PowerPoint: My New Secret Weapon

I'm up to my eyebrows in a book called Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate and Inspire, by Cliff Atkinson.

It's not that I have that many opportunities to make PowerPoint presentations these days – they tend to take place in office-like places where people are expected to wear things like pantyhose, which I've sworn off. Because they are evil. (The pantyhose, not the people!)

No, I'm reading this book because it was recommended over at Teaching Sells. Teaching Sells is an online learning program by Brian Clark of CopyBlogger and Tony Clark (not related, but a smart guy nevertheless) on how to develop and market online learning membership sites. (It's a fantastic program, by the way – worth WAY more than what they're charging for it.)

Anyway, one of the tools that Tony recommends for creating online tutorials is PowerPoint, and Cliff Atkinson's book is all about how to avoid boring your participants into a coma with the usual PowerPoint presentation-from-hell approach.

(That's not the only neat thing I've learned about PowerPoint recently—for instance, did you know you can use it to edit Microsoft clip art? You can do everything from changing the color scheme of a clip art composition to adding and removing all or part of an object. I learned that from Tom Kuhlmann at The Rapid eLearning Blog.)

But back to the PowerPoint book: Atkinson writes that the whole secret to making your PowerPoint presentation engaging is to develop the presentation using a simple story-writing approach with very little text (and no bullet points, of course). And as I was playing around with the template, it suddenly occurred to me that the Beyond Bullet Points method might be easily adapted for things other than PowerPoint presentations.

The first five slides set the stage and answer the audience's most pressing questions:

• Setting: Where am I and when is it?
  Example: Across the industry today, returns are declining
  
• Role: Who am I here in this setting?
  Example: You're looking for solutions
  
• Point A: What challenge do I face?
  Example: Your returns will stay flat if you do nothing
  
• Point B: Where do I want to be?
  Example: You want your returns to improve
  
• Call to Action: How do I get from Point A to Point B?
  Example: Hire us to help you find the returns you seek

And then the rest of the presentation expands on the call to action.

This same approach seems like it would be a shortcut for developing a clear, concise core marketing message for a coaching program or product.

In fact, that's exactly what I'm going to try next. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Comments

[Tom]

You might also take a look at Garr's work at Presentation Zen. It's a great addition to Cliff's book. He just published his own book, ironically, titled Presentation Zen. I haven't read it yet, but if it's like his blog, I'm sure it's worth the money.

[Kathy Mallary]

Thanks, Tom --

I read a great review for Garr's new book somewhere recently, so it's already on my reading list. I'll check out his blog, too.

Kathy M.