Check the time of presentation you do

As I wrote, one of the key principles of killer presentation is giving very precise and important information fast, so people who listen to you won't sleep. How to do it?

by Sam Miller

Measure the time of your presentation

Start with measuring the time you need to pass through the all slides of your presentation. Track the time you need to do it and find out if you speak as long as it's really needed.

Speaking too much?

If you have 10 presentation slides and you speak a lot of about slide #3 then it's obvious that you should do something about it. Your information should be organized carefully, slides must not be overloaded with details. If you are interested in making your presentation better, then check my killer presentation guide.

Few words and ... nothing more?

If you have nothing to tell, but "Look at that picture!" then it's bad approach to presentation too. You always must be able to say something about graphics that you represent. Think about what does it mean to you, to people who listen to you, to your colleagues, to your industry.

Tools

I know it's not easy to track presentation time. We at AKS-Labs have designed a freeware tool that help with this. We call it Presentation Time Meter and it is very simple software. It can tracks if someone press a "space" key on keyboard (usually it means "the next slide, please").

As a result it will give you a report, which will look like this:

Is it useful? Yes, especially, because we don't want you to pay for it! ;-)

Some words about better marketing of your presentation

Also, let me tell a little more about marketing aspect of any presentation. For facts are:

• It is better to have shorted slides with packed information, in this case you will have more chances to get a free word-of-mouth marketing.
• Slides when you need to talk several minutes still might be very good, as giving precise information, which is hard to find, giving analysis of this information is very valuable.

Finally, when you planning your presentation time, don't forget to include few minutes to talk a little about yourself and your service. People are willing to know what is your business and how was you involved in the topic, e.g. answer their question: "Why he or she talk about this? Is he or she a real professional?". Give your audience an answer.