Presentation

SECRETS

Presentation

SECRETS
D O W HAT YOU N EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE w ITH YOUR P RESE n n

Ale xei K apte re v

A C Q U I S I T I O N S E D I T O R : Mary James
S E N I O R P R O J E C T E D I T O R : Kevin Kent
T E C H N I C A L E D I T O R : Mike Stevens
S E N I O R P R O D U C T I O N E D I T O R : Debra Banninger
C O P Y E D I T O R : Kezia Endsley
E D I T O R I A L M A N A G E R : Mary Beth Wakefield
F R EE L A N C E R E D I T O R I A L M A N A G E R : Rosemarie Graham
A S S O C I A T E D I R E C T O R O F M A R K E T I N G : David Mayhew
M A R K E T I N G M A N A G E R : Ashley Zurcher
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P R O D U C T I O N M A N A G E R : Tim Tate
V I C E P R E S I D E N T A N D E X E C U T I V E G R O U P P U B L I S H E R : Richard Swadley
V I C E P R E S I D E N T A N D E X E C U T I V E P U B L I S H E R : Neil Edde
A S S O C I A T E P U B L I S H E R : Jim Minatel
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C O MP O S I T O R : Craig Woods, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
P R O O F R EA D E R : James Saturino, Word One
I N D E X E R : Robert Swanson
C O VE R I M A G E : Chad Baker / Lifesize / Getty Images
C O VE R D E S I G N E R : Ryan Sneed

Presentation Secrets: Do What You Never Thought Possible with Your Presentations
Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Indianapolis, IN 46256
www.wiley.com
Copyright 2011 by Alexei Kapterev
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
ISBN: 978-1-118-03496-5
ISBN: 978-1-118-17045-8 (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-118-17047-2 (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-118-17046-5 (ebk)
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To my mo m and dad

About the Author

Ale xei K apte re v is one of the worlds leading experts on presentations. Having had
many years of experience with international and Russian consulting firms, he decided to focus
exclusively on presentations in 2007. That same year he published a presentation titled Death
by Powerpoint, which saw more than one million views, all with no advertising or promotion.
Kapterev currently has a private consulting practice in Moscow. As permanent lecturer, he
teaches at the Graduate School of Business Administration (Moscow State University) and as
guest lecturerat the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo. He is also working in cooperation
with Mercator, Russias premier studio producing corporate presentations, films, and business
graphics. One of his presentation scripts was awarded the finalist award at the New York Festivals competition.

About the Technical Editor

M ike S t e ve ns, as creative director for several Silicon Valley advertising agencies, has
won numerous awards over the years for creative excellence in communication and has honed
his own presenting skills in highly competitive situations as an agency owner. He is also a
talented writer and editor, whose credits include the high-tech thriller Fortuna (as author)
and Nancy Duartes highly acclaimed book on presentations Resonate (as editor).
Stevens is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California at Berkeley with a B. A.
in English and is fluent in several European languages.

vi

Acknowledgments
I wo uld like t o t hank:
Garr Reynolds and Hugh MacLeod for inspiration;
Andrey Skvortsov for many invaluable experiences;
Nancy Duarte for great advice during the early stages of the process;
Mary James (Acquisitions Editor at Wiley) for convincing me to write this book;
Kevin Kent (Senior Project Manager at Wiley) for his tactfulness and patience;
All the viewers of Death by Powerpoint at SlideShare.net and elsewhere for support and
encouragement.

Ale xe i K apt e re v

vii

Contents at a Glance
Read This First xiii
Chapter 1
P a RT I

What Is Presentation? 1
STORY 2 3

Chapter 2

The Storys Focus 25

Chapter 3

The Storys Contrast 51

Chapter 4

The Storys Unity 75

P a RT II

SLIDES 10 3

Chapter 5

The Slides Focus 105

Chapter 6

The Slides Contrast 133

Chapter 7

The Slides Unity 163

P a RT III

De ve 19 7

Chapter 8

Focus in Delivery 199

Chapter 9

Contrast in Delivery 221

Chapter 10

Unity in Delivery 243

Chapter 11

Where to Go Next 265

Index

279

Contents
R ead This F ir s t
Chapter 1

P a RT I
Chapter 2

Chapter 3

xiii

What I s Presentation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

What Ar e P r es entations?

