Slides are not the presentation

Most people open the slide software first and start typing. That is building the handout and calling it a presentation.

Decide the message before you open anything. One sentence: what should this audience know or do afterwards. If you cannot write it, the presentation is not ready, and opening the software will not make it ready.

Then decide the three points that support it. Three, because that is what people retain.

Then decide what the audience needs, which is not everything you know. The most common failure in business presentations is somebody demonstrating the work rather than communicating the finding, and the audience sitting through forty slides waiting for the point.

Only then build slides, and only for the parts where a visual genuinely helps.

The two documents problem. A slide deck designed to be presented and one designed to be read alone are different objects. Trying to make one do both produces a deck too dense to present and too fragmentary to read. Build the presentation deck, and if people need a document, write a document.

Know your time and respect it. Running over is read as poor preparation and it takes time from whoever is next.

And know why you are presenting at all. If the purpose is to distribute information, an email is better and everybody would prefer it. A meeting is for the things a document cannot do: judgement, discussion, a decision made together.