3 Myths About Corporate Presentations You Need to Forget!
What do roadshows, AGMs, product demos, and vision meetings all have in common? PowerPoint is the way most corporations share visual information during these gatherings.
Do you know another thing they have in common? All too often, the people preparing these meetings fall for the same old misconceptions about what makes these presentations successful.
1. Anyone Can Make a Unique and Compelling Presentation
Just about anyone can get their hands on the PowerPoint app and make a presentation. But let’s face it—if you’re not a professional PowerPoint presentation designer, you’re working at a disadvantage.
Without a designer’s expertise with the program, you’ll probably rely on the basic built-in templates that come with the app.
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with using these templates, it means you’re relying on a template anybody can use to deliver what’s supposed to be an exclusive experience unique to your brand.
For audience members in the know, they’ll be able to spot the built-in templates within seconds, which tells them three unflattering things about you and your brand:
- You don’t have the time to build a unique template
- You don’t have the money to build a unique template
- You don’t care how your company is perceived
If you really want to wow your audience, trade out those built-in templates for custom ones. A presentation designer can create a template from scratch with your brand identity in mind. The result is a professional-quality presentation that looks tailor-made for your engagement.
2. You Should Only Ever Use Infographics and Other Visuals
One of the golden rules of PowerPoint presentations is that you shouldn’t fill your slides with top-to-bottom text, which is how this next myth got its legs.
People worried about overwhelming their audience with words can go too far in the other direction by removing all text from their presentation. What’s left is a deck that only shows graphics, data, and images.
A PowerPoint presentation expert will tell you there’s a happy medium between these two deck styles. While you shouldn’t publish your entire script for each slide, some words can help you tell your story better than images alone.
If you aren’t sure how to strike that balance, contact a PowerPoint presentation company for a consultation. These professionals can provide content consulting, motion graphics and video tips, and presentation training to help you cut the noise and tell a clear story.
3. Technology is the Only Important Part of Your Presentation
With all this talk about templates and viz data, it’s understandable that many people fall for this next trap. They’re so caught up in the look of their presentation that they forget about the actual presentation itself.
Having a sophisticated deck created by presentation designers is certainly an important facet of delivering your presentation. And indeed, a presentation designer will help you develop a strong narrative for your presentation.
However, no matter how far technology advances, there’s still a human element — you!
You’re the one who’s going to have to lead your audience through each slide, so it’s important you focus on good, old-fashioned presentation skills.
Confidence in your topic, eye contact, a strong voice, and assertive body language are just some of the analogue features of a presentation you can’t gloss over with fancy technology.
The Takeaway:
Making and delivering an impactful presentation takes intention — it isn’t something you can slap together, relying on mistaken beliefs or false impressions. Sniff out fact from fiction before you get on stage to be a success at any engagement.
