We spend this episode diving deep in the best practices for using visuals in your presentations. We are not talking about how to create powerpoints or visuals but how do you use your visuals in a manner where you stay the center of attention. People buy you before they buy your visual aids.
Show Notes:
We’ve been hitting a gamut of communication topics. Now, if you’ve been following me, there were three major buckets that we would spend time around. The first bucket was around this idea of delivery, physically, how you come across the second bucket was around crafting content, your message, your presentation, your keynote speech, and the third was around interaction.
[00:02:05] Today. I want to take us deep into this idea of the way we use our visuals. I am not going to spend a lot of time giving you tips and tricks on how to create your PowerPoint slide. I’m going to give you a high-level overview of that, but where I want to spend the heart of my time with you is how we use our visuals.
[00:02:27] Not how do we create our visuals? The University of Illinois did a study on the use of visual AIDS. Guys. They found that someone who uses visual AIDS is 85%. They are 85% more effective than someone who doesn’t use their visual AIDS. So the question you and I have to ask ourselves is not whether I can use visuals for my presentation, my meeting, my talk, my virtual webcast, my zoom session.
[00:02:58] That’s not the question. The question becomes, how do I use them in such a manner that I stay the center of attention. Guys, just from my experience of helping folks for over the last 30 years, it is critical, no matter what communication channel that you’re using, that you stay the center of attention.
[00:03:20] I want you to remember that people buy you before they buy visual AIDS. I want you to remember that people buy from people that they like, and I want you to remember that people buy from people. They don’t buy from companies. So when we slap up a bunch of slides, and you thought you have the ability to sell your company, your solution, tool, or product, you’re missing the Mark.
[00:03:45] They’re going to buy you first. And then they’re going to get your visuals. Now, those visuals could be PowerPoint, a whiteboard, a chalkboard, or a handout. It could be a prop, whatever you decide to bring to the table. As we walked through this brief session today, I’d like you to do two things for me.
[00:04:03] I want you to take two paradigms shifts, a paradigm shift. Number one, I want you to think differently about how you craft a slide and paradigm shift. Number two, I want you to think differently about how you use the visual. Now, if you’ll do those two things for me, here’s what I think you’re going to find.
[00:04:24] Number one, you stay the center of attention. You stay at the focal point. Number two, you’re going to find that engagement goes through the ceiling when you make these paradigm shifts. And most importantly, in my mind, you’ll increase your ability to influence people. Now want you to remember something. John Maxwell said that leadership is nothing more, nothing less than pure influence, guys.
[00:04:50] What we do when we use our visuals when communicating, we are influencing people. We are taking them from point a to point B. We’re taking them from a place where they are uncertain to a place where they are searching. And I want you to remember primarily right to sound now for me, that the purpose of the visual aid is to enhance your content period, visual laser, not your notes, but that’s how most people end up using their visuals.
[00:05:22] Now, in our segment today, I’m going to break it into two major buckets. The first bucket I’m going to cover just some tips and tricks that may help you craft your slides. These are very simple ideas that will keep you the center of attention. Then I’m going to spend the majority of our time together, really talking about how to use those visual AIDS in such a manner that you stay the center of attention.
[00:05:46] You keep your audience engaged, and you keep this idea that it’s a conversation. Let’s look at the first idea that I want to share with you around crafting your slides: idea number one, one idea per visual. So if I’m looking at your slide, if you’re crafting a slide that should communicate one idea, you could have five bullet points on there.
[00:06:12] Six bullet points, whatever you decide. You’re going to have a cartoon. You can have a quote at the bottom, but as long as all those things on that one slide communicate one idea. Then your wedding. The second one, I call the golden rule. The title must convey the essence of the slide. I should be able to read the title of your slide guys and know exactly what you’re talking about.
[00:06:39] So many times, I see people bring up a slide and you read the title, and when you’re trying to make a connection to what’s in the body of the slide. And there’s no connection. You should be able to look at the title of that slide and know exactly what I’m going to be talking about. Now, I want to make an application with that idea to a whiteboard.
[00:06:59] How many times have you walked into a business meeting, maybe you walked in late, and there’s a bunch of things on the whiteboard, and there is no title on that whiteboard, and you sit down, and you’re trying to catch up, but you have no idea what that person’s discussing. If you will put a title on your whiteboard and then put underneath it, whatever you want if you will put
[00:07:20] a
[00:07:20] Bart Queen: title on your flip chart, title on your chalkboard, I don’t care what you’re doing up there.
