How to Deliver a PowerPoint Presentation Designed by Someone Else

Doug Staneart  |  07/27/20
last updated

How to Deliver a Presentation that Someone Else WroteNarrating a PowerPoint Presentation designed by someone else can be very challenging. In fact, one of the fastest ways to increase public speaking fear and make your PowerPoint presentations sound canned and… well boring, is to try to deliver a PowerPoint slideshow that someone else designed for you.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t deliver PowerPoint slide decks that someone else created. It just means that when you do, you’ll probably be more nervous. You will have less of a natural flow than what you’d normally have when you stand up and deliver a speech. Remember that a presentation or a speech is just a conversation with your audience. So if you create the speech, you’ll be speaking in your own words. When someone else creates a speech for you, you will feel more uncomfortable and the public speaking nervousness will increase.

How a 19th Century Character Can Help You Solve a 21st Century Problem.

Remember the movie Roxanne or the play about Cyrano de Bergerac? The two male characters, Christian and Cyrano are both in love with Roxanne. Christian sees himself as being inarticulate and Cyrano sees himself as being ugly. Christian gets Cyrano to write love letters for him, which works pretty well until Roxanne finds out who actually wrote them.

The movies portray Christian as a dunce. According to the original play, though, Christian is a brave and intelligent warrior who is just nervous. Christian is the kind of person that Roxanne would have fallen in love with if he had just used his own words to woo her. But because he was using Cyrano’s verbiage (his slideshow,) it just made Christian even more nervous – not less.

Roxanne never got to know the real Christian. Your audiences are the same way. You will feel much more confident if you can communicate your own words to your audience versus trying to manufacture the “right thing to say” about a PowerPoint slide or bullet points that someone else created.

With that in mind, we know that situations will occur where we have no control over the PowerPoint slideshow or any of the visuals really. For instance, if you are a sales associate, and your company requires that you use a standardized PowerPoint presentation when you speak to customers or if someone calls in sick and you have to fill in for them at the last minute, the tips below will help you out tremendously.

Top PowerPoint Presentation Narration Tips When Presenting Slideshow Made by Others.

1) Add Your Own Personal Experiences to the Precreated PowerPoint Slideshow.

Using Stories to Make Points in a presentation The main thing that sets one presenter apart from another is the personal examples or stories that they tell during a presentation. You can easily make a PowerPoint presentation your own by inserting stories and examples from your own experience.

For example, let’s assume your bullet point is “Sales decreased by 10% last quarter.” If you can recall just a single example of one thing that happened during the quarter, that will add clarity. Here is an example…

“A couple of years ago, when I was a sales rep, I remember days that as soon as I would set the receiver down, another new incoming call was already being routed to me. The guys who are on duty now, however, are averaging ten to fifteen minutes between each call. At first, we thought that the sales reps were time between sales calls. We even thought about downsizing the sales team. However, because each salesperson is able to follow up better with each incoming lead, their closing ratios have increased over 250%. So that 10% decrease in sales is coming from less than half the number of incoming leads that we were receiving in the boom.”

Without the personal story, the bullet looks like the sales team is failing, but in reality, they are doing a tremendous job with the resources that they have.

By the way, this is the technique that our Fearless Presentations ® instructors use. We all use the same slideshow, but our classes are fairly unique. Toby is our instructor in Florida, and his background is in comedy improv. He inserts funny stories and examples throughout his classes. Liam, our instructor in South Texas started his career as an engineer. So, he uses examples that help participants make technical presentations more fun. Same slideshow but totally different deliveries.

For additional details, see Example of a Persuasive Speech Outline.

2) Avoid Memorizing Someone Else’s Notes (or You Will Increase Your Nervousness Exponentially.)

How to Memorize your speech If you try to write down everything that someone else tells you to say and memorize it, you will increase your nervousness exponentially. Instead, go to each bullet point and ask yourself, “What is the most important thing that the audience would need to know about that point?” Whatever pops into your head when you ask that question will likely be exactly what the audience needs to know.

The answer to this question should be an example, a story, an analogy, or something that clarifies the point. You may not have a lot of control over what bullet points the creator puts into a presentation. However, you do have control over how you explain them.

A good example of this is our list of 10 Ways to Add Impact to a Presentation. In our class, we use this as an example of how to deliver a presentation with lots of bullet points. Each of our instructors has his or her own way of describing each of these 10 items.

One of these 10 items is to “Add More Audience Participation.” When I deliver this point, I like to give the class a few tips on how to elicit audience participation better. However, our instructor in Dallas, Amy, is really good at making meetings more energetic. When she teaches the class, she focuses more on how to get the audience to WANT TO participate. Again, we are both using the same slideshow, but we aren’t memorizing a bunch of boring talking points. Instead, we are focusing on what would be most helpful for the audience.

3) You May Not Need to Speak to Every Point

You Don't Have to Cover Every Single Bullet PointWhen other people write a PowerPoint presentation for you, they often will insert way too much data into each slide. As a result, it can be very challenging to speak to every point. Realize that, as the presenter, you are in control of what you say.

I had a client once whose executives decided to create one all-encompassing slideshow that any sales rep could use in any situation. The finished PowerPoint deck had over 120 slides. There is no way that any presenter could deliver that much data in a single sales call. So what my client did was print out the whole deck and had an office supply store put a cover on it. She gave this out to the clients as a reference.

Then, she hand-picked the slides that were most appropriate to each client at the time she presented. As a result, she didn’t bore any of them.

So sometimes, you might have to get a little creative in your delivery.

Delivering a PowerPoint Presentation Designed by Someone Else Is More Challenging, But Not Impossible.

Narrating a PowerPoint slideshow that someone else creates for you is definitely more challenging a presentation that you create. However, you can do it. Just be sure to make the PowerPoint your own by inserting your own personal stories and experiences into the slides. Spend time determining exactly what is most important to the audience. And also feel free to cut out some of the bullets if your presentation is too data-heavy.

If you follow these simple tips, you will be more charismatic and articulate when you narrate someone else’s PowerPoint presentation.

author Doug Staneart
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Doug Staneart is the CEO of The Leader's Institute. LLC and founder of the Fearless Presentations class. He is author of Fearless Presentations, Mastering Presentations, and 28 Ways to Influence People.

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