Bluetooth, and perhaps not surprisingly, I couldn’t get things working.

I’m sure that ad-hoc connections with i-Clickr can work. But I wouldn’t want to be following a six-part set of instructions, with some long pauses in the middle, once I was with prospects at their offices. i-Clickr is a great App, but it’s probably not time to retire the Kensington just yet.

A great tool for presenters with iPhones who often present from their own office. But keep a back-up, in case set-up doesn’t go smoothly.

In the current economic climate, the spotlight has been shone with some intensity on the sales process. Across the board, increased competition has forced businesses to re-double their sales efforts, both in terms of the lead generation process and the actual number of new business leads being generated. Either way, delivering a return on investment throughout the sales process has never been more critical.

In terms of sales presentations, it is essential to avoid the trap of generating and attending a significantly greater number of presentations only for the conversion ratio to tail off. In this scenario, the new business drive actually results in being a drain on precious time and financial resources and therefore defeats the purpose of the exercise.

As a result of the increased competition for what leads are available, businesses are having to work that bit harder not only to get their foot in the door, but to stand out from the competition. Getting the value proposition right is of course key – but either way, it is not always possible to get to a face-to-face presentation at the drop of the hat. Consequently, many businesses, in order to stay that step ahead of the competition, have been investing in virtual selling.

One of the key considerations when contemplating virtual selling is to ask what is so different about face-to-face selling that makes it so much more effective than telesales. The answer, which should not be hugely surprising (given the premium importance attached to generating face-to-face meetings) is that an audience will on average only recall 10% of what it hears, compared to around 30 to 40% of what they see. A face-to-face experience engages so much more of an audience’s senses, so that the ability to recall information is dramatically enhanced. Certainly an audience will recall more of what it sees or hears if it writes down the information – but the percentage increase has an impact in both cases; and visual presentations have a far greater starting platform than the audio telesales.

In the case of virtual selling, a mid-point between audio and visual, an online presentation needs to work that much harder to maintain the audience’s attention and as such needs to be far more visual. Bullet points in virtual selling are a sure-fire method to turn an audience off at the outset.

One of the key aspects in maintaining audience attention is movement to draw the audience’s attention along. This is true in face-to-face presentations and is similarly true in virtual selling. There are specific techniques available to provide this level of dynamism, and animations such as motion paths can work well in a virtual selling environment. With an average audience attention span ranging between 5 and 10 minutes, it is imperative to grasp interest at the outset and work hard to retain it thereafter. With this brief period of time to reach an audience, a standard 20-30 minute face-to-face presentation will simply not work. It is also important to ensure that the presentation content is fresh and new to the audience. Even if the other objectives of value proposition, composition, illustration and interest have been reached, if the content has been seen before – perhaps via the business’ website, the audience will, most likely, lose interest.

With virtual selling, the devil is in the detail and there are a number of basic yet key rules for ensuring that theory is effectively translated into practice:

• Potential prospects will respond well to the suggestion of web meetings if it is relatively easy for them to access than face-to-face meetings
• Prospects are not clients and consequently have much lower patience levels. Therefore, the URL needed for them to access the presentation needs to work immediately and be easy for them to remember. Any level of frustration during the experience may result in the prospect walking away before the presentation is even delivered.
• Order values from virtual meetings are typically lower than those agreed at face to face meetings. Moreover:
  • Conversion rates are lower
  • Activity rates are higher
  • Sales cycles are frequently shorter
  • Presenters must be prepared to follow up with a face-to-face appointment if necessary

Broadly, a few simple steps can be taken to ensure the maximum is gained from virtual selling. Whilst webcams may seem a good alternative in principle, they are often fraught with potentially crippling bandwidth issues. In simple terms, one small bottleneck at any point in the chain may be sufficient to undermine the entire experience.

So, whilst there are alternatives, it is little surprise that virtual selling offers a tempting solution for businesses when executed appropriately. In addition to offering significant cost savings, virtual selling can prove a far more successful sales mechanism than pure telesales and a far more cost-effective option than funding a field representative. Even as a marketing tool for the generation of appointments it is far more effective than calling (figures suggest three times as successful).

Overall, the bottom line is that wherever previously a telesales of telemarketing team would have been engaged, using a virtual presentation incorporating short visual presentations, complementing a face-to-face pitch, with no software to download will improve the impact of the pitch and subsequently, the profitability given the lower cost of sale. And that’s got to be good in any economic cycle.

Happily, like any other trade there are secrets.

To keep your audience’s eyes off their Blackberrys and on you, here are a number of simple, psychological techniques that will work whatever your natural level of confidence or propensity for anecdotes and standup. Assuming your audience is human (not always the case with annual financial reviews), these fundamental principles will have them nestling in the palm of your hand for the full twenty-five minutes. Amateurs ignore them at their peril.

