How to Prepare a Good Presentation in a Hurry

It’s an emergency!

Your boss or clients have given you less than 24 hours to get a presentation ready…

Help!

Don’t worry… Here is how to make a good presentation in a hurry. It’s efficient for us time-poor types and it’s an easy 4-step process:

1. Outline your presentation
2. Practice your speech based on the outline
3. Create a simple slide deck to support your speech
4. Practice your speech with your slides

Let’s look at each step in detail.

1. Outline your presentation

Unless you have unlimited time, don’t start planning your presentation with PowerPoint or Keynote.

Planning with software will slow you down. You’ll waste needless time looking for perfect images or the right animation.

Plan on a whiteboard or paper.

Draw out a plan using a mind map.

Start in the center of the paper and write the main outcome or message in your presentation.

Next, draw lines extending from your central message with supporting points.

From your supporting points draw lines with additional supporting information.

Here is a mind map I drew for a fictional CRM software presentation. The central message was decided based on who the audience is going to be (a potential customer).

2. Practice your speech based on the outline

I know, I know. We’re still not getting into PowerPoint! Don’t worry, we’re going to save a lot of time.

Before we do any design we need to know what we are going to say. Preparing this way has two benefits:

1. You will sound more natural on stage and therefore build more credibility
2. When we eventually design our slides the process will be much faster

Hang your mind map on the wall in front of you and start practicing your speech.

The focus here should not be on memorizing exactly what you need to say, instead knowing the topic well so your speech progresses smoothly, logically, and clearly.

At this point you will naturally know what parts of your presentation need to emphasized vocally. Which brings us to the next point…

3. Create a slide deck to support your speech

Creating a slide deck at this point has many benefits:

1. You know where your presentation needs to go so creating the deck is quick
2. Your slides are less likely to overwhelm the audience because you are now creating them to support you instead of drive your speech
3. Knowing what you need to emphasize vocally in your presentation gives good hints about what information should be on your slides (hint: if you are emphasizing pieces of information vocally, it’s likely these are the points that need to be addressed in your slides)

Let’s go!

Create slides with few words. Visually emphasize what your are saying in your speech.

Don’t worry about headlines and bullet points. Focus on creating slides that help you say what needs to be said.

Use a site like Pixabay to download free, high-quality images to use for your slides.

4. Practice your speech with your slides

Now that you have a slide deck it’s time to do some final practice.

Practice with your slides running on your computer and click through the slides at the appropriate times in your speech.

Hint: Use presenter mode so you can see which slide is coming next. This will help to deliver your speech smoothly.

This final practice will consolidate in our minds what needs to be said. It will also confirm that the deck is supporting our speech rather than over-shadowing it.

Remember the four step process for how to make a good presentation in record time:

1. Outline your presentation
2. Practice your speech based on the outline
3. Create a simple slide deck to support your speech
4. Practice your speech with your slides

Good luck!