If you use PowerPoint when speaking to an audience, understand that PowerPoint is not the presentation, it is simply an enhancement to the presentation.
With that said, don't even think about writing your entire speech on the slides. PowerPoint is not a teleprompter, nor is it an alternative to a written report. The slides should be meaningless without your commentary. And when using bullet points, limit yourself to 3 bullets per slide. And consider - strongly consider - incorporating graphics and pictures to avoid dull, wordy, bullet point ridden slides. And do not, not even for one minute, turn your back to the audience and read the slides. In other words, don't let PowerPoint become your crutch. Slides with lots of bells and whistles give your audience something to look at, but they also give them an excuse to not listen.
It's hard to imagine professional business presentations done without PowerPoint. That's why I'm challenging you to present - just once - without it. Without PowerPoint, you can be the visual effect and the sound effect of your presentation. And perhaps your audience will be more interested in what you have to say since there won't be any slides to distract them? It will mean that as the presenter, you need to be well-prepared and well-versed in your topic. Or course, you should always be well-prepared and well-versed, but taking the crutch of PowerPoint away makes it that much more important.
But if you can't go cold turkey, and insist on using PowerPoint, at least strive to be more visually interesting to engage your audience.When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled Kindle Fire HD he wanted to stress that the new and improved e-reader had an 8 week battery life. He could have added that feature to a long list of bullet points. Instead, he chose a graphic to make his point. On one of his PowerPoint slides, he showed a calendar with the months September and October. September 6, which was the day of his presentation, was highlighted in red. Bezos explained that if turned on during his presentation, the Kindle Fire's 8 week battery would last until the end of October. That's a powerful image that most likely will not be forgotten.
Used properly and prudently, PowerPoint does a fabulous job - if you remember that it is not designed to be the star of the show.