[00:07:24] If you’re handwriting, put a title and then put everything in it. The principle applies one idea per visual. So whatever you put up on that whiteboard, you’ve got a title, and then everything underneath it should be communicating around that single idea, goals, and rule number three, no more than seven words in a title.
[00:07:47] Now I know as you’re thinking, Bart, that’s a lot of words in a title. Yes. I’m trying to think maximum here for you, especially for those folks of you who are in technology. When you need several words, now, seven in the title can include an, a, or XY. So you may need those kinds of simple words.
[00:08:07] And that’s why I’m allowing you to expand and did that total idea of seven words per title. So let’s look at what I’ve given you. One idea for visual, the title. It must convey the essence of the slide and no more than seven words in a title. So let’s look at the next golden rule. I want you to think about this.
[00:08:31] One is critical, and this is where I get the biggest pushback. Pictures are better than text. Pictures are better than text, or you’ve heard the old saying that one.
[00:08:42] picture
[00:08:43] Bart Queen: is worth a thousand words. So I’m going to ask you a question. When you think of someone in the marketplace that you said, do a tremendous job with pictures in what I would call their presentations, who comes to mind.
[00:09:01]the person that comes to my mind was Steven jobs. Think about when he launched a new Apple product; he was in his teens, black uniform, black t-shirt, black turtleneck, black jeans, black shoes up on stage, age, very conversational behind him, when he launched a product, typically a bunch of pictures.
[00:09:23] Cause he knew that you would identify with the picture, glance to it, and stay focused on him. The other brilliant thing that he did was he would put music behind it. So you and I both know that when you see a picture, and you hear some type of music, you get an emotional connection. Steven’s jobs were brilliant at the principal.
[00:09:46] That people buy with emotion, and they verify with facts, and he drove that whenever he did his presentations. Now, for those of you in the technical world, you’re thinking, okay, Bart, if I bring up a picture, I can talk about it. Still, if I’m going to leave something behind for my customer or my client, they’re going to look at those pictures and not make any connection.
[00:10:11] You’re correct. And I’m with you a hundred percent, which leads us to the next golden rule. And that golden rule is what I call the double-deck idea. Guys, do me a favor, write that down the double-deck idea. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to create a deck that you put Warren peace on.
[00:10:32] Make sure that there’s no white space if that’s what you feel like you need to do. Create the second deck that follows the golden rules that I’m sharing with you now; between the two decks, two things have to be the same. The titles have to be the same, and the slide number has to be the same. What changes?
[00:10:55] It’s what in the body of the slide. Now in your technical world, notice you get to give your client your technical person. You’re Mr. R and D miss R and D. You get to give them the information they need, but when you’re doing the talk, you’re sharing information, you’re keeping people engaged by seeing your picture.
[00:11:19] I am not saying that every single slide has to be a picture. I am saying that a picture can speak a thousand words. Now I want to bring one more note in with this one. When you are watching someone share PowerPoint, and there’s a bunch of text on the slide nine times out of 10, who is the communicator or the presenter in your words, who are they connected to?
[00:11:47] Are they connected to the audience, or are they connected to the slide? Again guys, most of the time, if there are many words on the text, the presenter, the communicator, is connected to the slide because they’re reading the slide. Whereas if you have a picture nine times out of 10, you’ve turned, and you’re just talking about the picture to your audience now, which creates more impact, of course, you being connected to your audience, not reading your slides.
[00:12:19] Guys, if you’re listening to this podcast, if I find out just by chance, if somebody comes and tells me, wow, they were reading the slide, I’m going to find you. I’m going to hunt you down, and I’m going to hurt you because it is the number one complaint by executives—people who read the slide. Your slide is not your notes.
[00:12:41] Your audience is perfectly capable of reading. You don’t need to read it. Pictures are better than text. So now, with that thought in mind, let’s just look at an example of what would be typical text possibly on a slide. So if we were looking at a slide on average, you’re going to see anywhere six, seven, eight, maybe nine, ten bullet points that people will put up there.
[00:13:07] So if I was to ask you what would be a golden rule for the maximum now, bullet points on a slide. What number would you come back and give me. I’ve heard people say three; I’ve heard people say seven. I’ve heard people say five. Three is beautiful if you can get three bullet points on a slide and be cool with that.
[00:13:27] That is awesome. But in your world, I’m going to let you go a little bit more five guys. No more than five bullet points per slide. Now, hold on. I’m going to ask one more question. How many words per bullet point, how many words per bullet point. A lot of people will say three. Some people will say seven.
