If you build decks for sales calls, board meetings, or training sessions and want them to communicate instead of decorate — this is the day that gets the slides out of the way of the message.
Who delivers this: Christopher Ross · PowerPoint trainer for sales, executive, and L&D teams · classroom training delivery since 2004 · MA Candidate, Learning and Technology, Royal Roads University
PowerPoint 101 is the practical day for people who present to make decisions happen — sales meetings, board updates, training delivery, internal proposals. By the end of it you will know what each slide is actually for, you will have built a deck that survives the “can you send me the slides” follow-up, and you will leave with a small set of opinions about templates, charts, and animations that will serve you for the next ten years.
Who this is for
- Fit. Sales teams building proposal decks, executives preparing board updates, project managers running quarterly reviews, and trainers shaping live or recorded sessions.
- Fit. Anyone who has been handed a 90-slide template from their organisation and told to make it look good for a 20-minute talk.
- Fit. Teams switching from Google Slides or Keynote and wanting the PowerPoint conversion to actually land rather than read like a screenshot of the old tool.
- Not fit. People who want to be taught animation tricks as the point of the day. Animations come up where they earn their place; they are not the curriculum.
- Not fit. Designers building branded deck templates for an organisation — that is template-design work, not PowerPoint training. Reach out and we can scope it separately.
Prerequisites: a working Microsoft 365 PowerPoint license (desktop or web), and one deck you have built in the last six months you can bring to the session. That is the bar.
What you’ll be able to do after
- Plan a deck before you build it — what each slide is for, what the audience walks out remembering, what cuts.
- Build slides as billboards rather than documents — one idea per slide, scannable at a meeting-room distance.
- Use the Slide Master and a custom theme so the deck stays consistent without copying-and-pasting layouts.
- Make charts that read — the most common chart-as-decoration mistakes, and how to fix them with two clicks.
- Present from Speaker View with your notes, while the audience sees a clean slide rather than your script.
- Send slides as a follow-up that actually carries the message without you in the room — the deck for the meeting, and the deck for the reader, are not the same document.
Curriculum, in four themed blocks
- Slides as billboards, not documents. One idea per slide. The headline that earns the slide and matches what the slide actually delivers. Why a deck with thirty short slides usually outperforms one with eight dense ones. The wall-of-text slide and the “agenda” slide that nobody reads — what to do instead.
- Master slides, themes, and the architecture of a deck. Using the Slide Master so consistency is structural rather than manual. Theme colours, fonts, and placeholder layouts. Reusable layouts for the slide shapes you build every week. Importing a brand template without it fighting you on every slide.
- Charts, tables, and visuals that read. The chart-as-decoration mistakes — 3D pies, hundred-line line charts, axes that start at zero when they should not. SmartArt where it earns its place and where it does not. The data table that should have been a slide title. Icons, images, and the alt text that makes the file accessible.
- Presenting, and the deck after the room. Speaker View, presenter notes, monitor setup. Animation budget — the difference between a transition that supports the point and one that interrupts it. Sending the deck after the meeting: handout view, exporting to PDF, the appendix-slide trick for follow-up questions. The deck that survives without you in the room.
Real examples we’ll work through
- A live rebuild of one slide from your existing deck — the wordy one you knew was a problem — using the billboard pattern.
- A chart you brought in that reads badly today, rebuilt in two clicks so it makes the point on first scan.
- A Slide Master adjustment that propagates a brand colour or font change across the deck without you touching individual slides.
Where this fits in the Microsoft PowerPoint track
Shaped for: Sales teams, executives, project managers, trainers, and anyone who builds decks where the slides have to earn the meeting they are in.
The full training catalogue shows how the Microsoft Office courses sit alongside the WordPress training track.
Format, duration, and pricing
PowerPoint 101 runs as a single full-day class, six hours, in person across the Niagara region or online over Microsoft Teams. The two half-days format works well for sales and L&D teams who cannot block a full day; the half-day compressed format is a working introduction rather than a complete curriculum.
| Format | Niagara region | Outside Niagara (Ontario) | Online (anywhere) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-day class (6 hr) | $1,495 | $1,795 | $1,295 |
| Two half-days across a week | $2,495 | $2,795 | $2,195 |
| Half-day compressed (3 hr) | $895 | $995 | $795 |
In-person delivery includes room setup, reference materials, a post-training summary for managers, and travel within the Niagara region. Online delivery includes the recording if you need it. Final scope and quote confirmed on the discovery call.
Currently booking through Q3 2026. One public cohort per quarter; private team engagements scheduled separately.
Product names referenced on this page — including PowerPoint, Microsoft, WordPress, and Teams — are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Training offered here is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of these companies.