Multi-sensory Presentations

The temptation to litter a presentation with bullet points is strong, so strong it has dominated presentation strategies for over a decade. Creating neat cue cards gives the presenter a quick fix to presentation jitters, a reason to avoid rehearsing, and the deluded belief that the presentation is somehow more clean or succinct for all those neat headings. Not only are bullet points self-explanatory (which, unhappily, reduces the presenter’s role to ‘irritant’), they are also processed by the same element of working memory that processes the presenter’s narrative – the Phonetic Loop. This is what is commonly misunderstood about bullets – they are not a visual medium.

The presenter who uses bullets is essentially delivering two streams of information to the same cognitive faculty in the listener’s brain, and it is hard work to separate the information in the bullet point from the information in the narrative. In the face of this confusion, the listener disengages or, if really motivated, has to choose one or the other. It’s like trying to read the Yahoo news headlines about Michael Jackson while the CNN coverage is blaring away on TV – even though the ‘message’ behind both streams is the same, neither can be properly absorbed.

The alternative is to build slides that don’t work as cue cards at all, but provide visual cues for the information. Slides that use images and diagrams which truly complement (rather than repeat) the presenter’s narrative allow dual-encoding – simultaneous neurological stimulation of the Phonetic Loop (which processes sound) along with the Visuo-Spatial Scratchpad (which processes imagery). The result? Heightened attention levels, quicker understanding of the information, and more of the message passing into long-term memory.

Incomplete Sequences

Creating a slide that shows an incomplete or unfinished sequence of information strongly motivates an audience to pay attention to the presenter. The audience is initially intrigued by an incomplete picture or sequence, and then captivated when the presenter uses animation (to build up the slide and gradually resolve the picture) and narrative (to further explain the changes the audience is seeing on the screen).

This is a psychological technique called Visual Cognitive Dissonance. It commands attention by exploiting the Reticular Activating System (RAS) in the brain, the cognitive agent that searches for resolution to incomplete sequences. RAS has a particular appetite for puzzles like Sudoku and crosswords, and becomes hyperactive (not altogether unpleasantly) when confronted by certain types of abstract art. But savvy presenters can use VCD to their advantage, to over-stimulate RAS and force attention levels up, subsequently increasing the amount of information that is assimilated and that can be recalled long-term.

Neurology Vs Culture

The power of activating and stimulating these core neurological aspects or subconscious impulses can clearly be seen with human reactions to colour. Use of colour can create strong neurological reactions – for example red is consciously and subconsciously associated with danger, creating associations with blood, whilst green, located on the opposite side of the colour spectrum is recognised as a complimentary colour. In presentations therefore, both colours can have a simple yet powerful impact on the attention and understanding of an audience; the meanings of green ticks and red crosses are easily recognised and easily distinguished from long distances.

But beware of cultural differences; in the Far East red is considered a colour of prosperity and good fortune; most banks and financial institutions have red logos (and red PowerPoint templates!). Black, often used elegantly in Western designs, is strongly associated with misfortune and death. Know your audience before committing to the use of colour to evoke specific emotional responses.

Understanding basic subconscious principles of perception, and working with them, can yield a high impact without a huge amount of additional effort. Something as simple as standing on the correct side of the screen when delivering a presentation can also determine how effectively you engage with your audience. In the Western world, where we are used to writing and reading horizontally from left to right, the human eye moves in a natural Z formation, from left to right, then in ‘carriage return’ action down and left, and right along the next line. Therefore if the presenter stands to the left of the screen or projection, the audience’s eye will move very naturally from the presenter, to the screen and back to the presenter before returning to the screen for clarification.

Again, make sure you know your audience. Arabic speakers will find it more comfortable to move their eyes from right to left, so the presenter should stand to their right of the screen. Similarly, a Japanese audience used to reading Kanji will find it more comfortable if the presenter is on the right. This simple consideration allows the audience to engage visually with the presenter before and in tandem with each slide without effort or distraction.

So, whether you are the smooth experienced marketer or the nervous novice, mastering these most basic of techniques are an important first hurdle in delivering a killer presentation. They are not about content, they are not about style and they are not about confidence. They are about understanding basic human nature and arming yourself to control your audience’s focus, maximise their attention level and ensure that your presentation is recalled. It may be science, but it’s definitely not rocket science.

WebEx

URL: http://www.webex.com

Functions

• Presentation upload
• Screen sharing
• Application sharing
• Remote control
• Annotations
• Teleconferencing
• Web chat
• Recording

Overview

WebEx has almost become a commoditised term, like Google and Kleenex, for online meetings. It is one of the most widely used online meeting software applications and boasts all of the features that online presenters could want. WebEx requires a small download and install of the meeting application, but this is often relatively easy to complete except for those behind the toughest firewalls.

The meeting environment has a large window for content, but a significant chunk of the screen is consumed with a variety of tabs down the right hand side of the screen. These tabs contain information such as attendee lists, web chat, web cam videos and, rather neatly, the speaker notes from your presentation (but remember, your audience can see these as well). On large monitors, this is fine, but users with smaller screen sizes may suffer a loss of detail on content, so be wary not to use text that is too small or graphics that are too fine.

