Point, Click & Wow!: The Techniques and Habits of Successful Presenters

Chapter 1. Focus on Your Key Messages

Situation today: You sit down to make PowerPoint slides or write your speech. When done, you go back over the presentation, trying to put it into some meaningful order. Before you realize it, you've worked for hours, reorganized the content, tried to cut it down (and discovered it grew instead)! Next, you review it with people who will be at the session, and even ask your boss to look over the outline. These people all say, "Shorten it!" or "It's over our heads!" Worse yet, they spend time trying to figure out the structure of your talk and what information should be included or excluded, instead of helping you check the content for accuracy and key messages.

Key problems:

Many people are creating haphazard, ...