Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire [Paperback]

Can you really deliver a PowerPoint presentation without having any bullet points in the deck? This book does a good job of convincing that this is possible. However, I believe that the book's greater contribution is pointing out that most people structure presentations as a dump of data rather than taking into account their audience and the goal of their presentation -- why are people there? What do you want them to do or believe after you're done presenting? Even if you disagree with Cliff's convincing points on removing bullets from your decks, you should take to heart his framework for developing concepts and decks.

The running example is of a presentation for a proposal to approve some drug or another for the executive board of a company. While I'm sure there are lots of presentations done for boards, at the company I work most presentations are to groups of peer first-level managers and individual contributors about technical areas, product overviews, or change initiatives. The second most common are those to upper management on the status of a project or requests for resources. None of those are easily transformed into the marketing presentation, as they contain lots of data to present, sequences of actions that need to be taken, lists of stakeholders to be affected, etc. I could see how you can remove bullet points from certain types of presentations, but he didn't do a great job of convincing me that was true of all presentations.

These days, not many people head into meetings without the requisite set of PowerPoint slides. But critics are taking aim at PowerPoint and question whether it helps communication or shuts down thinking.

Cliff Atkinson believes he's built a better mouse trap. He wants us to dump boring, bullet-riddled slides, and he has a creative solution: he taps Hollywood-style storytelling to transform PowerPoint presentations from endless lists of bullet points into compelling communications.

Beyond Bullet Points is a guided methodology for using the power of storytelling to make PowerPoint presentations effective communication tools, not just speaker notes.

Atkinson relies on examples, templates, and downloadable information from his site to demonstrate his concepts and wean the reader off the use of mind-numbing bullets.

Atkinson will have you working on your story long before you touch the PowerPoint software, which is not common practice for many presenters. His book is full of other tips to help pull together a compelling and persuasive presentaton.

If you're a user of PowerPoint, add this book to your library.

Michael McLaughlin, coauthor with Jay Conrad Levinson of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants.

I am a professional speaker and workshop leader. People have always told me I am good. But now I look at my presentations and think, "I cannot believe I used to present this garbage and people responded." The ideas I got from this book have completely transformed my business.

That may sound like a lofty claim but let me explain. I have never met Cliff Atkinson. Didn't know him from "Boo" before a month or two ago. I saw Cliff's book mentioned on a blog I read and began reading some of his posts. They were very useful and had a lot of great ideas. When this book was released, Cliff made an offer to do a makeover on a few presentations so that he could publically show people the results on his blog and in the discussion forum on his book site. When I saw that, I jumped at the chance.

My sales presentation drives the majority of my revenue. Why wouldn't I? If I could make it better, great. If I didn't like the result, I could always stick with what I had been doing.

Like it? Wow! The transformation has been amazing! You can see for yourself. Go to his blog and you can see my entire makeover process or you can see just a few before and afters in some of Cliff's blog posts. Look for Kim's makeover. I think you will agree the difference is truly amazing.

But it didn't stop there. What Cliff is really teaching is a structure for presenting information. Storytelling is one of the most powerful communication tools out there. I was a good story teller - but my stories weren't tight. They were not concise. The Beyond Bullet Point approach gives my audience exactly what they need to keep them interested and answer their questions - no more, no less. It puts you in their shoes.

I took Cliff's story structure and began to apply it in other areas. I have not only put it to work in other presentations, I tried a little experiment. I wrote one of my sixty second radio spots using Act 1 of Cliff's story structure. It began airing this week and right out of the gate it looks like it may be one of the best pulling ads I have ever run.

But it didn't stop there either. I have been working with an ad agency to develop a positioning statement (some would call it a tag line) and a jingle. We had been going back and forth on the positioning statement. Nothing popped. After I finished the story template I used for the sixty second spot, I sent it over to the creative guy at the ad agency and we instantly knew we had a positioning statement. It came naturally right out of Cliff's story structure.

So that is my story. I have never posted a review on Amazon before. I am an avid reader but I have no time to post reviews. For this book, I made time. I give this book my highest recommendation, which I will also do to readers of my newsletters and blog. I hope it is as powerful for you as it was for me.

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