If you are scanning the internet for PowerPoint tips, it’s most likely because something has happened recently that wasn’t ideal. Perhaps you stood up in front of a group and forgot what you were going to say. Or, maybe, you got tongue-tied during the delivery. Or worse, your audience looked sleepy-eyed or even walked out of the room while you were speaking.

These are all symptoms of related to a few of the biggest PowerPoint mistakes that almost every presenter makes at some time in their speaking career.

But if you avoid these mishaps, you’ll make a better connection with your audience. In fact, even if you don’t consider yourself a great speaker, if you just eliminate these mistakes from your preparation, you’ll deliver better presentations than 90% of business presenters out there.

Shownotes: PowerPoint Tips-The 10 Biggest PowerPoint Mistakes and How to Fix Them

(https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/power-point-tips/)

This is lesson number 12 of our 12-lesson series on how to win group sales presentations.

One of the myths that we tackled in one of the earlier episodes was that the PowerPoint slideshow itself is the shortlist presentation. That one mistake can cause teams to lose the high-level sales presentation more than any other mistake. What we started with last week was a different concept. I began to show you how to create the verbal presentation first. This means that you want to figure out what you want to say first and then create your slideshow last.

So, on today's episode, I'm going to show you how to turn that presentation outline that we created a couple of weeks ago into a fantastic and appealing presentation. We are going to do that with what I call our Impact Ideas.

Counting the Case Studies that we really expanded upon weeks ago, there are a total of five Impact Ideas. These items will really make your shortlist presentation come to life and make you and the content that you cover more memorable.

Then, finally, we'll show you how to create your visual aids -- which may or may not end up being a PowerPoint slideshow.

Also, in the last couple of minutes of this session, I'll give you a few of my final thoughts. I know that we've covered 12 different steps in this process. And at this point, you may be thinking, "This sounds very complicated." The exact opposite is true, though.

This process will save you so much time. It will also drop the stress level of your presenters a lot. The first time going through the whole process, it can be time-consuming.

You have to get each presenter really good at determining what the absolute-most-critical, most-important things are to the audience. You also have to get your entire team to get really, really good at telling captivating success stories.

But once you get your team skilled in these areas, the actual designing of a new shortlist presentation is very, very fast. For instance, I've been able to get experienced teams (meaning teams that have already done at least one shortlist presentation with me before) ready to present in a single three-hour morning.

The process is very fast once you get the basics down. And hopefully, by the end of this episode, you'll be able to see that very easily.

This is lesson number 11 of our 12-lesson series on how to win group sales presentations.

So far, we've covered a lot of the foundational concepts of group selling skills and ways to get buying committees to buy from your team after you get shortlisted. Just as a 30,000-foot recap, we started by covering many of the myths about shortlist presentations.

One of those myths is that the slideshow is the presentation so you should start by designing your shortlist slideshow. That one mistake can cause teams to lose the high-level sales presentation more than any other mistake.

Instead, you want to design the presentation -- design what your team will say -- first. Then, after you have a clear presentation designed, create your slideshow to enhance what is being said in the presentation.

We also covered the power of case studies and success stories in a shortlist presentation. The best evidence that you can help this buying committee is past experience on similar projects. When you get really good add adding specific case studies as evidence that you can help this committee, they will trust your team more. These success stories also build rapport with the audience and reduce the nervousness of your presentation team.

We also covered how important it is to research the buying committee. The more you know about what they want, the easier it is to design a targeted shortlist presentation.

Then, finally, last week, we covered how to create a succinct presentation outline. This is your blueprint for a successful shortlist presentation.

Now that we have a great presentation outline, in this episode, we're going to help you help your SMEs (your Subject Matter Experts) design their component parts of the presentation.

In this process, you have to be a great coach. You have to help them design a very concise presentation-within-the-presentation. And the backbone of each of those mini-presentation will be... wait for it... Fantastic case studies.

So, we are going to help your presentation team members create a mini-presentation within the big presentation. And we'll follow the same strategy that we used last week to help them create a compelling speech-within-a-speech, so to speak.

We'll also show you how to help them turn that outline -- that blueprint -- into a compelling presentation by adding in case studies.

Then, next week, in the final episode, we'll show you how to help them jazz up the entire presentation with what we call our "Impact Ideas." These are ways to enhance the presentation to an even higher level.

I know that, counting these last two lessons, we will have covered 12 different steps in this process. And, at this point, you may be thinking, "This sounds very complicated." The exact opposite is true, though.

This process will save you so much time. It will also drop the stress level of your presenters a lot. The first time going through the whole process, it can be time-consuming.

You have to get each presenter really good at determining what the absolute-most-critical, most-important things are to the audience. You also have to get your entire team to get really, really good at telling captivating success stories.

But once you get your team skilled in these areas, the actual designing of a new shortlist presentation is very, very fast. For instance, I've been able to get experienced teams (meaning teams that have already done at least one shortlist presentation with me before) ready to present in a single three-hour morning.

The process is very fast once you get the basics down. And hopefully, by the end of this episode, you'll be able to see that very easily.