[00:13:50] Again, some people will say five, five is a correct answer. So here’s your golden rule. I want you to make a note of it’s what we call the five by five rule, the five by five rule. So if you think about it, five bullet points with five words per bullet point, that’s roughly 25 words. And if you think about seven words in a title, that’s a total of 32 words.
[00:14:13] Yes. It’s a huge amount of text to put on a slide. Now, if you can come to me and you were asking me a coaching point and said Bart, I need seven bullet points, but I’m only giving you three words for a bullet point, I would say, okay, stretch it then. Cause you’re only at 21 words, the idea DIA is no more than 25 in the body of that slide.
[00:14:34] So if you need to do a variation with that, don’t worry about that. If you will stick to these simple golden rules and you have one slide that has more or a title that has more, don’t worry about that. That becomes the exception to the rule and not your general rule. Now the next two golden rules, you will not like me for, and this is one of the both of these, or when I get people just cringe in their seat, no bullet points.
[00:15:50]no sub-points. I love the guy. That’s got five bullet points and three sub-points under every major point too much. Now back to the double-deck idea, guys, if you want to do a double-deck idea, do that, put your sub-points on there. Fine, because remember that’s the deck you’re giving them.
[00:16:13] That is not the deck you’re showing. Your sub-point should be the things that you naturally talk about and have a conversation around. The second thing you’re not going to like is this; if you put it on the slide, you have to talk about it. If you put it on the slide, you have to talk about it. How many times is somebody brought up a slide, say they had seven bullet points on it, and only talk about four of them.
[00:16:40] And in your mind as a listener, you’re going, why didn’t they talk about those? Those must not have been important, or maybe you even thought the presenter, the communicator, doesn’t even know their slides. All you did by doing that was creating doubt. And you’re lessening your credibility. Now, if I chance team, just by chance, you are Jen, and the person who invited you said.
[00:17:06] Bart. I’m sorry. I know we gave you an hour, but your time has been cut in half. Apologize. The person who spoke before you, Joe, spoke way too long. And so your time is good. Cut short. Okay. No worries. You’re not going to be able to hit every single bullet point. So at the front end of your presentation, your talk, whatever you’re doing, I want you to mention that.
[00:17:29] I want you to just say something simple today. My time has been cut short. I’m not going to be able to hit every single bullet point. Like I had planned. I’m going to hit the top three or four. Now, if by chance, after this is over, you’d like me to go back and address any of those key points. Those bullet points I’m more than happy to.
[00:17:50] Now, let me ask you the question, the critical question. As I go through my slides and I skip a bullet point, does it bother you? No, because I set it up on the front end that I couldn’t cover it. That’s what we call a logistical square. Anytime you do your talk, a presentation, a meeting you’re going to do, I would have a logistical square or what you may call housekeeping, where you put that kind of information before you launch into the meat of your information.
[00:18:20] That’s square in my mind covers many sins—those kinds of examples. When someone says your time has been cut short, So let me review just right here what I’ve covered. No more than five bullet points. No more than five words per bullet point. No sub-points. And if you put it on the slide, you have to talk about it.
[00:18:41] The caveat to all that is your double deck idea. Suppose that’s what you’d like to do to give the technical person, whoever you want to have all of the minutia details.
[00:18:51]Now, let’s go to another golden rule. And this is the one where it’s the second major complaint by executives. How many times have you heard someone say, I know you can’t read this, but let me tell you what it says, team. This is another one. If I ever hear that you say that I’m going to find you and hurt you again.
[00:19:12] Your slide has to be easy to see and easy to read. Now I love the guy that uses the 12 point font. When he’s speaking to an audience of 2,500 and the guy in the back row can’t even read it. And that’s when the person says; I know you can’t read this. Let me tell you what it says. All you do is let your credibility go down.
[00:19:35] When you make that kind of a comment. Here’s just a thought. If you’re going to speak at a conference, Get a hold of the conference coordinator, ask them to send you the schematic of the drawing of the room that you will be in. Now realize that when you go to convention halls, you go to major hotels, they have to do a diagram of what that room looks like from a setup perspective.
[00:20:01] Is there a stage or no stage where the door is where the water station is? Where the microphone is where the screen is going to be. They have to lay all that out. And there’s this comedic drawing. It will give you the length and width of the room. Ask them to send you that then base your font size on that drawing.
