How do Presenters Deliver Their PowerPoint® Presentations?

How do Presenters Deliver Their PowerPoint® Presentations?
Results of a Survey by Dave Paradi of ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com

In January, 2006 I conducted a survey on how PowerPoint presentations are delivered. Survey participants were given three choices, projected presentations, printed presentations or remote presentations, and I asked them to indicate what percentage of their presentations were delivered using each method. I received 250 responses, with the respondents suggesting that most of them deliver less than 5 presentations per month. Upon analyzing the replies, I conclude the following:

Almost 40% of the respondents always project their slides when presenting, with an additional almost 31% projecting their slides more than 80% of the times they present. This suggests that a very high percentage of presentations (over 70% at least) are still done in person using projection equipment and presenters need to be aware of design and presentation principles that ensure effective live presentations.

Over half the respondents said that they print out their slides and present them about 20% of the time. While this may seem to be small, the printing of slides is still a key skill because I suspect that many handouts are printed copies of the slides, so presenters also need to know how to make their slides print well.

Relatively few respondents said that they used remote presentations. While this may represent a small minority of the presentations done, I think it will grow as web conferencing technology is now more stable and travel budgets continue to get cut in organizations. This is an emerging area that presenters need to be aware of and starting to learn about.

I also asked what role the respondent was in and the following differences were observed:

The largest group of respondents were those who identified themselves as in a technical or professional role. They showed an even higher percentage of presentations that are projected when presented and a lower percentage of printed presentations. They also indicated that they presented a little more often than the overall group. This is also the only group that really showed any significant number of presentations done remotely.

The next largest group were those who work in a management or executive role. This group uses printouts of their slides more than the overall group and delivers less presentations than the overall group.

The third largest group were those in marketing, sales and customer service. This group responded that a much larger percentage of their presentations use printed slides and they delivered a higher number of presentations per month than the overall group and higher than the technical and professional group.

The final question I asked is what industry group the respondent was in. Two industry groups stood out:

The largest group was from the Education sector and their responses showed a much higher percentage of presentations done via projector. This is expected as the traditional delivery method for education is a teacher standing in front of a class. Interestingly, this group did show some use of remote presentations, which I think is a sign that the traditional methods are being adapted by some cutting edge presenters to take advantage of today’s technology.

Another industry represented were the Professional Services firms. They showed a lower percentage of projected presentations and definitely higher percentages of both printed and remote presentations. This again makes sense since many of their presentations would be client presentations which are outside their offices. The use of remote presentations is significant because I believe that these firms, due to their workforce that is often located in many different areas, have grasped the usefulness of the technology that allows presentations to be done without the cost of travel for everyone to a single location. They will continue to be leaders in this area due to necessity driven by their distributed workforce and clientele.

My conclusions from the analysis of this numerical data are:

As presentations move from internal audiences to external audiences, the percentage of presentations that are not projected increases significantly. I think this is because of equipment challenges. It is much harder to carry a laptop, projector, screen and set it all up for what may be a relatively short meeting at an external location. Many organizations have technically equipped meeting rooms that make projecting presentations easy for internal audiences. Presenters and those who create presentations for others need to be aware of who the audience is and design appropriately for the presentation medium.

The data also suggests to me that the personal connection is more important in externally focused presentations, so they print the slides and sit across a table instead of having the distance between presenter and audience that exists with projected presentations. I think personal connection is very important in all presentations and those who mostly project their presentation need to be more aware of this factor when presenting.

I believe that there will be a growing trend towards remote presentations, both for internal and external audiences. I think it will grow first for internal audiences, as organizations make use of web conferencing technology. But it will also become a factor for external audiences as more people in the traditionally less technical roles get comfortable with the technology and recognize the benefits of being able to present from their desktop.

I also asked an open-ended question about what would help them deliver their presentations more effectively. The most common responses fell in these categories:

Adding audio or video to the presentation

Using advanced delivery skills, including remote presentations

Adding graphics, such as photos, graphs and diagrams

Creating well designed slides

Proper use of animations or movement

Structuring the content of the presentation

From the popularity of the written responses, it suggests to me that some people are still working on the basic skills, but many have moved past this stage. They see so many presentations that are bullet text heavy and they want to break out of this mode. They are looking for ways to better stand out and connect with the audience. This is a good sign, but it also brings caution. Many of the multimedia features of PowerPoint distract from instead of reinforce the message, so presenters need to be careful when using these features. Presenters need to focus on only those graphics or multimedia elements that will add to the message and avoid inserting these elements just to entertain the audience with what the presenter thinks is "cool".

Conclusions

Both the numerical and written data reinforce trends that I have seen emerge over the past few years. The majority of presentations are still delivered with the presenter standing up using projected slides. But that depends on the location of the presentation and we are starting to see it change. Outside the organization, it is more likely that a presentation will be printed and delivered due to the logistical challenges. We are starting to see, and will continue to see, the growth of remote presentations. This will become a more important consideration for presenters and designers. Audiences are getting fed up with endless bulleted text slides and presenters have been put on notice. It is time for presenters to learn how to incorporate meaningful graphics and focused multimedia elements that bring the message alive and don’t distract from the presentation.

Dave Paradi’s Think Outside the Slide™ approach helps presenters get results by showing them how to quickly create effective PowerPoint presentations. He is the co-author of "Guide to PowerPoint", part of the Prentice Hall Series in Advanced Business Communication. He offers a free PowerPoint e-course, newsletter and articles on his web site at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.