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PowerPoint presentations may be the curse of our age, while it can be an effective tool for backing up your talk all too often it becomes an ugly distraction from what you are going to say. The best presenters always remember their audience is there to listen to them and not watch a slideshow. Here are three simple tips for making sure your audience is with you and not flinching at your visuals.

Keep the Slides to a Minimum

The first key is to make sure you aren’t overdoing the visual information, if your audience has to keep up with an endless procession of slides they simply cannot concentrate on what you are saying. You should have no more than one slide for every 5 minutes you speak, excluding the cover page and the thank you/goodbye page. More than that and you won’t be the focus of attention and your message will be lost.

Keep Content to a Minimum

Let’s be blunt about this, your visuals should be visual. That means get rid of any unnecessary wording, and at most if you want to include words you should have no more than seven bullet points on a slide and no more than seven words per bullet point. The objective is to highlight key content, not to replicate your speech, if you really feel you need to churn out the whole content of your talk – then create handouts and don’t give them to people until you’ve finished speaking. The more you write down, the more your audience will be reading and not listening.

Wherever possible make sure your visuals are pictorial instead, use graphs, pie charts, pictures, flow diagrams, to enhance your points and reveal key data and trends. Audiences can then relate to your speech, which should explain what they see and add to it.

Lose the Effects

Yes, you can do amazing things with PowerPoint – graphics can swoop onto the screen, slide onto it, bounce, etc. and yet none of this adds any value to your talk at all. If you really must use effects, then be consistent, only use one and use it all the way through. It’s always better not to use them at all though, they are distracting and in the long run a huge source (of unintended) mirth for the audience.

Making a presentation can be nerve wracking enough without spending forever developing an all encompassing PowerPoint display which only detracts from your talk, keep it simple by following these three rules and you’ll always be better received.

What do you know about value?

“… I’m so sorry for your inconvenience. I can upgrade you to a better room.” Those were the words spoken by a front desk person at a 5-star hotel. He was informing a guest of what he could do as the result of the patron experiencing a restless night. The patron’s restlessness was due to his loud neighbors in other rooms on the floor. The patron had begun calling the front desk around 12-midnight to complain. Throughout the night, he called several more times – all to no avail to squelch the noise that prevented him from sleeping. He thought to himself, and this yammering is ceaseless.

When he checked out of the hotel the next morning, he told the desk manager of his experience. The manager extended apologies on behalf of the hotel, stated that the night’s stay would be removed from the guest’s bill and asked if there was anything else that he could do. The patron said no. I appreciate the gestures you’ve made. Then he said, “all I wanted was a good night’s sleep. I have an important meeting today. And I just wanted to be fresh and well-rested.” As he left the hotel, he wondered if he’d ever stay at that location again.

Do you see the difference between how the front desk person and the desk manager addressed the situation? It’s slight. But it’s also powerful. The desk manager extended apologies, and he asked the guest if there was anything else that he could do. He was seeking the guest’s perspective of value. In other words, he wanted to know what was essential to the guest. If you don’t know what someone values, you don’t know what to offer them. That means you’re making blind offers when doing so in a negotiation.

When you negotiate, there are five factors to keep in mind about value.

1. People have a different perspective on what they value and why. Once you know their value perspective, seek to understand it.

1. Don’t assume because someone is like you that they’ll like you. Even when people have similar values, there will be nuances that separate their opinions about value. To assume you share exact ideals as your negotiation counterpart can lead to offers and counteroffers that are not valued. In a worst-case scenario, such offers can be damaging to your negotiation efforts.

1. When you’re unsure of a person’s value, ask what they’d least like to lose. The reply will indicate what is of most importance.

1. To test someone about their value, ask, “if there’s one thing that I could grant you in this negotiation, what would it be?” Once again, that person’s value proposition will reside in their response.

1. This last suggestion may fall into the red herring category. It entails discovering something you possess that’s of great value to the other negotiator. Entice that person to believe that he can acquire it but at a very high cost. The higher he’s willing to pay for the acquisition, the higher the value of possessing it will be. Be cautious when engaging this means of acquiring someone’s value perspective. If you don’t allow them to receive it after getting them to make substantial offers, they could become unwilling to grant you much after that. Then, the negotiation might hit a roadblock.

To become a better negotiator, you must always understand what is of value to your negotiation counterpart. Once you do, making better offers will be more comfortable – because you’ll know which offers possess the highest value… and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d like to know. Reach me at [email protected]

The first thing you should know if you want to learn how to conjugate Spanish verbs in the present progressive tense is that you need two things, the verb estar (to be) for any pronoun in the present tense and the present participle of a verb. For verbs ending in -AR, the present participle is formed by dropping the ending and adding -ANDO. If the regular verb ends in -ER or -IR you add -IENDO. The present participle is the same for all pronouns. Only the verb estar is conjugated according to the pronoun. See example below.

yo estoy viajando – I am traveling
tú estás viajando – you are traveling
él/ella está viajando – he/she is traveling
usted está viajando – you are traveling (formal)
nosotros estamos viajando – we are traveling
ustedes están viajando – you are traveling (plural)
ellos/ellas están viajando – they are traveling (masculine or feminine)

Verbs ending in -IR that change the stem in present tense continue to change the stem for the present participle. Review the following:

1. Verbs changing the stem vowel from e to ie in present tense change the vowel to i for the present particle (ie → i ). Therefore preferir (to prefer) and sentir (to feel) become prefiriendo, and sintiendo respectively.

2. Verbs changing the stem vowel from e to i in present tense also change the vowel to i for the present particle (e → i ). Thus pedir (to ask for) and servir (to serve) become pidiendo and sirviendo respectively.

3. Verbs changing the stem vowel from o to ue in present tense change the vowel to u for the present particle (ue → u). Thus dormir (to sleep) and morir (to die) become durmiendo, and muriendo, respectively.

There are some irregular present participles for verbs such as caer (to fall), creer (to believe), leer (to read), proveer (to provide), and traer (to bring). The present participle ending for these verbs is -YENDO. Their present participles are cayendo, creyendo, leyendo, proveyendo, and trayendo, respectively.

If you are using the Verbarrator Spanish Verb conjugation software to learn this verb tense (and I do recommend that you use the Verbarrator for learning how to conjugate this and other Spanish verb tenses), instead of the “present progressive verb tense,” the Verbarator calls this tense is “estar PLUS gerund.”

Now you know how to conjugate Spanish verbs in the present progressive tense. Be sure to practice daily so that conjugating Spanish verbs becomes easier for you.