This guide belongs to 100 Ways To Be Being Remarkable  Series, a special project that brings you business and self-development advice from The Success Manual.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple is one of an all-time great startup founder and an all-time great presenter as well. His presentations are visual essays. This huge guide comprising of best wisdom from books, experts and articles is a tribute to Steve Jobs' presentation abilities( as if his business prowess wasn't enough).

Essentially the structure of all good presentations is to:
"Tell'em what you're gonna tell'em. Tell'em. Then tell'em what you told'em."
- George Bernard Shaw

The two elements of a great presenter
1. Respect (from the audience)
2. Love (to the audience)

The presenter who loves his audience the most, wins.
- Seth Godin

Tell a story that makes the audience into the protagonist, then demonstrate how your approach to solving their problem will help them win in the end.
- Cliff Atkinson

Do a cold open: Try to open with something in the real world — an anecdote, a memory, an image, something that grounds your talk in the “right now” and that skips the whole “Here are the nine things you will learn today…” jibber jabber.

You can always do an introduction second, once you’ve set the tone and gotten people’s interest.
- Merlin Mann

Fact
7% of our communication is verbal –words alone;
38% is Vocal – tone, pitch and speed;
55% is non-verbal – expressions, gestures, postures.

THE FIVE P’S OF PRESENTATION

1. Preparation
Research the audience - develop the presentation- organize the presentation aids - check the venue – rehearse - ready yourself.

To repeat, the best-known presentation framework is:

- Tell the audience what you are going to tell them
- Tell them again what you have told them

The Five Steps to creating an instant speech

Step 1: Get attention with a catchy opening.
Step 2: Explain the relevance – tell why the subject is important to them.
Step 3: Present the central message – follow with a general statement of your purpose.
Step 4: Give examples – support your message with real-world illustrations (examples).
Step 5: Close-end with a striking sentence that summarizes your speech.

And, finally, rehearse.

2. Purpose
Throughout your presentation you need to be clear why you are saying what you are saying. Why are you doing what you are doing and what effect do you want to achieve at any one moment? Knowing your purpose from moment to moment helps you vary the tempo, alter the attack, and even your intonation. It also enables you to vary your range of expressions. And think beforehand – what exactly do you want to achieve in answering people’s questions (during question time)? This could be a great opportunity to expound your ideas and make them relevant to the audience.

3. Presence
Powerful presenters establish a presence. It is all about being present in the moment – your entire attention is concentrated on what is happening around you. Your senses are heightened, so that you notice things that you might normally miss – like, hearing the shuffle of a person at the far end of the room; you are in tune with the moment.

Start of your presentation:
- Do not rush in. Give your audience time to absorb your arrival.
- Before you utter a word of your presentation-Stop; breath; look; listen.
- Allow a pause for 5 or more seconds before starting to speak. The power of this approach is immense- it gives you time to ‘arrive’, to take in your audience and your surroundings. It also allows your audience time to absorb your arrival, assess your appearance, and to get comfortable with you being there.

4. Passion
If you do not care about you are saying, why should the audience? Your passion warms, excites, enthuses and holds your audience. Good presenters build a relationship with their audience.

5. Personality
What the audience wants is you, not an imitation of some well-known speaker or another personality. Let your real, enthusiastic self come out. And, ask friends or a colleague (whom you trust ), to give you feedback on how you come across on first impression.

Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 Rule: Get in, get out, and don’t make people squint.
"a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points."

MORE PRESENTATION RULES
Don't start with an apology unless you've really made a serious error, or it's part of your plans and an intentional humorous device.

Use humor, but make it relevant and never irritating.
Use gender-neutral speech.
Practice intensely beforehand.
Meetings have a very low rate of information transfer.
Take questions, but NEVER condescend to the questioner.
Keep in mind that most questions arise from personal concerns.
Express enthusiasm about your material, but only if your enthusiasm is real.
Finish early.
Practice your presentation skills
Check out the presentation venue beforehand to get a feel
Try not to over prepare. Trust those skills you know you have.
Test the equipment before the presentation; get familiar with it before you start.
Visual aids: Graphics, pictures, cartoons bar charts etc; you can then use words to elaborate.
Be yourself
Wave: Be more expressive rather than less.
A certain amount of nervousness is vital for a good presentation. You need the extra energy to communicate:
Breathe: Taking a slow, deep breath, breathing fully out and then in again, will relax you.
Get something else to do: It's the reason people hold pens and fiddle with things.
Go slow: Your audience need the time to assimilate and interpret what you are saying.
Presentation as Conversation: stimulate your audience into wanting to get more of the information you have, not just to present that information at them.
Interact: Look for reactions to your ideas and respond to their signals.
Show conviction
Get some perspective: The odds are that someone in the audience will not like your presentation, or may disagree with you.
As a rule of thumb, the majority of most audiences want to like you and what you have to say - they want you to be good.
Use metaphors
Use Examples
The point: Stick to the point using three or four basic ideas. For any detail that you cannot present in 20 minutes, try another medium such as handouts or brochures.
Your Presentation Finale: End as if your presentation has gone well.