Content can be uploaded to the meeting room by the presenter, although upload speeds are often slower than one might expect, so large presentations will need to be uploaded to the meeting room in advance.

Uploaded content does not display well when the content contains many graphics, including transparencies and colour gradients. Charts, particularly pie charts rarely display well and in some cases are completely obliterated, represented as just single blocks of colour. In some cases, small graphical objects can also become distorted and so overall, WebEx doesn’t do justice to more graphical presentations that have been uploaded into the system. Animations do not fare much better, with more complex animations failing to work properly, resulting in some fairly ‘funky’ slides.

The screen sharing or application sharing option is probably best for those with more graphical presentations. This allows presenters to essentially project their screen, or a specific application, onto the screens of their audience, without the need to upload content through the WebEx system. Whilst the graphics still aren’t perfect, they are more reasonable and within the expectations of a decent online meeting application. Animations are much smoother with more predictable results, rather than some of the effects generated by the uploaded content

Verdict

WebEx meetings are really let down by their lack of support for high end graphical presentations and a range of animations that many presentations today feature. If you present bullet points, then WebEx is fine, but it really doesn’t do justice to well-designed visual presentations. Screen sharing saves WebEx from being a total disappointment and is really the only option for those wanting to impress with their presentations.

Score: 3/5

GoToMeeting

URL: http://www.gotomeeting.com

Functions

• Screen sharing
• Application sharing
• Remote control
• Annotations
• Teleconferencing
• Web chat
• Recording

Overview

GoToMeeting is based on screen sharing or application sharing, giving meeting attendees the opportunity to see your screen as you see it or a specific application, such as PowerPoint. GoToMeeting requires a very small and quick set up process that is very simple for all attendees to follow.

The meeting environment is split into a viewing window, that can be re-sized by each individual attendee and a functions panel that offers various functions such as attendee lists, web chat and teleconferencing details. For presenters, this panel also provides options for screen sharing and attendee participation.

GoToMeeting gives presenters a greater level of control over what meeting attendees see during the meeting. Attendees can be given full view of the desktop environment of a PC, including any applications that are running, or a more basic version that strips out background graphics and icons, giving a much simpler, more focused view of content. Unlike all the other online meeting software reviewed here, GoToMeeting also supports multiple monitors, with choice available for share a primary monitor, secondary monitor or both together (although this option results in fairly small reproductions of both screens within the attendee viewing window).

The quality of the screen sharing is good. Graphics are reproduced well enough to provide reasonable viewing of content and for animations, refresh rates are sufficient to allow all but the most complex transitions and animations to be seen clearly. There is a latency of a second or so (this can be higher with slower connections), but unless the timing of narrative and animation is critical, this won’t really cause a problem for presenter or audience.

Verdict

GoToMeeting offers an excellent tool for quick online meetings, with excellent screen sharing capabilities. Let down slightly by not having upload capabilities which eliminate problems of latency and refresh rates, GoToMeeting is a tool that any presenter should be happy to use.

Score: 4/5

Microsoft Live Meeting

URL: https://www.livemeeting.com

Functions

• Presentation upload
• Screen sharing
• Application sharing
• Remote control
• Annotations
• Teleconferencing
• Web chat
• Recording

Overview

Microsoft Live Meeting provides users with every function normally required by presenters. Live Meeting requires a download and install of the Live Meeting application for both hosts and participants to meetings, which can take several minutes. As a result, initiating meetings often isn’t the quickest of processes, but once you have the application installed, further meetings are quick to set up. There is an alternative web-based version which is quicker to initiate, but this sacrifices presentation performance.

Once in the meeting, the environment is neat with very little in the way of the main content screen. Drop down menus give access to a range of useful functions including content, attendee lists, web chat and meeting invitation details.

Hosts and presenters can upload content to the meeting room at any time (as well as before the meeting starts). Upload times always appear reasonable, but clearly depend upon the speed of your web connection.

The quality of uploaded content is excellent. Live Meeting works well with PowerPoint and is probably the best online meeting software application available to faithfully replicate your PowerPoint slides and all their animations. It falls down slightly with some of the emphasis animations such as colour changes, but overall delivers a very credible performance. Graphics are of good quality and animations are smooth on all but the very slowest web connection speeds.

Curiously, uploaded content from PowerPoint 2007 can sometimes experience issues, with graphics sometimes failing to appear and some animations not working correctly.

Live Meeting also offers screen sharing and application sharing functionality, which eliminates upload times, but results in a presentation of lower graphical quality with more interruptions to animations, but neither is noticeably off-putting, unless you have particularly detailed slides with fine levels of animation (although arguably such subtle animation would be inappropriate in an online presentation as it can be lost on audiences without a presenter to physically point it out).