Stor y

Slides

Deliver y

13

The Thr ee P r inciples of P r es enting

14

Summar y

22

STORY

23

The Stor ys Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

N ot All Stor ies Ar e Cr eated Equal

26

F ocus ing on One Idea

26

Setting the Goal

27

The Cus tomer Is nt Always Right

35

Gather ing the Mater ial

39

Inventing the Tr uth

47

Can You Sell Without Lying?

47

Summar y

48

The Stor ys Contr ast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

P r oblems and Solutions

52

Her o and Villain

63

Summar y

73

Chapter 4

The Storys Uni t.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Mak ing Your Stor y Unified

76

Cas e S tudy: The Stor y of Tomato Sauce

80

The P r oblem of Balance

82

Cas e S tudy: A Company Intr oduction

99

Summar y
P a RT

II

SLI e

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

P a RT

III

Chapter 8

C ontents

101
10 3

The Slides Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105

P r oducing Your Slides

106

Zen and Vajr ayana

107

Des igning Zen Slides

113

Summar y

131

The Slides Contr as t.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Ener gizing Lifeles s Diagr ams

13 4

Using Compar is ons

13 6

Data Vis ualization

144

Lies , Damned Lies , and Statis tics

15 5

A Wor d on Animation

159

Wher e to Go N ext?Vis ualization Res our ces

161

Summar y

162

The Slides Unity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Avoiding Ugly Slides

16 4

Slide Des ign for N on- Des igner s

16 5

Wor k ing with P ictur es

188

United Wor ld in a Slide Deck

191

Summar y

19 5

De L I ve

19 7

Focus in Deliver y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

What Should You F ocus on Dur ing Deliver y?

200

Clar ity

202

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

P ace

205

Voice

20 7

Engaging with Your Audience

20 8

Mak ing Eye Contact

212

Addr es s ing Any Ques tions

218

Us ing Humor (or N ot? )

218

Summar y

22 0

Contr ast in Deliver y. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

The Oppos ite of Monotony

22 2

Being P er fect Ver s us Being P as s ionate

22 3

Dont Avoid Confr ontation

226

Lear ning fr om O ther P eople

23 2

Summar y

241

Unity in Deliver y. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Going with the F low

24 4

The P r os and Cons of Impr ovis ation

247

Relaxing Contr ol

251

Summar y

26 3

Where to Go Next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .265

P r es entation Checklis t

266

Tak ing F ur ther Steps

269

Gener al P r es entation Res our ces

269

Stor ytelling Res our ces

27 0

Slide Res our ces

27 3

Deliver y Res our ces

275

P r es entations Tr ans for m

277

Index

279

C ontents

xi

Read This First

I have b e e n s pe cializing in presentations for the last 5 years, but before I was
approached by Wiley, I had no ambition to write a book. It never felt like the right time, never
felt like I had enough to say on the subject of presentations to justify the whole book. But when
I made a decision to write, a magical thing happened. All the questions that I was postponing
answering for years started coming back to me. The questions that I wasnt obliged to answer
before now returned all at the same time: nagging me, bothering me, demanding to be answered.
It wasnt a totally pleasant experience; after all, there were good reasons why I wasnt answering
those questions before. Those questions were tough:
How do I make a script that is dramatic but not pretentious?
How do I make slides that are simple yet project credibility?
How do I become spontaneous and react to the audience during a live presentation
despite hours of planning and painstaking rehearsals?
And, of course, there were many, many more. I spent months answering those questions, and
I am proud to have answered many of them. In terms of progress in my chosen profession this
book is the absolute best thing that ever happened to me. My only hope now is that Presentation
Secrets will be as useful for you as it was for me.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

