Say It with Presentations: How to Design and Deliver Successful Business Presentations

by Gene Zelazny

This is a follow on text to Say It With Charts and aims to give managers all of the tools, tips and techniques needed to give a successful, audience-friendly presentation.'

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Communication, Management, Productivity

153 pages, Hardcover

Published December 21, 1999

Reviews

[Gloria He · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must-read for business presenters!

Recommended by a partner at the firm, I started reading this book. The biggest takeaway is to treat the audience not as judgmental enemies, but people who want to follow through your logic and eventually agree with you. To make it happen, define the situation(incl. the goal, the content, and the decision makers etc) and then design the presentation accordingly are the key. With that being said, the presentation is no longer a tedious task to power through, but an opportunity to communicate, learn about the audience, and help them address the pressing business issues they are facing.

To do that, rehearsing thoroughly, providing proper transition between points and using pause to let points sink in are essential to a successful presentation!

[Jan Spörer · Rating 2 out of 5]

My key take-aways:
-Endings should consist of: Summary, recommendation, action program/implementation proposal, ask for commitment, next steps/agreements that were made during the presentation. (pp. 56-57)
-Introductions should have four parts: Purpose, importance, preview, transition (last is mostly verbal). (p 104)
-Checklist: (pp. 156-160)
--1: Define the situation: Specify objective, analyze the audience, define scope, select medium
--2: Design the presentation: Determine message, craft storyline, build the storyboard, produce visuals and handouts
--3: Deliver the presentation:

[Ani]

put this and say it with charts on your shelf, and you can pretend to be a management consultant.

[Ahmad Badghaish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good tips & information about the presentations. Although, in some points you can see that the writer is just being funny, or providing unnecessary comments or details.

[Julie Barbosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have to do PowerPoint presentations, this simple guidance makes all the difference!

[Rongkai Sha · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful powerful book that opens a gate for what it meant to give a presentation.
A lot of useful instructions. The principles are not outdated at all in 2020.
Very useful for cultivating a good mental representation about what a good presentation is. It also provides many exercises for practice.

[Maya Dellor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly really obvious stuff but sometimes I forget it and it's helpful to reference this book. Some of the tips seem outlandish but I guess if you want to make a statement you can use the more extreme suggestions in this book.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a good book about general presentation techniques. But it is outdated, because it was a little bit confusing to read the author's recomendations to use a light projector. But the rest of the book has plenty of good advices.

[Nathan Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a little dated at this point, but the actual meat of the book still applies. If you need to give a presentation, this is a good book to use. I'm using it as a teaching device for corporate presentations.

[Jason Hardin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid starter book on the basics of how to craft and easy to understand presentation. I recommend this book to anyone starting out with presentations or who are making very complex presentations. Gene has years of experience critiquing presentations and presents a solid set of best practices.+

[Asya · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was fine. I think it had a really good structure on how to plan, prepare, and deliver a good presentation. Some of the references are a bit dated, which gave a few chuckles as I was reading. This book is a great place to start if you are new to presentations.

[Maggie Che · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very instrumental!

[Theut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Da 5* per i contenuti, una pietra miliare.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful but doesn't go too much beneath some good common sense advice

[Brandon Mullan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid information about presenting.

[Vlad Kharitonov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Outdated. Lots of water and irrelevant content.

[Timen Zandbergen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it contains a lot of good advice, you'll have heard most of it already when giving presentations in school.

[Jill Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy & fun to read, with good advice on developing presentations.