Debbie Mayo-Smith: Visuals persuade others to see it your way

If you want to sell more, get that contract or persuade people, don't allow your visuals to let you down in 2010.

Before the Christmas break, I went to the monthly National Speakers Association meeting. Colleague John Shackelton was educating his fellow speakers about creating modern, visually exciting presentations to complement the spoken word.

I'm sure your sales team have made appealing presentations. Hopefully, you've embedded videos, added music and used interesting transitions. All easy to do. Everyday. Even old hat.

John said, and I concur: "To be exceptional and stand out in 2010, your presentation visuals must be TV-like."

Here are eight tips to power up your success.

Present like Steve Jobs

I was inspired by John but I also bought Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo. Here is a link to a must-view five-minute video highlighting Steve's presentation secrets.

Challenge yourself/your team

I've made a 2010 promise; I've kissed bullet points goodbye. Don't be lazy and show charts and small text. Put charts into context. Numbers mean nothing, so interpret them for your audience. For example, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPod, it wasn't a device with 8 gig of memory. It was 1000 songs in your pocket.

Interesting transitions

Do Google searches with terms like "animated presentation", "best PowerPoints" or "PowerPoint animation tips". Microsoft has many online as templates.

Outsource if possible

You or your team can roll up your sleeves and start creating new slides. However, I suggest putting an advertisement in student job search (www.sjs.co.nz) or similar for someone to do it for you.

Why? If you want a presentation that will thrill the 20-somethings (who could be Twittering about you as you speak), why not have a 20-something do it? They have the creative skills and experience.

Furthermore, what is your time worth? If it's worth more than you would pay for help, don't do it yourself.

Set up a Master

Save yourself a massive amount of time. Create your design on one slide rather than redoing the font, background, logo and colour over and over again for all slides. Use the Slide Master and Handout Master features.

Screen shot it

If you're using images or screen shots, crop, crop, crop whenever you can.

You do this to focus your audience's attention on the point you're making - and to help those at the back see.

Avoid live demos

I never do presentations incorporating live demos or internet links. Too often, things go wrong. It takes too long waiting for links to download and you're constrained to showing the whole webpage.

A better way is to prepare your presentation, go through each step of the demo (first capture it with a screen shot), then crop the screen shot to enlarge and focus on the point at hand.

Screen shots are as simple as hitting the PrtScn button and Control + V to paste into a PowerPoint slide. Select the screen shot, trim it, then stretch it to it the slide.

Always, always prepare for disaster

Make sure you let the host know beforehand if you have sound incorporated into your presentation.

Arrive early, because often the audio/video message hasn't been relayed to the technicians on site.

Copy your presentation onto a memory stick as well as a CD. Many modern laptops do not have CD/DVD players.

Upload your presentation to your webmail and leave it in a draft email. You want it held online, not sent to you, in case your computer dies or gets stolen. Prepare a simple outline that's large enough for you to scan from the lectern to ease your way through a power cut.

Debbie Mayo-Smith is a bestselling author and international speaker. You can get your copy of her new book at bookstores or for $18 at www.debbiespeaks.co.nz/books.htm. Twitter mseffective