Verdict

Overall Microsoft Live Meeting is an excellent online meeting tool for delivering every type of online presentation. It provides the best graphical output and works well with animated PowerPoint slides, unlike many of its rivals. The main negative is the required download and install of the application before joining a meeting as this can be both confusing and time consuming. The work around to this, in the form of a web-based version does not display animations in uploaded content and so audiences are forced to view a static version of the content, or cope with lower quality graphics through screen sharing. Screen sharing is viable alternative with Live Meeting, albeit with a small sacrifice in graphics and animation. Mac users may also want to be wary of a Microsoft product that still doesn’t quite work as smoothly as it does on Windows machines

Score: 4.5/5

Glance

URL: http://www.glance.net

Functions

• Screen sharing
• Remote control
• Teleconferencing
• Web chat
• Recording

Overview

Glance, like GoToMeeting, is a screen-sharing-only online meeting tool. As a result, the software is much more basic and so correspondingly, accessing the meeting is much simpler. Whilst a download is required, it is very quick. Accessing the meeting is also very simple, with only a simple URL and four digit code to input, rather than the sometimes confusing URLs, usernames and password requirements of other systems.

The meeting environment is a full screen representation of the host’s desktop, which makes viewing easy, even for those with smaller screen sizes.

Graphical quality of shared content is good and being a sharing option, animations are always reproduced faithfully. However, Glance appears to use a scanning refresh format, much like TVs, which refreshes the screen line by line and can result in some animations looking rough and shuddering. More complex animations such as motion paths can suffer as a result, as can animations that have a specific purpose (such as arrows wiping in a certain direction to add emphasis).

Remember that this is a screen sharing tool, rather than an application sharing tool and so presenters need to be careful that sensitive information is not displayed and for a more professional appearance, email reminders that appear over presentations are turned off.

Verdict

The simplicity of accessing Glance meetings is a balance with a poorer quality delivery of animation heavy presentations. Graphics are displayed well and for presentations with low levels of animation the system works remarkably well. For a simple, no frills, yet easy to use application it provides very good results.

Score: 3/5

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Hard Skills

Because m62 presentations don’t consist of a series of bullet-points that a presenter reads from the screen, m62 presentation skills training doesn’t just consist of teaching presenters how to read aloud in the ‘least-bad’ way. There’s a lot more to presenting than body language and tone-of-voice.

Presentation skills training that looks at how to present – but leaves the presenter using awful slides – is like learning how to drive with the handbrake on. The only way to really become a better business presenter is to understand how to present, and what to present.

m62 hard skills courses start by reviewing the science of communication, to understand how audiences understand visual and spoken information. By looking at modern presentation theory delegates will understand what works, and what doesn’t work, in face-to-face communication. Hard skills courses involve significant transfer of knowledge. This knowledge is then used as the basis for practical presentation skills training and tips.

Why attend?

By the end of the course you will:

• Know what makes a presentation great for the audience
• Know how to prepare for a presentation
• Understand how to maximise the audience’s recall of your presentation
• Know how to make presentations Engaging and Memorable
• Be able to present using Visual Cognitive Dissonance based slides

Open62 will completely transform the way you present. There are other courses out there for those who want to learn how to read bullet points in a slightly “better” way; this course is designed for those who want to deliver outstanding and effective presentations.

Who should attend?

Open62 courses specifically cater for individuals and groups of five and less, to accommodate smaller companies, and those who may have missed out on their company’s original in-house training session. Open62 teaches presentation skills in a dynamic and results-focused way.

If you arrive on your own, you’ll soon be surrounded with other like-minded people, eager to learn invaluable presenting skills. As part of the course, each delegate will present his/her own company’s presentation. A sample presentation will be provided for those who haven’t worked with m62 before.

Dates

Open62 will next run on 26-27 January 2010, in Liverpool, England.

Booking and Further Information

A full course description is available. There are plenty of examples on this website showing how m62 believe presentations should be designed and delivered. If you think this works better than typical bullet points with a presenter reading-aloud, then Open62 is for you.

For more details and to book, please call the m62 office on +44 (0)151 259 6262, or request a call back.

We will run further courses around the UK, Europe, USA, and Asia. To pre-register, please contact us.

Tried and Tested: Optoma PK101 Pico Projector

From the age of 10 my career ambition had always been to join the Police force, but like so many graduates I left university with significant debt, and I very quickly discovered that a career in the Police force wouldn’t help me pay this off quickly enough.

So for the quick financial rewards I embarked on a career in sales and I took a graduate job for a small IT company where I started out selling projectors and plasma screens. Back then the smallest projectors weighed in at just over 15kgs and cost upwards of £10,000, so when I was asked to review the Optoma PK101 Pico Projector which weighs in at an amazing 115g (yes that’s only 4oz) and with a footprint smaller than an iPhone I simply couldn’t resist.

Power

This projector can literally fit in your pocket. It is powered by a rechargeable battery that lasts around 90 minutes, so there is no need for a power cable and plug that would probably weigh more than the projector itself. My unit came with a spare battery, so in theory you have around three hours of power for when you’re on the move. It’s also possible to power the unit via the USB power input.

