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It's tempting, especially among older businesspeople, to gripe about PowerPoint "ruining" or dumbing-down the business presentation.

However, fundamentally, PowerPoint is just a presentation tool, and your use of it is really only going to be as good or bad as your overall presentation strategy.

If you go into a PowerPoint project with the goal of allowing it to aid and enhance a business presentation that has solid ideas and data behind it, PowerPoint will help you succeed. If the ideas or data are poor, or poorly-organized, it won't.

Making a Good Business Presentation With PowerPoint

• Focus on your audience. It's easy to make PowerPoint presentations that are very "me-centric." Only put information and ideas into them that are relevant to your audience and the message you're communicating to them. Just because you can graph anything at all doesn't mean you should.

 

• Organize your data logically. In any presentation, you are trying to convince people of something, and building up to an ultimate conclusion. Think carefully about how to organize your information so that each element clearly and logically builds on what came before, moving towards that goal. Avoid digressions.

 

• Forego large blocks of text. This feels like "PowerPoint 101" but it's still such a common mistake. Don't ever put full paragraphs of text onto a slide, and don't use more than 3 or 4 bullet points on a single slide. Too much text distracts the audience, causing them to read rather than listen to what you're saying.

 

• Show restraint in using animations. Please, please, do not put a fancy animated transition between every slide. There are cases where something like a simple dissolve can be used effectively (such as transitioning between two closely related graphs), but on the whole, just treat it like a static slideshow. And there's never a good reason to use sound effects. It just feels gimmicky.

 

• Ensure you are the true focus. In our opinion, the #1 reason for PowerPoint contributing to a bad business presentation is if you allow the PowerPoint to grab more attention than you get. YOU should always be the focus of your presentations, not your tools. Use good public speaking methods to keep control of your audience's attention.

 

Key Takeaway: For a good PowerPoint business presentation, plan your slides logically and with purpose. Ensure that the presentation tools never distract the audience from you and the message you're communicating.