If you work in the corporate world, you've had to sit through hundreds (maybe thousands) of presentations. What percentage would you say were excellent? And by 'excellent', I mean the presenter was captivating, the content was compelling and the slides were visually stunning? This question was posed to a leader who had witnessed 30,000 presentations throughout his career. His response? Only 1% were excellent. I'm no math whiz, but based on his answer, it would seem that most people are delivering presentations that fall somewhere in the other 99%.

I've personally delivered more than 1,500 presentations over nearly three decades, including training sessions, concurrent sessions and keynote talks. When I first started out, I was bad. Nerves. Slides filled with text. Reading from my notes. Yuck. Today, delivering presentations is one of my favorite things to do. I'm fortunate to have organizations invite me to deliver paid presentations at their conferences. I'm regularly ranked as one of the top speakers at these events. I'm not sharing that to impress you. I'm sharing it to reinforce the fact that with a bit of focus, work and practice, I believe anyone can claim their spot in that 1% of kick-ass presenters.

Over the next three weeks, I'm going to share my best tips to improve the quality of your presentations:

• Week 1 (this week) is about creating great content
• In Week 2, we'll take your visuals (slides & video) to the next level
• And in Week 3, we'll show you how to knock your delivery out of the park

Create great content for your presentation

Do your homework

If you want to deliver a presentation that connects with your audience, spend some time doing homework about them. Find out who's going to be in the room. Put yourself in their shoes. Given the topic you're presenting on, how is this relevant to them and their jobs? What's keeping them up at night (if anything) about it? What's the potential benefit or risk to them? What are some biases or blind spots they might have? In the past, I've arranged meetings with conference organizers ahead of time to ask how I can customize my content to provide value. If you're not doing homework about the audience, you're just guessing what's important to them.

Map out your outline before you open PowerPoint

Many presenters start with an old PPT deck they built or inherited. They might delete a few things or tack on a few things but, in reality, it's a dog's breakfast made up of disparate parts that don't tell a cohesive story. This is a great way to confuse or bore your audience. Instead, blow up your old presentation. Grab a stack of index cards and a Sharpie. Clear off your desk or table and get to work. Focus on the topic of your presentation and write a key word or idea on a card. Place it on the table. Keep repeating until you've exhausted all of the big ideas or themes related to your topic. There's no magic number of cards/ideas. And at this stage, there are no bad ideas. Get your thoughts on those cards. When you're done, it should look something like the accompanying photo (except for the cat). For context, these are the cards I wrote out for a presentation training session last year.

Now, stand back and look at your handiwork. Start editing. What I like about index cards is you can see them all at once. You can get an idea of the structure/flow and you can easily edit with your hands. Move this one here and that one there. Combine two cards that might be similar. See one that doesn't really fit? Toss it. Play around with the order until you're happy there's a narrative thread that hits all the important points. THEN you can fire up PowerPoint.

Start with the end

Many speakers wait until the end of their presentation to reveal the big conclusion. That's a missed opportunity. Recently, I've started giving my audience the conclusion right up front and it's proven to be really effective. I'll say something like, "Over the next hour, I have one objective. I want to rewire your brain with respect to the way you think about and prepare for media interviews." That's something they can grab onto. An anchor. A destination. Now, we're on the same journey. I didn't invent this technique. I borrowed it from Hollywood movies. Start with the conclusion. Grab their attention. Thrust them into the story. This technique leaves zero room for confusion, it gets everyone on the same page and it will make your presentation stand out from the others.

Goodbye bullets, hello stories

Another effective way to separate your presentation from the others is to eliminate (or at least minimize) bullet points and crank up the number of stories. If you deliver a presentation filled with bullet points, you're essentially presenting a Word doc. It's uninspiring. It's tranquilizing. Your audience can read those bullet points more quickly than you can recite them. Even a skilled presenter will struggle to connect with an audience if the whole presentation consists of page after page of text. We'll look more closely at upping your visual game next week. But for now, try to keep the number of slides with just words on them to less than 10% of your total slides. If yours is a technical presentation and you think it needs more bullet points, consider having two versions: the slimmed down version you present in the room and the wordier version you leave for them to take away.

Next, look for ways to drive home your key points with stories, examples and case studies rather than those boring bullet points. People love stories as much as they hate bullet points. Here is a bird's eye view of a recent presentation I delivered (on the topic of giving better presentations):

There are 80 total slides in this deck for a one-hour presentation (that's my preferred style...lots of content and keep it moving). In this deck, there are 7 summary slides that contain what I would consider to be something like bullet points (less than 10% of total slides). And within this deck, there are at least 17 different stories that I've chosen to help illustrate key points. I'm not saying you should adopt the same style as me. But I am saying that if you minimize text and increase the number of stories, your audience will appreciate it. These 'story' elements can come in many forms:

• A striking image accompanied by a quote
• A short video
• A case study
• A news story
• An anecdote

Use your imagination to source stories that support your presentation theme while also educating (and even entertaining) your audience.

In closing

The first step to becoming a 1% presenter is to start with excellent content. And unlike delivering a presentation (which can be very stressful for most people), creating the content is something you can do free of anxiety, all alone, at your own pace. You can craft that awesome content while sitting at your desk, sipping your coffee or tea and wearing your pyjamas.

When creating your content, do your homework and get inside the audience's head. Use index cards to map out your ideas before you turn on your computer. Start with the conclusion to get everyone on the same page. And wherever possible, eradicate bullet points and turn up the volume on the storytelling.

Next week, we'll look at how to take your presentation's visuals to the next level.

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If you're looking to nail your next media interview, there are 3 ways I can help:

1. ​The Art of the Great Media Interview: A comprehensive, online, on-demand course (4+ hours of content) that covers every aspect of the media interview process.
2. ​Media Training Crash Course: An online course that will get you ready for your next interview in just 28 mins.
3. Book a live, in-person media training session here.

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