Agood visual aid is like a good billboard you see on the highway—you get the message even at sixty miles an hour. Visual aids are an integral part of delivering an effective presentation. Good visuals add clarity, aid in telling your story, and make your points both persuasively and memorably.
Visualized information is the easiest way for the speaker to present information and the easiest way for the listener to process and retain it, because approximately 85 percent of learning occurs through sight.
Before creating and using any visual, ask yourself the question: “Will this visual cause the audience to remember the message that surrounds it?” A visual is not a crutch. It is a tool for getting people involved. Science has proven that we think faster than we listen. This means that, during any conversation, your audience’s power of concentration can be wandering in fields unrelated to the program. Proper use of visuals, as an additional stimulus, helps you keep the audience’s attention.
Here are a few general thoughts on visual aids:
1. Image: If done properly, good visuals will enhance your image in the audience’s eyes.
2. Retention: Using good visual aids increases retention.
3. Saving Time: You can frequently save time because “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
4. Rule of Thumb: Use one visual for every three to five minutes of presentation material. Be more than just a “reciting robot.” Create visuals that enable you.
5. Test Ahead of Time: Whenever possible, test the media ahead of time in the environment where you will use it—especially if you are going to use a laptop for fancy visual effects, a soundtrack, or QuickTime® movies.
6. Avoid Too Much Text: You should include only one main point per visual. Key words and phrases are preferable to whole sentences. Your visuals are not dumping grounds for all the information you can’t include in your talk.
7. Use Color: Use color for highlighting, variety, emphasis, or entertainment value. Be careful of using colors that are hard to read like red and yellow. Be sure to check whether color visuals are acceptable in the corporate environment.
8. Limit Typefaces: For best legibility, use clean, simple typefaces. Limit the number of typefaces to two or three styles within a family.
9. Remember: Words are not visuals. Always ask what the visual will show—not what it will say.
Flip Charts
A flip chart is the easiest visual aid to create. It can be done in advance or as the audience responds. Flip charts are not as sophisticated or as professional as slides, but are highly effective when used correctly. The advantages of flip charts are that they are portable, can be displayed for viewing on a continuous basis, can be referred to easily and quickly, and are inexpensive to produce.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR USING FLIP CHARTS
1. Use only if presenting in a classroom or conference room setting with a medium to high interactivity level. Group size should be thirty or less and lighting level should be high.
2. Use graph flip-chart paper because it allows you to make straight lines.
3. Use a blank sheet between prepared pages so the audience cannot read through.
4. Start each prepared set of flip charts with a title sheet.
5. Use high-quality markers that can be easily seen rather than dry erase markers. I recommend carrying your own markers so that you can ensure the quality. I use Sanford Mr. Sketch® scented watercolor markers.
6. Write legibly. Write neatly and large enough (at least one-and-a-half-inch letters) so that your message is easily conveyed.
7. Check your spelling! Nothing will destroy your credibility more than words that are spelled incorrectly.
8. Center the information on the page. In all your visuals the center is the first place the audience will focus. This is where you want your message to be.
9. Use simple pictures rather than words.
10. Draw borders around the page to focus your audience’s attention.
11. Do not speak with your back to the group. Write what you have to, then turn back to the group and begin to speak again.
12. Write light pencil notes in the margins of prepared flip charts. This allows you to expand on items without having to return to your notes.
13. Promote group memory by placing the completed flip charts around the room so that they can easily be referred to throughout the conversation. Also, this passively reinforces the learning taking place in the room.
14. Fold over the lower right or left hand corner of the flip chart page if you want to find that specific page quickly in the pad of paper.
Whiteboard
Often you will have an opportunity to use a whiteboard either at the customer site or in the classroom. The following are some suggestions regarding this tool.
• Make sure the whiteboard is completely clean. Dirty whiteboards look unprofessional.
• To remove permanent marker, use commercial remover, orange juice, or Coca-Cola®.
