I’m currently working on a PowerPoint to present to potential sponsors for a new replacement team in my area, along with putting together a small package to give to them. I’ve only created and presented one powerpoint in the past, and that was for school some time back. I’ve never done a professional presentation before.
Generally, how long should this be? I don’t want it to be too short, but would rather not bore them with a lot of useless junk just to fill time. How many minutes should it last?
Also, any tips on what should or shouldn’t go into the powerpoint?
FIRST has some power point presentations already prepared. You are welcome to download and adapt for your uses. You could use the global info here and then add info about your team. http://www.usfirst.org/community/resourcecenter.aspx?id=952
Less is better than more. Allow time for follow-up questions. 15-20 minutes for the presentation is good. [NOTE: this will be hard. It’s not much time.]
Be sure to practice in front of people first. Team members and mentors would be great. It seems that people always underestimate how much time they take. Don’t just read the slides. They are there as background.
Good luck!
Thanks. The first thing I did was download the powerpoint from FIRST, then basically changed the look and added some things relative to our team (sponsorship tiers, etc).
Also thanks for the tip on practicing in front of people.
If you have the time try to make 3 versions of the same presentations.
a 10 -15 minute presentation, a 3-5 minute presentation, and a 30 second “elevator” presentation. we have found that when we make these long 20 minutes presentations we never get that far, and that most of our money comes from these 30 second talks with people we meet along the street.
also try and put the most important and eye catching stuff in the first minute, this is when most people will make up their minds about you. ( Remember only Steve Jobs can get away with putting the cool stuff at the end)
Thanks for the advice. I might make at least another, shorter version. Right now I’ve got a few people helping me out as far as knowing what to put on the slide and what to leave out for the speaker.
By the way, just out of curiosity, what would you (or have you) put into the first minute? Information about FIRST/FRC itself? The needs of the team?
Also, any tips on what should or shouldn’t go into the powerpoint?
One thing I see a lot of people do that really bugs me is putting basically a transcript of what they say into a powerpoint, then reading their own slides off word for word. This is really boring / annoying to me, as the slide becomes redundant and it’s like there’s no point in the speaker even being there.
This is all excellent advice. Where I work, I have the privilege (you could call it that) of giving power point presentations to customers, managers, and co-workers fairly regularly. Here’s my advice:
Studies have shown that listeners are most attentive at the beginning and end of a presentation. The middle is usually the part that is most easily forgotten. So choose the most important points for the very beginning and end of your presentation.
Too many people put too much information on a slide. The slides are a backdrop for visual aids and key points - not the presentation itself. The focus should be on the presenter, not his slideshow.
In general, a slide has four parts:
a. The title. Don’t underestimate the importance of a slide title! It is roughly 20% of your screen real estate - don’t waste it! Try to use titles that convey a message rather than stating the purpose of the slide in a general way. Which sounds better as a slide title: “Mission Statement” or “Inspiring the Next Generation of Engineers”?
b. The visual aid. Not all slides have one, but a picture, flow chart, or other multimedia aspect usually gets about half of the space on a slide. The visual should support whatever you are talking about (obviously).
c. Talking points (often in bullet form). Don’t try to put sentences in a slide. Stick to main ideas and let the details come out during your talk.
d. A takeaway. A lot of people neglect this part, but I think it is important. Consider adding a one-line blurb of text at the bottom of the slide - this summarizes the overall message of the slide. If your listener remembers one thing from a slide, it should be this takeaway. Think of a slide as a standard “Intro-Body-Conclusion” formulation. The introduction is the title. The body is the visual and talking points. The conclusion is the takeaway.
Know your audience. This is without a doubt the trickiest part of a presentation. I have briefed my own managers, external customers, and my own engineering co-workers on the same project, but each type of audience requires a completely different approach. Engineers want technical details; managers want the bottom line; customers want to know how your solution can benefit them. With a potential sponsor, this part can be especially tricky - you have no idea what they are looking for.
Do they legitimately care about inspiring kids to become engineers? If so, stick to the main FRC “company line”. Or would showing the myriad ways that a student can be inspired (web design, animation, CAD, presentation skills) be more effective? Do they care about how a donation would benefit them via logo placement or tax writeoffs? In general, you won’t have a sure answer to these questions prior to presenting - so you should try to paint as broad a picture as possible and be prepared with more details upon prompting. Which brings me to…
Have backup slides. Often I put these at the end of my presentation after a “buffer” slide. Due to time I often can’t say everything pertinent to my topic during my presentation and instead need to do a shallow overview. But come Q&A time, I can whip out a new chart or have more detailed information available. Doing this both helps you to not have to think on your feet quite as quickly, and it really impresses your audience.
Everyone who’s attended a boring presentation (and yours certainly won’t be one ;)) knows the importance of slide numbering. If you let people know you’re boring them but it’s already slide 20/23, you will be OK. It’s just a nice thing to have on the corner of the slide to inform the audience their pain will be over soon - I find it to be a gentle move by the presenter, and I certainly appreciate a presentation with this.
I hate to disagree with another’s suggestion, but this seems to have the opposite effect on me. If a powerpoint is 23 slides…and I’m on slide 8, I’m thinking “how long is this going to go on for?”…and if I’m on slide 20, I’m thinking “yay, almost lunch time”. Either way, the numbers tend to make me think more about the time that is passing rather then what is being said. I even get to the point of trying to use it to predict when the speech will be over.
Admittedly, I am terrible with powerpoint presentations. This is mainly due to the assumption many presenters make. A lot seem to think, “I’ve given you the bullet point and pictures, you should be interested by now”. This isn’t true. It is still VERY important how you say everything. You can take a perfect powerpoint and do horrible, if you do a poor job presenting it. And you can take a terrible powerpoint and do amazing if you do a great job presenting it.
The trick to Powerpoint presentations(as with all presentations) is in the way you present it. The substance of the speech is only second to the way it is being conveyed. Think of it as a delivery. The perfect gift is horrible if it gets broke in the mail. And if a lousy gift comes with lots of bubble wrap, it could still be awesome.
My points:
Try to remove all distractions. (sometimes you have to give them no choice but listen)
Don’t assume people are interested.
A powerpoint is always as good or bad as the speaker.
Hmm, the advice here to move towards MORE media in the presentation is contrary to some other people that helped me out. But at the same time, FIRST teams know more about what a FIRST team would need.
So, on to our photo gallery!
Also, for those of you who had multiple people perform the presentation, how did you organize that? Did you write down the key points on notecards and studied them (obviously not using them during the actual presentation)? How did you handle whose turn it is to speak? I’m assuming the entire presentation was segmented and delegated?
I am working on a presentation for the Kiwanis for Wednesday right now. We have three presenters doing 5 minutes each on the following topics; First, the Team, the Competition. We are opening with the video that opened last years competition. After the presentation we will be demonstrating the robot.
Each presenter is putting together index cards with notes on their presentation. This weekend we will do a couple of dry runs to perfect the presentation and work on timing.
I’m attaching a link to the presentation in its current form, about 95% complete.
The trick to media is balance. If used properly, pictures really enhance a presentation. But avoid having whole slides that are just pictures. This really detracts from it. Also, I find that you should always talk a minimum of 3X the amount of time they are watching a video. For instance, the animation that we are given at the beginning is a good video length. A match might be good. But together the presentation would become less personal.
Oh I didn’t plan on replacing it all with pictures and videos. But my current revision has paragraphs of text, with few multimedia pieces. Just need to cut down the text to simple bullet points and maybe add a video.
