Slideware Part 2: How to keep from going blank

I was leading a skills workshop recently at a Manhattan-based PR company, and I asked the group, “What’s your biggest fear about presenting?”

“Blanking out,” said a young woman.

Someone else added, “Not remembering what I planned to say. Losing my place and just standing there.” The rest of the room nodded, as they usually do in presentation workshops when I ask this question.

If the fear of being struck dumb is the most common presentation anxiety I encounter, it’s no wonder pitch decks are glutted with verbiage. Most of us don’t trust our memories to last us through ten or fifteen minutes of talking. Especially when a room full of people is looking right at us; that’s unnerving by itself. Take away all the words on the slides, and our safety net’s gone—we might go completely blank. We also fear that without cues to important, but secondary, material we’ll say too little, and sound lightweight or superficial.

Luckily, there’s an answer—four of them, in fact. I’ll show you four tools that help you see the key points you want to make, and prompt you with the specific words you want to use, yet still keep your slides clean, uncluttered, and powerful. Using these, you’ll make a better impression on your client. And you’ll look (and feel!) confident and authoritative.

The four simple tools are these.

1. Write out a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end
Help your memory do its part by giving it a structure it knows and likes: the structure of a story, with a start, middle, and finish. From eons before blind Homer told the story of ancient Troy, story structure has helped human beings remember what they plan to say. We’re wired that way. This story’s about your prospective client, of course, filled with information addressing his or her interests, needs, and concerns (INCs). Perhaps a story about where they’ve been, where they can go, how they can get there, and what will happen when they do. Story structure keeps your presentation from being a dry recitation of facts, because the story’s drama and emotion are coming from the things that keep the client up at night.

Write this story out, even just an Executive Summary of it, in prose, not bullet points. Do this first in Microsoft Office Word or a similar text processing program, before you even think about pictures, animations, or other distractions. This helps you get the logic of your reasoning down, and your “if… then” and “…so that…” connections solid. It trains your brain for the presentation work ahead. Then, you’re ready to develop visual aids to support your story—and only then are your ready to go to the slideware.

This approach pays a pretty dividend, too: now you have a written proposal that makes sense to give your client to review post-pitch. Accompanied by your slides, that’s compelling.

Many, if not most, people do this backwards. I’ve been in too many pitch run-throughs where people say they’re going to go “figure out what they’re going to say” after they look at the slides they’re presenting. When you think of it, that makes no sense at all.

2. Use headlines that tell your story, not labels that index the slides

Cliff Atkinson, author of Beyond Bullet Points (Microsoft Press, 2008), argues that audiences get a more clear sense of your point if slide titles are always full-sentence. Even if that’s a rule meant to be occasionally broken, simple declarative sentences with strong verbs make great reminders—to you. They help you remember the point you intended to make, and help audiences understand what you’re driving at. Too often, though, slidemakers use topic labels, not headlines, as if the slides were an outline to be followed. “Key Findings” is not a headline, nor is “Strategic Imperatives”. And while “There Are Three Key Imperatives” is technically a simple declarative sentence, far more helpful to write “The First Imperative is to Reach The Undecided” (or whatever you’re recommending) and use two additional, separate slides for the other imperatives. Why? Because the headline gives you a strong verb and strong, specific content to work with. You then just have to remember supportive details. Over the course of your team’s talk, the main story’s played out one headline at a time.

Keep headlines short, and keep them to a single idea. (Make the headline more general, but still singular, if you need to talk about several different ideas that all relate to it.) Otherwise, you’re back in the clutter factory.

A succession of headlines like these can become tedious, just like anything that’s repeated, so it’s useful to break them up with occasional one-word labels. With experience, you’ll find you can often craft your narrative around just visuals or a few words without losing your place or your audience, and it can enhance your charisma to do so. The rest of the time, though, headlines on slides are a godsend.

3. Use Presenter Tools (PowerPoint) or Preferences (Keynote) as your cue cards

OK, some of you may see this next bit as cheating, because this is about as seductive as slideware can get. Used well, however, it’s amazing. If you’re working from a laptop and projecting through a media projector (or on a flat-screen monitor), you can pull some presentation sleight-of-hand: You can actually get to peek at your crib notes on your laptop while you’re speaking, but hide those notes from the audience. Better still, you can see what’s coming up on your next slide, too. Plus check a timer to see how long you’ve got. And all your audience sees is you and your clean, powerful, uncluttered slide.

This all comes with the Presenter Tools option on PowerPoint 2003 and later (for PCs) and PowerPoint for Macs 2004 and later. There isn’t room here to take you through the setup instructions, but in PowerPoint (PC or Mac), you’ll find instructions by opening up the Help menu; just type in Presenter. Keynote has a similar feature, but you have to go into the Preferences (in the Keynote menu) to set it up: select Presenter Display and choose, “Use alternate display to view presenter information”.

If you’ve used them, you know these screen gems let presenters have their cake (notes they can review while they present) and eat it too (clean, uncluttered slides). When you do use them, don’t write out your whole speech in the notes area and try to read it. That will bore your audience and strain your eyes. Keep a few, well-chosen cue words there as reminders. They’re probably the words you would have used as bullet points before you knew better.

One downside of these Teleprompter-like aids is that they still break eye contact with your audience. True, you no longer need to turn your back to see what’s on the slide. But you’re still looking at something other than your clients. It’s similar to holding notes in your hands and reading from them. Once audiences figure out that you’re actually reading something, your credibility may suffer somewhat. As long as what you’re saying is valuable to them, though, they’re prone to forgive. Especially with those beautiful, meaningful, clean slides you’re showing them.

Another caution is that anything that increases reliance on technology increases risk of technical failure. Don’t let Presenter Tools lull you into thinking you don’t need to rehearse

4. If you do blank, think of audience INCs

And speaking of things audiences forgive, blanking out is one of them. Most of them have had the experience themselves of losing their train of thought. So if you do find yourself suddenly dunked in a sea of confusion about what you’re supposed to be saying, they’re not going to hold your head under the water. They typically want to hear what you’re offering them.

The life saver ring for you to grab is their previously-mentioned INCs: interests, needs, and concerns. Pause, take a breath, and say something like, “I believe I’ve forgotten what my next point was. If it comes back to me, I’ll make sure I share it with you. However, we were talking about your interest in ___, and” (here you summarize what you’ve said until now and how it helps them). Audiences, I’ve found, are far more sympathetic to this than many people think. They know that your intention is to help them. Give them a chance, and they’ll help you.

There they are: four ways to keep you on track with a compelling story, while you dazzle your audience with the clearest, cleanest slides they’ve ever seen. What a great way to make a great impression on your clients.

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