As an executive coach who presents frequently and has helped numerous leaders in the past with their presentations, I know a thing or two about putting one together. It’s certainly a labor of love to create a presentation that’s going to impress an audience. Or is it not a labor of love for you because you don’t like giving presentations? Whichever it is I’m going to help you to make your next presentation much better with my surefire formula for putting one together.

Step 1. Start with an agenda or outline for the presentation. To do this you need to know exactly where you’re going to go each step of the way with the talk. The problem is you might not know yet. Well, you need to figure it out because without a clear outline you’re likely to take much longer to create the presentation, and worse, you might lack cohesiveness from beginning to end.

I find that once I’m done with an outline it’s much easier to create the presentation since I’m essentially connecting the dots with content. I start on the outline at least a week out from having to give the presentation. I start formulating it in my mind from the day I know I’m giving the presentation. Thus, when I actually sit down to write the outline, I already have some clear ideas on how the presentation should flow.

Once you’re done with your agenda, print it and keep it in front of you as you create your presentation.

Step 2. Have one of your older presentations to borrow from. There are usually certain slides you can reuse or lift from. For example, the title page, Ground Rules, Agenda, and About the Presenter could all be used in a new presentation. In terms of lifting from older presentations, there may be certain slides that have a unique layout or embedded graphics you can use again.

Either way, this step saves some time and gets you moving in a forward direction. You want to establish some momentum without difficulty. In case you’re feeling any anxiety in relation to putting the presentation together, this step helps ease it. It can also alleviate garden variety procrastination to start here.

Step 3. Decide about how many slides you’ll have to work with. My typical presentation is 45 – 90 minutes long. I’ve found that I can comfortably do a slide every 3 – 4 minutes. That means somewhere in the area of 15 – 20 slides for an hourlong presentation.

I know that if I go much over this range of slides, I’ll have to rush my content, squeeze out any audience participation or will go way overtime. Audience members dislike all three of these scenarios. Ask me how I know!

As an experienced presenter, I’m now ruthless about staying within the prescribed slide count. This discipline will force you to eject fluffy slides and keep the best you have to offer. If you expect Q&A to be a part of your presentation, go for the lower number of slides.

Step 4. Start building your presentation at least 3 days in advance. It may be all right to pack the night before a trip, but you absolutely want to avoid building a presentation the day before you have to deliver it. Odds are you won’t come up with your best content this way, AND, you won’t have time to rehearse. Two presentation killers you must avoid.

This step is so very important. It allows your mind to essentially work on the content in between times sitting down at your computer. I find that my mind goes into serious contemplation, idea generation, and data gathering mode in the last days before delivery.

By this time, you should have gone through the prior steps. If you skip them and jump right to this step, you’re just making it harder for yourself.

Step 5. Create a 2 – 3 hour block on your calendar the day before. Although you started 3 days in advance, it’s very unlikely you’re done, done. So, give yourself plenty of time the day before and you will have time to refine the presentation to make it really good. Plus, you’ll have that valuable rehearsal time, which will polish your delivery.

Of course, this isn’t always possible but do the best you can to have a big block the prior day free. You’ll thank yourself each time you do it. Power tip to make this happen is to schedule the block as soon as you know you’re doing a presentation on a given day. Our calendars are often more accommodating weeks ahead of time. If you are not open on the days leading up to the presentation, then you must go through all these steps well in advance of the final week.

Step 6. Have a good tool for help in building slides. I like to use images of web pages fairly often and my tool of choice for grabbing such imagery and converting it to a simple to insert jpeg is Snagit. It’s very easy to use and works like a charm. I wouldn’t want to build a presentation without it.

Now, of course, there are numerous AI tools out there to help you build a presentation. It’s up to you to decide what will make the job easier for you. Just keep in mind no AI slide builder is going to do it all for you. There’s due diligence required on your part to comb through any AI-generated slides to look for errors.

Step 7. Once you’re done building the deck, it’s now time to carefully go through each slide with a very keen eye looking for typos, bad alignment, fonts too large or small, URLS that aren’t hotlinks, and so forth. I almost always find little things to fix when I go back through a presentation. You probably will, too. You may even want to run the presentation by someone else to see if they notice something you’ve missed.

Step 8. Rehearse and make final edits. Of course, rehearsing gives you confidence when you actually present the content. However, it also alerts you to awkwardness in the content. You thought it was good, but when you actually tried to elaborate on what’s written on the slide you stumbled. Or you thought a given slide flowed well into the next one, but it doesn’t once you speak to it. You will make changes during the rehearsal and that’s a good thing.

Ideally, you’ll rehearse the entire presentation from beginning to end. When I first started out as a presenter, doing a full rehearsal with timing indicated whether I’d added too much to the presentation. We often err in putting too much in. If you’re overtime, then you must go back and cut something out to get to where you’re under the allotted time. No one is unhappy if you end 5 minutes early.

Now you should be done and sitting on a very good presentation. Go give it and thank me later!

If you’d like help with your next presentation, get in touch and we’ll work on it together. Just don’t reach out at the last minute.

Here are more resources related to presentations and building an executive presence:

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