[00:20:28] Now, if you were just going to a client site, there are two key questions that you should always ask. Number one, what’s the logistical setup. If you ask that question, the client who’s asking you to come in and I’ll say, it’s a little boardroom table. No, it’s one of our bigger conference rooms that hold a hundred.
[00:20:49] They’ll give you the idea that you can walk in the door with the appropriate font size. Now, when it comes to font size, If I’m going to walk into someone’s office and just do a one-on-one just a one on one with someone, I can’t encourage you. Enough team, no smaller than an 18 point font. Now that’s just sitting across a desk with someone and talking and sharing and bantering back and forth and showing some slides.
[00:21:20] But if I chance you’re going to go to a client site in a larger group format, your rule of thumb is this bigger is always better. Bigger is always better.
[00:21:31] You
[00:21:31] Bart Queen: want to make sure the readability factor is high. If someone has to strain to read your slides, you’re in trouble, and God helps us. If the executive gets up out of the chair and walks to the screen because he can’t read or she can’t read what’s up there, you might as well just walk out the door because your credibility is now lost.
[00:21:54] Now that leads us to one more question around this font size idea, the maximum number of fonts, the personalized maximum number of fonts per slide. Most people will tell me your rule of thumb is three-one in the title, two in the body. Now what I mean by two in the body is this, your bullet points are probably going to be one size, and they’ll all be uniform.
[00:22:24] If by chance, you need a pie chart, a bar graph, you might want to label that. So you’ve got a label part of the pie chart or the bar graph. That’s where you get to the third font. Do me a favor and make sure all your title fonts are the same size. So if you, by chance, have a longer title and you have to reduce the font size by one or two, whatever you do, then make sure you reduce them all to the same.
[00:22:49] Keep them consistent. You get more of a uniform picture when you do that.
[00:22:55]Now probably the other issue that comes up a lot. And for most of us out in the marketplace today, your company dictates what your background colors are. When I first got involved in the marketplace, if you remember way back at the beginning of PowerPoint, most of the time, it was a dark background in light text.
[00:23:16] And if you remember, when you used to go to print, you had to go to gray scale today for the majority of companies that I interface with, it’s all a lighter background. Sometimes it’s just a pure white, maybe it’s a light cream, or sometimes I’ve even seen the light blue. If you’re doing something more socially, you’re doing something at your church group at a boy scout group, a girl scout group, something you do with your children.
[00:23:42] You’re speaking at an association, think through the background color and the font. If you have the freedom to do it, most people today are doing it: lighter background and Adar, a darker print, darker font. If I’m dealing with an elderly audience, I typically do a darker font and light or print because it pops out and stands out better.
[00:24:09] If my client said, Bart, I got to tell you the room was dark. Then I’m going to do that lighter background. Cause I want to flood the room with a ton of light. This becomes a personal choice, depending on what you’re trying to do. Think it through from a listener’s perspective, not from your perspective.
[00:24:27] From a listener’s perspective. If everything we do is we create our slides is more listener focused. You’ll find that you’re far more effective. Now that brings me to the last two points. I want to talk about crafting a slide. When you craft a slide, each slide, you should ask two critical questions.
[00:24:49] First critical question. What’s the point I’m trying to make. This is where you’re tying in your bullet points and your title. So I should be able to look at my title and look at my bullet points and articulate the point I am trying to make with that slide. The second, yeah, you want to ask yourself is what’s the impact that you’re trying to create?
[00:25:14] Let me give you an example. Let’s say that I had gone to a major company and did a presentation to an executive group, and the CEO came up and said, Bart, this was fantastic. I enjoyed it. My son is a senior in high school, and he’s involved in an entrepreneurial club. Could you take this presentation and present it to his club?
[00:25:38] I think it would be a huge value to them. And of course, you’re probably going to say yes. So when you go back to your office, and you’re going slide by slide, you’re asking yourself these two questions. What’s the point? What’s the impact. The point’s probably not going to change, but when you ask yourself the impact, it might.
[00:26:01] You’re going from an executive audience to a group of high school students. So you decide to put a video clip in, you decide to add some animation behind it. You decide to add a cartoon to it because, with the high school students, your goal to entertain is higher with them than it may have been with that executive audience.
[00:26:26] So please remember that there are always two choices. As we think through what we do, there’s educated and entertained with the executives. The majority was educating low on entertainment, high school students. It’s the vert reverse high on that entertainment, and I’m still educating, but a little bit higher on that internet entertainment to make it more engaging for them.
