Similarly, your audience should focus intently on what you’re saying, looking only briefly at your slides when you display them. To create slides that pass the glance test: Start with a clean surface: Instead of using the default “Click to Add Title” and “Click to Add Text” slide master, turn off all the master prompts and start with a blank slide.

When asked, “What’s your presentation about?” most people answer with a phrase like “Software updates.” That’s not a big idea; it’s a topic—no point of view, no stakes. Change it to “Your department needs to update its workflow management software,” and you’re getting closer. You’ve added your point of view, but the stakes still aren’t clear. So tr

you can find your audience’s resonant frequency by doing a little research. You’ll want to examine: Shared experiences: What from your past do you have in common. Do you share memories, historical events, interests? Common goals: Where are you all headed in the future? What types of outcomes are mutually desired? Qualifications: Why are you uniquel

“Your audience wants you to be real. So avoid sounding like a corporate spokesperson—but don’t portray false humility, either. Playing small and meek when inside you know (and the audience knows) you’re a giant will not win you any fans. Authenticity means claiming who you are.”

But how do you resonate deeply enough to move them toward your objective? Figure out where you have common ground, and communicate on that frequency.

“forgive a stumble, an ‘um,’ or a section where you backtrack as long as they know that your heart is in the right place.”

Say you’re presenting a new product concept to the executive team, and you know you won’t get their buy-in unless Trent, the president of the enterprise division, gets excited about the idea, because they always defer to his instincts on new initiatives. Appeal first to Trent’s entrepreneurial nature by describing how exciting the new market is—whi

Change typically doesn’t happen without a struggle. It’s hard to convince people to move away from a view that is comfortable or widely held as true, or change a behavioral pattern that has become their norm.

Trim your slide deck: If you created an hour-long presentation and want to deliver it in 40 minutes, cut your slides by a third. You can work in slide-sorter mode in PowerPoint, dragging slides to a “slide cemetery” at the very end of the file. Don’t delete them, because you might have to resurrect one or more at the last minute, when you’re answer