• Use high-quality dry eraser markers that can be easily seen rather than permanent markers. I recommend carrying your own markers so that you can ensure the quality. Often the markers on-site will be of poor quality and diminish the image of your presentation.
• Write large (at least two inches) and use colors.
• Be consistent with the colors. For example, if a router is red, keep making all the routers red.
• Have an appropriate eraser. Don’t use your hands or clothing.
• Let the customer get involved. Give them the marker and ask them to assist in creating the conversation on the whiteboard.
The Challenge with PowerPoint
PowerPoint is not the presentation . . . you are! You are having a conversation with the audience and in the IT world PowerPoint is one of the primary tools you use to encapsulate and attempt to clearly transmit your thoughts across the space to the audience. Unfortunately, many IT professionals are weak in their ability to effectively deliver a PowerPoint presentation. The purpose of this discussion is to give you some suggestions on how to improve your performance, and I will divide this section into three parts: data, delivery, and structure.
DATA
Data is the food you are going to feed the audience. Before doing the presentation you need to determine whether or not the audience is hungry for the food on your menu. This hunger is the enrollment/WIIIFM conversation from the chapter on Structure where you are determining the need, pain, or disease of the audience. If they don’t have a need, then it would be a mistake to do the presentation. If they do have a need, then your presentation becomes the solution to their problem or the medicine that will cure their disease.
The next thing you need to decide is the amount of food you can feed them during the presentation. A common mistake presenters often make is delivering more food than the audience can digest. The amount of food you can deliver depends on the knowledge level of the audience. For example, if your audience is engineering people, then the amount and complexity of the food can be greater than if you are talking to an audience of sales people. You probably all have sat in a PowerPoint presentation and been overwhelmed by the volume of data being transmitted. I call it PowerPoint abuse or torture by PowerPoint. The result is you zone out and mentally give up trying to understand the conversation. Oversaturating the space with data reduces your effectiveness, lowers the evaluation scores your audience gives you, and builds you a reputation as a boring speaker. Now let’s move to another critical data issue.
The number one barrier that blocks an audience from understanding a speaker’s communication is the misunderstood words. When you analyze PowerPoint slides you often see that they are full of misunderstood words and acronyms. If the audience sees a word or acronym that they don’t understand, they become confused and detached from the conversation. Therefore, in your role as the Manager of the Conversation you need to be very concerned about clarity. Look at your slides. Look at the words and acronyms. Put yourself in the shoes of the audience. Are they going to understand these words and acronyms? If so, great. However, if not, then get rid of them or know that when you show the slide you will need to clarify these words and acronyms. Now let’s look at ways to increase your effectiveness in delivering a PowerPoint presentation.
DELIVERY
Position your laptop so that the screen is facing you and you are facing the audience. This will allow you to maintain eye contact with the audience and reduce the amount of time you have your back turned toward the audience in order to read the slides. Set up your laptop using the Dual Monitor Display feature. This will allow you to see the slide the audience sees, be able to read both your data notes and delivery notes, see the slides that are coming up, and see the digital time display. The following are the steps to set up the Dual Monitor Display feature on your PC and also how to add notes.
DUAL MONITOR DISPLAY
1. Connect the projector to the external monitor port
2. Press Fn + F7
3. Select the “Presenter Mode” profile
4. Start PowerPoint
5. On the Slide Show menu, click Set Up Show
6. In the display slide show on the list, click the monitor you want the show to appear on (for instance the projector or large monitor rather than the presenter’s monitor or laptop)
7. Select the Show Presenter View checkbox
8. Click OK
9. Select Advance Apply New Setting Without Restart
10. Start the slide show
HOW TO WRITE NOTES ON A SLIDE
1. If you are in the “Slide Show” click on “End Show”
2. On the top menu click on View 
Notes Page
3. Add notes under the slide
4. Click on F5, which will return you to the Dual Monitor Display
When delivering PowerPoint slides it is useful to have the ability from time to time to preframe the slide before you show it to the audience. Preframing means telling the audience what they are going to see before they see it. For example: “The next slide I am going to show you focuses in on the three characteristics of a Local Area Network.”