This book is intended for those of you who disagree that contemporary slide presentations are the
necessary evil. For those who believe that preparing and delivering presentations is something one
might actually enjoy. For people who want more from their presentations: more fun, more adventure, more challenge, and more results. For people ready to explore, ready to stop being just presenters and become scriptwriters, graphic designers, and improv artistsat least so some extent.
It doesnt matter whether you present in business, educational, political, or scientific
contexts. Nuances do exist, of course, and I address them in the book. However, for the most
part I write under assumption that your audience is simply human. Humans have common
psychological and physiological traits that dont depend much on their chosen field. We all
like stories, our capacities for processing raw facts are limited, and we mostly trust people
who look authentic. These needs arent easy to meet, but armed with advice from this book,
if you at least attempt to meet these needs, you might well succeed.
xiii

Beginners will find the Focus chapters (Chapters 2, 5, and 8) to be most useful. Those
chapters provide the foundation for all the work that you will be doing, whether you are working with your structure and slides or delivering your presentation live. The Contrast chapters
(Chapters3, 6, and 9) offer more advanced tips, and the Unity chapters (Chapters 4, 7, and 10)
also invite into the discussion those of you who are experienced in the art of presentations.

WHAt THIS BOOK COVERS

This book covers three major topics concerned with presentations: structure, slides, and delivery.
In the first part (Part I) you will learn the basics of storytelling, how the narrative part of
your presentation should be constructed. I will walk you through the process of establishing
your storys goal and finding the best hero your audience can associate with. You will establish
the controlling conflict by trying to answer the question, Who is fighting whom for what? You
will also create a sequence to lead the audience from established status quo through the conflict
to the resolution and new balance.
Part II has to do with slides, which serve four major goals: to remind, to impress, to explain, and
to prove. By answering the question Whats the purpose of this slide? you will learn to choose the
proper slide type and the proper visual concept. I will briefly mention various ways of visualizing
data and common pitfalls to avoid. The last chapter of Part II is dedicated to aesthetic design, which
I believe is becoming increasingly important as the new language of communication.
In the last part of the book (Part III) you will learn about the most important things to
focus on during a live presentation. I will also touch on more strategic, time-consuming but
ultimately rewarding ways of improving your public speaking skills. Finally, I will share my
thoughts on the subject of speakers authenticity, perhaps the hottest topic in todays presentation discourse.
Overall, this book is organized as a 3 3 matrix, one axis being Structure, Slides, and
Delivery and the other Focus, Contrast, and Unity. The latter are the core principles that
I follow in my own approach; you will find the detailed descriptions for them in Chapter 1.

WHAT YOU NEED tO U THIS BOOK

You need at least some experience with preparing and delivering presentations. Even a couple
of attempts to get your point across with slides will be enough. If you have never delivered any
presentation in your life, you will have a hard time understanding what all the fuss is about.
Also, I dont offer much technical advice about Microsoft PowerPoint or any other application in this book. I assume that you are already familiar enough with some slide editing
xiv

Read T his F ir s t

software. If need to improve your skills here, I suggest you read other titles from John Wiley &
Sons. (PowerPoint 2010 For Dummies, for example, is an excellent book.) However, this information is important only for Part II of the book, which deals with slides. Other parts of the book
that deal with structure or delivery are much more technologically independent.

FEA tURES nD IcnS U n THIS BOOK

The following features and icons are used in this book to help draw your attention
to some of the most important or useful information in the book, some of the most
valuable tips, insights, and advice that can help you unlock the secrets of presentation.

SebaRS
Sidebar s like this one featur e additional infor mation about topics r el ated to the near by text.

or
W at c h fe s like
t
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m a r g in t h at
t h is o net s o m e
h ig h lig h e o f
ke y p ie ct io n o r
inf o r m a c us s s o m e
t h at dis o c um e nt e d
p o o r ly d t o f ind
o r h a r d ue o r
t e c h niq h .
ap p r o ac

TThe Tip icon indicates a helpful tr ick or technique.

TThe N ote icon points out or expands on items of impor tance or inter es t.

TThe Cr os s - Refer ence icon points to chapter s wher e additional infor mation
can be found.

T
The
War ning icon war ns you about pos s ible negative s ide effects or pr ecautions
you s hould take befor e mak ing a change.

Read T his F ir s t

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