[00:26:51] The last point I want to give you is what I call a guesstimation tool. I want you to guesstimate based on the timeframe that you have been given, the number of slides you should have. So let’s start with this idea of a 60-minute time slot. If I was to ask, you’ve got 60 minutes to come present to my team or my company, one slide per tire.
[00:27:17] How much timeframe would be your golden rule as a guesstimation? Now, this is where, when I’m teaching class, everybody’s all over the board. Some people will say one slide for 10 minutes. That would be great, but probably pretty real unrealistic. And someone will say one slide per five minutes. And so we’ll, that’s tremendous.
[00:27:36] That’s. That’s great in your technical world. I still don’t think that’s realistic. Your guesstimation guiding principle is this one slide for two to three minutes. Now I am not saying you have to talk about each slide for two to three minutes. I am saying that you look at your timeframe of, let’s say 60 minutes, and you do one slide per two to three minutes.
[00:28:02] If we go to the maximum. Of two minutes, that gives you about 30 slides. Now, if you said, great, I’m going to say wrong because there’s something I want you to factor in that we have not. If I gave you a 60-minute time slot, I want you to factor out your banter or your Q and a time. Let’s say example, we’ve got 60 minutes, and you said, Bart, I want 15 minutes to banter and do Q and a at the end.
[00:28:32] Okay. Forty-five minutes is your real-time. Then now, I do one slide per two to three minutes. Now I’m at 22, 23, somewhere along in there for the maximum number of slides. Now you’re not going to like me on this point either. That includes your title slide, guys. That includes a slide that people put up that says questions or Q and a, why you need a slide that says questions on it.
[00:28:59] You just can’t ask your audience. I don’t get it, but you see it all the time. Transition slides. When you go from 0.1 to point to that count. If you bring up a slide with your email address on it, or a link where they can download something that you’re sending to them that counts one slide for two to three minutes, make sure you back out your Q and a time.
[00:29:23] Now, what if someone said, I’ll give you 30 minutes. What’s the maximum amount of time. That you should have the maximum amount of slides you should have in 30 minutes, executive-level audience, 30 minutes, no more than 10 CEO magazine recently came out with an article that said this. If you’re going to come in and speak with an executive-level audience, come in and tell us a story.
[00:29:50] Do not bring in PowerPoint.
[00:29:52]Learn to tell your personal story more effectively and learn to tell your company story more effectively when your time gets shorter like that. Don’t walk in with a bunch of PowerPoint. Now, what if the executive says, I’ll give you 10 minutes or 15 minutes? How many slides, if they’re going only to give you 10 minutes team.
[00:30:15] No slides, walk-in, tell the story, grab their attention, and then you can come back in. If you get that executive team to say, wow, that’s interesting. Bart, a Ru, tell me more. We want you to come back. You have one. If you walk in the door, set up your laptop and try to show a bunch of PowerPoint in 10 minutes, and you have lost them in.
[00:30:36] They’re not engaged. You’ve missed your opportunity. People buy from people. They don’t buy from the PowerPoint slides they buy from you. So when you walk in that short amount of time, you should be trying to build your likability factor and your trust factor. And that factor that says me too. I’m interested.
[00:30:54] Tell me more now, guys, in this segment, I’ve had an opportunity to give you some golden rules around slides. Just some simple things, nothing written in stone, guys, nothing that’s coming off the mountain. These are just simple ideas that keep you the center of attention. So when you think about the average room that you end up having to present or communicate in, you’re at a boardroom table, dead center in the room is that screen.
[00:31:26] If you go into modern training rooms today, you will see that the screens are off to the side. Suppose you will think about major awards shows, the Grammys, the Academy Awards, the country music awards. If you think about those big award shows, where are the screens off to the side? Now there may be one screen way above the stage.
[00:31:49] Those though that slide, that screen is for the PE people up in the nosebleed. That way, they can see who’s up there on the stage presenting. But what should be the dead center is you; everything I’ve shared with you in this segment has been about keeping you the center of attention. So I come back to what I started with in this session, guys, the number one thing you need to do is keep yourself in the center of attention.
[00:32:19] People are going to buy from you. What I want you to do is apply this principle. The next time you have to create a slide deck, think through each one of those and do your best to map to those golden rules as closely as you can. Here’s what I think you’re going to find. Number one, that audience is sitting on the edge of their seat, waiting for you to share more and more.
[00:32:42] You will find that they’re looking at you and not looking at the slide. You’re going to find that the banter is both ways instead of this one-way thing where you’re going slide after slide. More importantly, you’re going to find that your ability to influence that audience goes from point a to point B, and it is exponentially far greater.
