Our training to you

Public workshops are wonderful for meeting peers, but there is no comparison to the level of personalized service and the depth of instruction that we can bring to your organization for presentation skills development.

Across one day or two, we work with you to create a completely tailored and customized curriculum, using your own work whenever possible as the basis for instruction, example, and discussion. There is nothing cookie-cutter or canned about the experience — it is all about you, your message, your slides, your issues, your opportunities, and your growth as presentation content designers, creators, and presenters.

This is the bread and butter of what we do; see the video section for various snippets of the key messages that we bring to presentation skills development.

The difference between design and decoration

We know how difficult it is for earnest content creators to produce good-looking slides when they usually have little or no formal training in design and when the project is due yesterday. We know how easy it is to go on auto-pilot and roll out hurried slides, or worse, generic ones from templates that came with the software.

Presentation design is about much more than attractive slides. Do your company’s slides begin with “Who we are” and “What we do” slides? Is your primary selling device the facts and figures that make up the logical reasons to act? You should know that very few decision makers pull the trigger unless their gut tells them to. The best presentations are those that evoke emotions, not hammer facts. Shaping your ideas well is the first step to selling your company, your business, and your expertise to an audience.

Whether your issues are unremarkable slide design, deficient messaging, or both, we can help you navigate these waters. From the 11th hour fix or the cleaning up of slide disasters to a comprehensive re-branding initiative, we are masters at creating clean, businesslike slides, with intelligent builds, engaging photos, and evocative messages.

“PowerPoint is easy…I learned it in an hour.”

The headline above is a true statement. The real question is whether that is good news or bad. We think it is bad news…very, very bad.

PowerPoint is probably the easiest program in the Office suite for getting started and learning rudimentary skills. Most people declare themselves proficient after less than an hour of PowerPoint training. This wouldn’t be so distressing if these same people used the software only in their own cubicles, as they do with Excel and Access. But most presenters practice their craft in public…can you say Death by PowerPoint?

If you are like most, you no longer call yourself a beginner, but you never really learned the fundamentals of the program and have little comfort with the finer skills and techniques that would increase your productivity and make you, or the people for whom you create presentations, more effective during delivery. Custom shows, triggered actions, sequenced animations, intelligent hyperlinks, confidence with imported audio and video — there is a whole world waiting to be discovered by people willing to move beyond the skillset defined in the first hour of PowerPoint training.

Would you rather be in the casket?

The specter of speaking in public is reminiscent of the Jerry Seinfeld line in which he places speaking in public ahead of dying as society’s greatest fear. “That means,” he says, “that the person delivering the eulogy would rather be in the box.”

Please don’t do anything rash before calling us. You might not be a natural-born speaker, but you can still become an effective public presenter. There are specific tactics, skills, and behaviors that you can learn to help you become more relaxed and more comfortable in delivering your message. Altman is an expert at bringing out your best by enabling you to genuinely speak to critical narratives and helping you integrate more smoothly with your PowerPoint slides.