Connectivity

The sole connectivity is through a composite video connection perfect for DVD players, camcorders and more importantly linking with some of the most popular devices on the market today, in particular the iPod and iPhone. The challenge comes when trying to connect the device to a laptop as the Pico Projector doesn’t have a VGA input,  unlike just about every other projector on the market. To connect to my laptop took lots of Google searches to find the right cable combination.

Image & Performance

With a device of this size it’s not at all surprising that you need to ‘adapt’ your environment to accommodate for the lack of brightness.  The simple rule-of-thumb is the darker the room the better the Pico. This unit is not designed for environments where you cannot control the light conditions. In a board room you’ll need to close the blinds and turn out the lights for the Pico Projector to be of any real value.

As with any projector, the further you take the Pico away from the screen the larger the image. In an almost pitch black room the largest image it could accommodate was around 7-8 feet, any more than this and the unit really struggled. The Pico performed best displaying a diagonal image of around 2 feet, but the lighter the room the smaller the image needed to be.

Specification

In a controlled environment the published results for the projector are very poor; the brightness (in the projector world measured in ANSI lumens) came in at 10 ANSI lumens. Most portable projectors today (at around half the footprint of a laptop and 4kgs) have a brightness of around 2000 ANSI lumens, so in comparison the Pico isn’t on the same playing field, but let’s not forget the footprint and weight of this unit.

The Pico Projector has a claimed contrast ratio of 1000:1 (contrast ratio is they way manufactures measure the difference between black and white, the greater the ratio the better the colour definition). In reality I’d be very surprised if this was the case, I’ve read other tests that show the contrast at 250:1. This however is not a bad performance, and the image quality for high quality video-casts downloaded from the likes of iTunes is surprisingly good and watchable. On the other hand the Pico really struggled with images from my laptop; they were grainy and often flickered.

The Pico Projector uses a technology called DLP (Digital Light Processing) which is how Optoma can develop such a small unit. DLP usually struggles with certain colours but this unit performed surprisingly well.

Sound

Believe it or not the Pico Projector even has a small built-in speaker. At 0.5w sound is not great quality, or particularly loud, but what can one expect from a unit of this size? Unlike most projectors there is no fan noise to fight with, so at least the small speaker has a chance. Personally, I prefer to use the sound from my laptop or iPhone as the quality is sharper and louder, but as least you know the Pico has a loudspeaker if “needs must”.

Selling with the Pico Projector

The Pico Projector isn’t about to change the technology I use to deliver a sales presentation. I’m afraid to say that right now I’d have to continue using either my laptop or my current portable Sony projector in preference to this first version of the Pico Projector. Although my Sony projector is significantly heavier (around 4kgs instead of the Pico’s 115g) and bigger (the footprint is about half the size of my laptop, whereas the Pico’s footprint is smaller than an iPhone) I couldn’t run the risk of not being able to block out the natural light to allow my audience to see the screen clearly. Even if I could, there is still the issue of the image quality, and this isn’t up to standard, yet!

Conclusion

If you’d have asked me 11 years ago when I was first selling projectors if anyone would ever produce a unit of this size, at this specification, and at this price, I’d have laughed at you. There is no doubt that this is amazing piece of engineering. But for business presentations right now I’d pay a fraction more for a larger, more powerful, unit.

For watching videos from my iPhone in an environment where I can control the light the Pico Projector is a “nice to have” but I’m not sure I’d spend £225 of my own money! [Editor's note - Richard has actually offered to return this unit.] I’m sure future models will be more powerful, with higher specs. Then, this size of device will be used daily without a second thought from any of its users. Unless they happened to have had a previous career selling projectors, when they might remember trying to carry two or three of the original 20kg projectors into an office for a client demo.

Where to buy

Amazon.co.uk – £224 including free delivery; Amazon.com – $299 including free delivery (which is approximately £180. So it might be worth our UK readers buying this from the USA).

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As an iPhone user and someone who carries a sales target there are often times when, sat on a train or on a flight, a person near me would ask “so what do you do?” Working for a presentation company, the easiest way to answer that is by showing that person a handful of PowerPoint slides. As it’s not always possible or appropriate to pull out the laptop and launch into a sales presentation, the iPhone has provided me with a neat and quick way to help me demonstrate what m62 does and why people want to engage with us.

If you have seen any of the more recent iPhone advertisements or taken a look at the Mac website you may have seen or heard the phrase ‘there’s an app for just about anything’. There are an estimated 35,000 applications available for the iPhone today, but is there an app to help deliver Killer (PowerPoint) Presentations on your iPhone? What’s the best way to use an iPhone to present while on-the-move?

Fact: You cannot run native PowerPoint Presentations on the iPhone; this is after all a Mac based technology. So what are your options? In my opinion there are four main ways of getting your presentation onto the iPhone:

Option 1

The easiest way to get a presentation on to your iPhone is to send yourself a copy of the presentation by email. When you click on the attachment the iPhone will let you view a static shot of the PowerPoint slide without the need for any additional software.