TIPS FOR LIVELY PRESENTATIONS
Examples of fun, humor, interest, participation and diversion that you can use to bring your presentation to life, and keep your audience attentive and enjoying themselves:

Stories
Questions and hands-up feedback
Pictures, cartoons and video-clips
Diagrams
Sound-clips
Straw polls (a series of hands-up votes/reactions which you record and then announce results)
Inviting a volunteer to take the stage with you (for a carefully planned reason)
Audience participation exercises
Asking the audience to do something physical (clapping, deep breathing, blinking, finger-snapping, shouting, and other more inventive ideas)
Asking the audience to engage with each other (for example introductions to person in next chair)
Funny quotations (be careful not to offend anyone)
Inspirational quotations
Acronyms
Examples and case-study references
Create analogies and themes, and use props to illustrate and reinforce them.
Prizes, awards and recognizing people/achievements
Book recommendations
Fascinating facts (research is easy these days about virtually any subject)
Statistics (which dramatically improve audience 'buy-in' if you're trying to persuade)
Games and exercises (beware of things which take too much time - adapt ideas to be very very quick and easy to manage)

Quirky presentation ideas - (use your imagination - have everyone demonstrate their ringtones at the same time, or see who has the fastest/slowest watch time, or the most pens in their pocket/bag - depending on the occasion linked or not to the subject) and your body language, and the changing tone and pitch of your voice.


Simply asking the audience to stand up, or snap their fingers, or blink their eyes (assuming you give them a good reason for doing so) immediately stimulates physical awareness and involvement.

Quotes are a wonderful and easy way to stimulate emotions and feelings, and of course quotes can be used to illustrate and emphasize just about any point or concept you can imagine.
Research and collect good quotations and include then in your notes. Memorize one or two if you can because this makes the delivery seem more powerful.
Always credit the source of quotes you use.

Props (see the visual aids tips below)

Tips: Planned chaos is actually a wonderful way to keep people involved and enjoying themselves. Clap your hands a couple of times and say calmly "Okay now - let's crack on," or something similarly confident and un-phased, and you will be back in control, with the audience refreshed for another 5-10 minutes.

Visual aids tips
- For printed visual aids with several paragraphs of text, use serif fonts (a font is a typeface) for quicker readability. For computer and LCD projectors use sans serif fonts , especially if the point size (letter size) is too small.

- Arial is a sans serif font. Times is a serif font. (A serif font has the extra little cross-lines which finish off the strokes of the letters. Interestingly, serif fonts originated in the days of engraving, before printing, when the engraver needed an exit point from each letter.

- Extensive sections of text can be read more quickly in serif font because the words have a horizontal flow, but serif fonts have a more old-fashioned traditional appearance than sans serif. If you need to comply with a company type-style you'll maybe have no choice anyway. Whatever - try to select fonts and point sizes that are fit for the medium and purpose.

- Use no more than two different fonts and no more than two size/bold/italic variants or the whole thing becomes confused. If in doubt simply pick a good readable serif font and use it big and bold for headings, and 14 - 16 point size for the body text.

- Absolutely avoid upper case (capital letters) in body text, because people need to be able to read word-shapes as well as the letters, and of course upper case makes every word a rectangle, so it takes ages to read. Upper case is just about okay for headings if you really have to.

- Create your own prompts and notes - whatever suits you best. Cue cards are fine but make sure to number them and tie then together in order. A single sheet at-a-glance timetable is a great safety-net for anything longer than half and hour. You can use this to monitor your timing and pace.

KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER:
Smile,
solid well-rehearsed opening,
impact,
tell'em what you're gonna tell'em,
tell'em,
tell'em what you told'em,
entertainment,
interest,
body-language,
humour,
control,
firmness,
confidence,
avoid jokes/sexism/racism,
speak your audience's language,
accentuate the positive,
use prompts,
participation,
and have fun!

Sprinkle your sales letters or presentations with references to your subject's first name.
- Mell Holloway

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.
- Alan Kay, computer scientist

Nothing, surely, is more alive than a word.
– J.D. Adams

MORE KNOCKOUT PRESENTATIONS TIPS
- drink room temperature water with lemon
- practice into a tape recorder and pop a rubber band for any vocalized pauses
- use corn starch, liquid talc, or a rosin bag for sweaty palms
- TIPE: teach, inform, persuade, or entertain
- HIRBEC: hook, issue, recommendation, benefit, evidence,
From ‘Knockout Presentations: How to Deliver Your Message with Power, Punch, and Pizzazz’ by Diane Diresta

WHAT IS WRONG WITH POWERPOINT?
Edward Tufte has been described by The New York Times as "the Leonardo da Vinci of Data". He is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams, coined the term "chartjunk" to refer to useless, non-informative, or information-obscuring elements of information displays.

EDWARD TUFTE'S PRESENTATION RULES
- Show up early: Something good is bound to happen.
- Lay out the problem: who cares about it and what the solution is.
- When presenting complicated material, follow PGP (particular/general/particular).
- When you talk, TALK: avoid the obvious reliance on notes.
- Give everyone in your audience a piece of paper.
- Match the information density in your presentation to the highest resolution newspapers.
- Avoid overhead projectors. Keep the lights up in the room.
Never apologize.

Tufte argues strongly against the inclusion of any decoration in visual presentations of information and claims that ink should only be used to convey significant data and aid in its interpretation. He criticizes the way Microsoft PowerPoint is typically used.

- Its use to guide and reassure a presenter, rather than to enlighten the audience;
- Unhelpfully simplistic tables and charts, resulting from the low resolution of computer displays;
- The outliner causing ideas to be arranged in an unnecessarily deep hierarchy, itself subverted by the need to restate the hierarchy on each slide;
- Enforcement of the audience's linear progression through that hierarchy (whereas with handouts, readers could browse and relate items at their leisure);
- Poor typography and chart layout, from presenters who are poor designers and who use poorly designed templates and default settings;
-  Simplistic thinking, from ideas being squashed into bulleted lists, and stories with beginning, middle, and end being turned into a collection of disparate, loosely disguised points. This may present a kind of image of objectivity and neutrality that people associate with science, technology, and "bullet points".

From ‘The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint’ by Edward Tufte

Recommended Reading on Steve Jobs' Presentation Style:

Deliver a presentation like Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs' Greatest Presentation [pdf]

Presentation secrets of Steve Jobs [Video]

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