Avoiding the Great PowerPoint Slide Hunt

This PowerPoint tip takes just 120 seconds to learn and can make you look like a real pro.

This may seem like "PowerPoint 101," but fewer than 10% of the CXO presenters I have coached knew this trick before I shared it with them. 

Try it; it's very cool!

One of the things that drives me crazy when I am an attendee at a presentation is when someone in the audience asks a question and the presenter says, "I have a slide here somewhere that addresses that," and then proceeds to flip forward and backward through the slides, flashing them all on the screen and looking like a rank amateur while appearing flustered on the Great PowerPoint Slide Hunt.

When they finally do find the elusive slide, they talk to it, and then they have to click madly back to where they were, flashing on screen all intermediate slides as they go. Any pretext of "presenter cool" has just vanished, usually taking some -- or all -- of the presenter's self-confidence with it.

Never let that happen to you, or at least not while I am in the audience!

Before your presentation, make a simple, small discreet list maybe on a 3 X 5 card, of all of your slide titles with their respective slide numbers; like this example:

    1-   Welcome
    2-   Company overview
    3-   Players, problem & pain
    4-   Pain killer
    5-   Our magic technologies
    6-   Competition
    7-   Business model
    8-   Go to market plans
    9-   Revenue summary
    10- Team
    11- Timeline & status   
    12- Why Us Summary

  Backups (to be used only as needed*)
    13- Expanded market data
    14- Technical details, expanded view
    15- Financial details
    16- Revenue details
    17- Etc.
    18- Etc.

Now you are all set to look like a professional, perhaps even a genius with ESP.

Example 1: You are just finishing talking about slide 9 (revenue summary) and someone asks for more revenue details. Without missing a beat you glance at your list, and press 16 and Enter - - you are instantly seeing that slide (revenue details). When you're done, you simply do a 10 and Enter and you're back to your original flow. 

To the audience it looked like the revenue details slide was always immediately after the revenue summary.  Only you know that this is what really happened: . . . 7, 8, 9, 16, 10, 11, etc.

Example 2: You are on the summary slide 12 and a question comes up about your patent-pending technologies. With a simple 5 and Enter you can return to the slide where that was discussed, or jump ahead to a more detailed explaination with a 14 and Enter. After that discussion, a 12 and Enter will return you directly to the summary slide.

You can totally avoid the Great PowerPoint Slide Hunt and jump to any slide at any time, if you just know what slide number you want. Referring to your discreet slide list, simply press the desired slide number and Enter. You can hop-scotch all around your presentation at will.

   * CAUTION: backup slides seem to have a magical, hyponotic power over the presenter, as though part of the presenter's brain says "I went to all the work to make these, so darn it, I am going to show them whether they are needed or not!" Only use the backup slides if they are really needed. Now you know how to make them appear seamlessly in the right place at the right time.

 

Comments

[S. Lee]

This hint has helped my PP presentations flow much more smoothly. Thanks for sharing! (I've shared this with many co-workers, and every one of them was delighted to add this to their PP 'bag of tricks'.)