The "B" Key

Here’s a little tip I uncovered more than 20 years ago and passed on to all attendees of my Developing & Delivering Great Presentations It’s for those who use Powerpoint for their presentation software.

When you’re in slide show view, as opposed to normal or slide sorter views, pressing the “B” key will blacken the screen. When you press the “B” key again it will go back to displaying the slide it was on.

It’s a great little feature for presenters because by darkening the screen, all attention is put back on you. There’s no chance of message competition (when the slide says one thing and you say another) since there’s no slide for your audience to look at.

When do you want all eyes focused on you? There are three times when it makes the most sense – at the beginning of a presentation, at the end, and my personal favorite, when taking questions, especially those that are off topic.

Let’s say you’ve presented information about your product and now you’re talking about support. Someone circles back with a question about your product. You’ve got 3 options:

1. You could tell them you’ll answer their questions at the end. But that’s not a good strategy especially if you’ve encouraged dialogue and them asking questions. Besides, the person asking the question may stay mentally focused on that question, and not the topic you want to present.
   
   
2. You could try to find the slides that cover what they’re asking (assuming they’re in your slide deck) and you can get there quickly. But I’ve seen way too many presenters take way too long searching for the slide (meanwhile losing their audience) or go to a slide that really doesn’t address the question (wasting more time). And, if you go to that slide, what unspoken message are you telling the questioner? That you already presented this and they weren’t paying attention. Not a good way to make friends and influence people!
   
   
3. Instead, in most cases, I prefer is to answer their questions right on the spot. Stop what I’m doing, hit the “B” key to black out the slide thereby avoiding message competition, and listen to the question. All attention is on me as I answer the question. And when I’m done I can hit the “B” key again and go right back to where I was.
   
   

If you want to grab your audience’s attention consider strategic use of the “B” key in your presentations.