The problem with this approach is that you can’t get a full screen view of the slide, you can’t see any of the builds (as the image is static), and you have to scroll down through the document as if it were a Word file. It’s therefore not really a presentation, and not how I’d ever want to deliver a presentation. This would be a last resort and only of any real value if you just want to review the content of the presentation.

Option 2

PowerPoint will allow you to export your presentation as a series of pictures; once you’ve done this you can then synchronise these pictures to your iPhone through iTunes in the usual way. Then you can use the slide show program on your iPhone to show your presentation.

Although this can be a slow process it’s relatively easy to do and (assuming you are happy to remove all the animation and builds in your presentation) will work well for most users.

Option 3

The third option is to convert the native .ppt file to a .pdf file. There are many tools to do this both specifically for the iPhone, and you can do this on your PC or Mac then transfer the file to your iPhone. The problem with the PDF format is that you remove all the builds and animations on your slides. This makes delivering an effective presentation very difficult! It’s better than Option 1 but far from perfect.

Option 4

Probably the most common and effective way to show PowerPoint Presentations with builds and animations is to convert the native .ppt file into a video file. On the iPhone the correct video format is MP4. Again, there are many different conversion tools available to download that do this very well. I think that Wondershare PPT to iPhone works well, although others may be as good.

Remember when you do the conversion the best screen size is 480×320px and that you’ll need to find the right balance between the file size and the quality of the image. The file conversion software can create large MP4 files, so you’ll need to work around how much storage space you have on your iPhone and how high-quality you want the video to be.

The single biggest problem with this solution is controlling the flow of the presentation. To deliver the presentation effectively you have to keep pausing the video, unless of course you take no questions, practise and rehearse all the timings, and can deliver the presentation exactly to the timing you set up when you do the conversion from .ppt to .MP4. I suspect for most of us that’s not a feasible option!

Conclusion

To date I’ve not found a better solution than Option 4. This works OK for me right now, but it’s far from perfect. I suspect (and can only hope) that someone somewhere will come up with a better solution and make the whole process of delivering effective PowerPoint presentations on your iPhone easier.

Next Month

We review the Pico pocket projector, which believe-it-or-not weighs 4oz and is an amazing 50 x 103 x 15mm, that’s a footprint SMALLER than the iPhone that can project an image up to 60 inches across the diagonal.

If presenting were a sport, for many of us answering questions (or Questions & Answers – Q&A) would be the equivalent of going twelve rounds with Mike Tyson. The questions come in like punches, and we try our best to fend them off. Each question could land a killer blow, and we’re just happy to give reasonable answers, to stay on our feet. When Q&A is over we relax, and feel happy for having survived it.

When we deliver a presentation, most of us have messages we want to convey but when it comes to answering questions, we become reactive and defensive – taking each question as it comes, and hoping we don’t mess up. And of course every Q&A session we go through reaffirms this way of looking at things – the questions we prepared for don’t get asked, we’re surprised by questions we didn’t expect, and we get nervous trying to give decent answers – feeling like we might get knocked out at any second.

In preparing to answer questions as part of a presentation, presenters should do three things. See questions as a chance to score winning points, bring in outsiders to suggest difficult questions that could be asked, and prepare thoroughly.

Without a clear and compelling sales message, a presentation will most likely be unfocussed and ineffective. Unsurprisingly, as a consequence, answers to questions following the presentation will most likely have no particular direction to aim in, and won’t have much impact. With no clear messages, no target, Q&A quickly becomes defensive, and starts to feel like fending off Tyson. Not ideal.

Effective pitch presentations are structured around a clear value proposition. The value proposition sets out clear reasons for selecting the pitch team’s bid. The pitch stands for something – “our solution is flexible, scalable, and will be delivered fast” – or whatever else might work. The value proposition – or sales positioning – should be built around things that are important to the buyer, where the pitching company has competitive advantage and a believable story to tell. Then, the pitch is mostly about telling that story, proving that competitive advantage really exists. So, in our example, a significant part of our presentation is about proving that our solution will be more flexible, more scalable, and faster to deliver than other proposed solutions.

If our value proposition sets out what we want to say, then questions give us a further opportunity to sell. A question allows us to further prove our value proposition by giving a strong answer. A question about technical partners can be related back to flexibility, and used to show how flexible our solution is. A question about current customers can be related back to scalability, by showing how we have already deployed large solutions for others. Almost any question provides us with an opportunity to link back to a positive sales message – we are proactive in trying to hit-home our messages, and not reactive in trying to defend against looking stupid or weak.

With the right training, Q&A becomes less like facing Tyson in the boxing ring, and more like ‘breaking serve’ on the tennis court. Every question serves up another opportunity to score points. Presenters need to hammer home their key messages. Good answers – like cross-court winners and smashes – score points. Questions give presenters the chance to offer-up winning returns, in areas that the audience care about. A good question and answer session can do wonders for a sale.