The Dual Monitor Display allows you to preframe by showing you the next slide.
The benefit of preframing is that it makes you look very professional and helps the audience understand the upcoming slide by giving them an extra second or two to access their own knowledge, in this case, of a Local Area Network.
Other useful delivery features in PowerPoint are the “W” key and the “B” key. When you press the “W” key the screen goes white and when you press the “B” key the screen goes black. This is useful when you want to interact with the audience and do not want their attention focused on the PowerPoint slide. You can return to the PowerPoint slide by simply pressing the “W” key or “B” key again.
Another delivery tool which is very useful is the wireless handheld remote that allows you to change the slides without having to walk over to the PC and press a button. The remote gives you the freedom to move anywhere in the room. Some of these remotes have laser pointers built in, as well as the ability to help you control your timing through the use of a feature that vibrates when you have a certain amount of time left in the presentation.
A final delivery tool is the creation of “space packets” or pausing. The “space packet” allows you to relax, breathe, think, and go over to your laptop to read your notes on the Dual Monitor Display. Now let’s shift to the final area, structure.
STRUCTURE
Divide the PowerPoint presentation into three parts: the Introduction, the Body, and the Conclusion. Your first slide is usually the title slide. Use the title slide to introduce yourself and to state the purpose of the presentation. An example of a purpose statement would be: “The purpose of the presentation today is to expand your understanding of Voice Over IP (Internet Protocol).”
The next slide is the enrollment and trial close slide. In enrollment, you are telling the audience why they should pay attention. What is the problem or pain they face in their business that your presentation is a solution for? Once they have agreed that there is a connection between your presentation and their problem, the trial close is the next step you want them to take after the end of the presentation. An example of an enrollment and trial close statement would be:
And why is expanding your understanding of Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) so important? Because last week when we met you said that your network administrative costs were too high and the network downtime was too much. And we agreed that you needed something or some method to resolve those issues. I asked for the opportunity to present our solution to you, which is what today’s presentation is all about. Now, if I can demonstrate to your satisfaction that our solution will work, then at the end of the presentation what I propose is that we move to the next step, which would be to install our solution in your network. Does that sound fair to you?
You don’t necessarily need to actually create this enrollment/trial close slide but you do need to have this conversation in the Introduction section of the presentation.
The third slide in the Introduction is the agenda slide. This lists the items you will be addressing (which include your key points), Q&A (if you have one), and the Conclusion.
Now transition to your first point in the Body by highlighting the first point in the agenda slide. Then deliver your data using the PowerPoint slides. You can reduce the number of words on the slide by making them your notes in the Dual Monitor Display. When the slide appears you look at your PC, gather your thoughts from the notes, and then add that value to the conversation. Once you have finished your slides in point number one, transition to your second point by bringing back the agenda slide and highlighting point number two. Follow this procedure until you have finished all your points. If you are having a Q&A session put this at the end of the Body and before the Conclusion.
After the Q&A transition to your Conclusion. The Conclusion should be two slides. The first slide restates the purpose, listing your key points and maybe one thing you want the audience to remember about each point. The final slide (if appropriate) is your Call For Action or your Next Step slide. You introduce this slide by saying something like:
At the beginning of the presentation we agreed that if I could show you that our solution would satisfy your needs you would be ready to move to the next step. Based on your feedback throughout the presentation we have accomplished that goal and now I want to move to the next step, which is sign the purchase order.
In actual fact the Next Step could be many things, such as: meet with senior management, do a demonstration, attend a seminar, go to the Executive Briefing Center, become a Beta test site, etc. You can end the presentation with “Thank you” and let them know, if appropriate, that a copy of the slides will be available as a handout at the door.
This information on structure is also discussed in chapter three, where you can find a more detailed outline of presentation slides.
This completes the section on the Challenge of PowerPoint by addressing the issues of data, delivery, and structure.
Finally, always remember: You are the most important visual aid.