Presentations Dont Put The Audience To Sleep With Your Powerpoint Slides

Developing the Next Generation of Rainmakers Presentations: Don’t put the audience to sleep with your PowerPoint slides I frequently tell lawyers I coach that I owe a great deal of my success developing business to writing for industry publications and speaking at industry meetings. If you have an industry based practice, I can’t think of a better opportunity to attract potential new clients. Today, a law firm group I coach will be focusing on writing and presenting to get hired. Volunteers will do the beginning and ending of presentations. I have shared with the group that most presentations by lawyers are boring because the presenters tend to be tied to the words on their PowerPoint slides. I encourage the lawyers I coach to consider not using PowerPoint at all, or to consider creating slides with no words or only words in the title. Some time ago I had a coaching call with Karen who had just returned from speaking at a conference in Orlando. She followed two presenters who had gotten up and read their PowerPoint slides, totally putting the audience to sleep. Karen and I had gone over her presentation in a previous coaching session. She was able to get the audience involved by not presenting to them. Instead she engaged them by telling a story and allowing them to visualize the points she was making. It was less a presentation and more a conversation. If you are a regular reader, you likely recall that last October I posted:  Use Stories to Make Your Presentations to Industry Associations More Interesting. Nick Morgan is the author of “Give Your Speech, Change the World,” one of my favorite books on speaking. This week Nick is doing a series of blog posts about story telling:  Storytelling-I. 5 Ideas. 5 Blogs. 5 Days. I urge you to read all five posts in the series. If you are interested in a tutorial, check out my  Writing and Speaking to Create Business Opportunities Video  and workbook that goes with it.   I practiced law for 37 years developing a national construction law practice representing some of the top highway and transportation construction contractors in the US.