Of course, putting this theory into practice isn’t completely simple – it takes work. One problem can be that companies don’t see themselves as others see them – and so it can be hard to know what questions might come up. So the questions companies anticipate aren’t those that get asked. Bringing in an outsider to help prepare can be invaluable – by ensuring that a wider range of possible questions are considered, the risk of surprise is lowered.

Another problem can be that individuals don’t like to report problems to their colleagues if these might make them look bad. Things that a team member feels they don’t need to share – a customer complaint, a quality problem, ongoing litigation in their division – can derail a bid. Without a structured approach to getting these things out into the open – actually asking for a list of issues the prospect may have – an entire bid can become unstuck because a pitch team member gambled that something wouldn’t come up, and then it did.

Imagine that you are on the decision-making panel, and you have accepted a bribe to make the decision in favour of the competition. With outside help, draw up a list of the most awkward, below-the-belt questions that you might ask to deliberately unsettle and undermine your team. Decide who in the pitch team should answer each one, then have that team member spell out which part of the value proposition the answer might support. Every question provides an opportunity to sell. Does this particular difficult question give us a chance to talk about our ability to deliver, or our record of innovation?

By creating a memorable structure for sales messaging, and then linking every answer back to that structure, answers help to sell. Every answer should be a winner – think hitting tennis returns, not being Tyson’s punching-bag.

Proper preparation for Q&A takes time. A long list of possible questions. Forethought and consideration. Answers linked to the value proposition. Actually having a value proposition. Slides to accompany answers, where visual aids will help. Practice delivering the answers out loud. In other words – proper presentation for Q&A takes longer than many pitch teams find the time for. Yet that’s why Q&A often feels like fighting Tyson, when it should feel as if you are Rafael Nadal, hitting winner after winner.

To deliver a truly engaging, memorable and effective presentation, not only do you need the right presentation but you also need the right tools of the trade. One of these tools is a wireless presentation remote clicker. We have tried and tested three of those currently on the market. See how our expert rates them. This month’s m62 expert: Richard Newman

Kensington 33062 Wireless Presentation Remote Control

Simple yet very effective, this Kensington remote conveniently has a built-in wireless USB receiver, perfect for giving you control of your presentations, and has a usability range of around 50 feet (15m).

Lightweight, and with only four buttons to choose from, it’s incredibly simple to use. At times when your arms aren’t long enough to reach the screen, it also has a built-in laser pointer to highlight key presentation points, and with over 65,000 separate IDs, the chances of crosstalk – where someone else remote controls your presentation because they have the same remote – are very slim!

Best of all, this is truly ‘plug and play’ – as no drivers / software installation are required. The remote also has a blank screen function to allow you to turn off the screen and enable your audience to focus 100% on you, the presenter.

Weaknesses: Unfortunately you have no idea when the battery might die and changing the battery is a delicate operation, which requires a jeweller’s screwdriver. It doesn’t take standard batteries (AA / AAA) and you can’t turn the remote off to prevent running down the battery’s charge accidentally, when carrying it in your bag.

Overall rating: I have to admit that this is a personal favourite of mine. I’ve been using this remote for over five years and I still love it, despite its minor weaknesses.

Star Rating 4.5 out of 5.

Price Guide £20 / $45

Logitech 2.4 GHz Cordless Presenter

Finishing your presentation on time is critical, especially when you take into account m62’s research on how long your audience will pay attention for. This remote gives you an easy to set LCD timer that gives automatic vibrating warnings when you have five and two minutes remaining.

Again, it has a range of around 50 feet (15m), which is more than sufficient for just about any environment. It includes a storable receiver and carrying case, has a laser pointer and is ‘plug & play’ – connecting to your laptop via USB.

Unlike the Kensington, the Logitech remote allows the user to launch and escape from the slide show (although I’m not quite sure why you would need this!) and has a volume control function. It also benefits from a very useful battery indicator, which will help ensure you don’t run out of power half way through your presentation.

Weakness: The USB receiver can easily be put into the remote the wrong way, which then makes it somewhat difficult to take out again!

Star Rating 4 out of 5.

Price Guide £38 / $50

Keyspan Presentation Remote Pro

The Pro Presenter has a laser, audio controls AND a mouse control that provides cursor control, scrolling and two-button mouse capabilities in one remote. With a claimed range of over 100 feet, it’s perfect for large meeting rooms and lecture halls.

Like the other two, this remote doesn’t require software, just plug the receiver into the USB port on your PC or Mac and it works within seconds. With a ‘hide slide’ feature you can also blank the screen anytime that you want to have the audience focus on you. The receiver is stored inside the remote when not in use and has an on/off switch to ensure that the batteries are not accidentally run down when in your bag. Its AAA batteries are easy to replace when needed.

Weaknesses: The response on the mouse control is good but very sensitive and requires lots of practising in order to use well. The remote will NOT work with Keynote.

Star Rating 4 out of 5.

Price Guide £60 / $60

Soft Skills Programme: Presenting with Confidence

Soft Skills

Soft skills are the interpersonal skills needed for good communication, confidence, eye contact, voice projection, appearance etc All of which a good presentation coach can help with.

