Despite the availability of impressive graphics and professionally designed templates, several lecturers still have to face a common dilemma: PowerPoint presentations aren’t always very exciting.

If creating a presentation can be sheer apprehension, then listening to one can be pure misery. Both sides dread it. Bad presentations cost companies sales, ruin their reputations, and waste executives’ time.

You may have heard someone say, "Show, don’t tell." But what exactly do they mean? It’s actually easier than it sounds. Don’t go overboard with the clipart and stock photography. Rather, bring a bit of reality into the room.

Last year, Tom Duncan, president of the US division of Positec Power Tool Group, had a sales call with an important account. He decided to ditch his PowerPoint presentation at the last minute. Instead, he placed two drills, his and his competitor’s, on the table, and disassembled them next to each other to demonstrate the durability of his company’s design. The audience loved Duncan’s presentation minus the PowerPoint slides and he closed the deal.

Another common mistake that presenters make is being too comprehensive, i.e. placing too much information on the slides. We get that some research went into the project, but keep in mind that "great presentations are mysteries, not encyclopedia entries".

When creating a presentation, think of yourself as the director of a play, and you’re assigning speaking parts among your main points. You can come up with a great dialogue, but if you have 20 characters speaking, you haven’t developed any of them properly. Cut back on the excess characters and focus on the extra lines given to the lead roles.

Your audience’s curiosity must come before content. We’ve all seen the presenter who clicks to a slide with ten bullet points. By the time he’s done discussing the first one, we’ve already read all of them. Now he’s lost us and we’re bored. But what if there had been ten questions instead? We’d be curious to hear the answers.

One way to increase engagement during presentations, especially in a large group setting, is to encourage audience participation by polling them live in the presentation. This keeps the viewers from getting bored and makes them feel like they’re part of the presentation.