Synopsis

It is described by many as a fate worse than death. Speaking and presenting can be fun and it can be done by anyone – it is a skill, which can be learned. Unfortunately, so many people allow themselves to believe that good presenters are ‘born’. This workshop will provide them with the core elements for effective presenting to help them build their confidence and competence.

Overview

• Duration: 1 or 2 days
• Format: Plenary session, breakout groups,
• Teaching Ratios: 1 facilitator to 6 to 8 delegates
• Type: Open or In house

Objectives

Replacing fear with fluency

Delegate Profile

Anyone who wishes to speak with more confidence and professionalism.

Methodology

The programme can be done in two ways:

• Method 1 – The input can be covered via our DVD – Presenting with Confidence. Delegates then get more workshop time for practice.
• Method 2 – The input is covered on the course and delegates get an opportunity to deliver pre prepared presentations.

Video is used extensively and delegates get feedback from other delegates and the course leader.

Outcomes

By the end of the course you will:

• Identified the essential factors for successfully preparing and planning a presentation.
• Analysed ways to control nerves and convert the energy into a positive, dynamic force.
• Examined non-verbal communication techniques to add extra professionalism to a presentation.
• Reviewed a technique that will help them structure the presentation.
• Examined the quality of their voice, the volume, the variety, the articulation.
• Identified the techniques for managing the audience and the discussion period.
• Reviewed the essential factors for developing and using visual aids.

Content

Speaker Image

• Physical Image of the Speaker.
• Vocal Image of the Speaker.

Analysis of irrational fear

• Controlling nerves and the development of positive energy.
• Visualisation techniques.
• Learning to relax.
• Posture & breath control.
• Body language.
• Movement and Gesture.

Qualities of the effective voice

• Improving articulation.
• Achieving vocal variety.
• Increasing volume.
• Developing resonance.
• Structuring the Presentation.

Setting objectives for presentation

• Analysing the audience and their motivators.
• Developing powerful openings and closings.
• The WOMBAT approach to structuring a perfect presentation.
• Use of humour.

Question Handling

• Encouraging questions.
• Types of questions.
• Handling the discussion period.
• Pitch, pace, tone.
• Positive verbal and non verbal behaviour.
• Grab and hold the audience attention.
• Handling objections.

Hard Skills Programme: Killer Presentations Seminar

Overview

• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Format: Plenary session
• Teaching Ratios: any size delegation
• Type: Open or In house

Objectives

To change delegate perception of what constitutes acceptable behaviour in a presentation.

Delegate Profile

The course is designed for any business presenter.

Outcomes

By the end of the course you will:

• Know what makes a presentation great for the audience
• Know how to prepare for a presentation
• Understand how to maximise your audience’s recall of your presentation
• Understand presenting using Visual Cognitive Dissonance^TM based slides

Knowledge Taught

• Visual Cognitive Dissonance^TM
• Passive Mnemonic Processes^TM
• Dual Encoding

Hard Skills Programme: Killer Presentations Workshop

Hard Skills

Hard Skills are those presentation skills that don’t need practice and coaching but are based on knowledge transfer, that is to say facts based on science that once learnt effect the way you approach face to face communication.

Hard Skills Programme: Killer Presentations Workshop

Overview

• Duration: 4 hours
• Format: Plenary session
• Teaching Ratios: any size delegation
• Type: Open or In house

Objectives

To enable delegates to deliver more engaging, more memorable and therefore more effective presentations.

Delegate Profile

The course is designed for senior customer facing executives in either sales or management roles.

Outcomes

By the end of the course you will:

• Understand presenting using Visual Cognitive Dissonance™ based slides
• Know how to prepare for a presentation
• Understand how to maximise your audience’s recall of your presentation
• What makes a presentation great for the audience

Structure

• Killer presentations seminar
• Visualisation Exercise
• Messaging Exercise

Hard Skills Programme: Killer Presentations Course

Overview

• Duration: 2 days inc. overnight work (2 hours prep)
• Format: Plenary session, breakout groups,
• Teaching Ratios: 1 facilitator to 6 to 8 delegates
• Type: Open or In house

Objectives

To enable delegates to deliver more engaging, more memorable and therefore more effective presentations.

Delegate Profile

The course is designed for senior customer facing executives in either sales or management roles.

Outcomes

By the end of the course you will:

• Know what makes a presentation great for the audience
• Know how to prepare for a presentation
• Understand how to maximise the audience’s recall of your presentation
• Know how to make presentations Engaging and Memorable
• Be able to present using Visual Cognitive Dissonance^TM based slides

Structure

• Day 1
  • Half-day classroom teaching.
  • Half-day group exercises.
• Day 2
  • Three-quarter-day workgroups.
  • Quarter-day classroom

Knowledge Taught

• Visual Cognitive Dissonance^TM
• Passive Mnemonic Processes^TM
• Cognitive Load Theory
• Dual Encoding
• Visual Segue

Skills Developed

• Directed Attention
• 4D presenting
• Structuring presentations