How to Create Talking Points for a Presentation

Daniel came to us for a conference presentation. We built the slides, nailed the structure, and the design was exactly what he wanted. Then, three days before the big day, the panic set in.

"The slides look great," he told us, "But now I have no idea how I'm actually going to deliver this in front of a room full of people."

Our Creative Director's response was simple: "Prepare your talking points."

As a presentation design agency, we've seen this common issue time and again: most presenters invest everything into how their slides look and almost nothing into what they're actually going to say.

So, in this blog, we'll teach you how to create your own presentation talking points, the same way we guided Daniel, so that when you're standing in front of your audience, you're not scrambling for words. You're delivering with intention.

In case you didn't know, we specialize in only one thing: making presentations. We can help you by designing your slides and writing your content too.

What are Presentation Talking Points?

Presentation talking points are short, focused notes that capture the key ideas you want to communicate for each slide or section of your presentation.

They are not a script.

They are not bullet points you read off a screen.

Think of them as mental anchors, the three to five core thoughts per slide that keep you on track, on message, and sounding like you actually know what you're talking about.

How to Create Talking Points for a Presentation: The POINTS Framework

Most advice on this topic will tell you to "just jot down what you want to say per slide." Helpful. Thanks. That's like telling someone who wants to get fit to "just eat less and move more." Technically true, completely useless in practice.

So we built a framework. We call it POINTS.

It's the exact process we walked Daniel through when he came to us in a panic three days before his conference. It's structured enough to give you direction, and flexible enough to work whether you're presenting to five people in a boardroom or five hundred at a conference.

Here's how it works.

P - Purpose: Know Why This Slide Exists

Before you write a single talking point, you need to answer one question for every slide in your deck: what is this slide supposed to do?

Every slide has a job. Some slides inform. Some slides persuade. Some slides provide proof. Some slides create an emotional moment. If you don't know what job a slide is doing, you will not know what to say when you're standing in front of it.

So start here. Go through your deck slide by slide and write one sentence for each one that completes this prompt: "This slide exists to..." That single sentence becomes the foundation of every talking point you write for that slide.

For example, if you have a slide showing customer satisfaction data, your sentence might be: "This slide exists to prove that our current customers trust us." Now you know exactly what angle to take when you speak to it. You're not just reading numbers. You're building a case.

O - One Core Message Per Slide

This is the rule that most presenters break without realizing it. They try to say five things per slide because there are five things on the slide. But your audience can only absorb one strong idea at a time.

Your job is to identify the single most important message for each slide and make sure every talking point you write ladders up to that one message. Everything else is supporting detail.

Ask yourself: if the audience forgets everything I say about this slide except one thing, what do I want that one thing to be? Write that down. That is your core message. Build your talking points around it.

Daniel's conference presentation had a slide packed with three different statistics about market growth. His instinct was to talk through all three equally. We pushed him to pick one. The one that mattered most to his audience. Once he did that, his talking points for that slide became sharp, confident, and convincing instead of scattered and forgettable.

I - Illustrate With an Example

Data tells. Stories sell. You've probably heard some version of that before. It's repeated so often because it keeps being true.

For every core message you identify, you need at least one example, anecdote, or analogy ready to go. This is what makes your talking points feel human instead of corporate. It's what makes your audience nod along instead of zone out.

Your example doesn't have to be long. A single sentence can do the job. "We saw this exact problem with a client last year, and here's what happened" is enough to shift the energy in a room. It signals that you're not just presenting theory. You've lived this. You know this. And that builds trust faster than any beautifully designed slide ever could.

When you're building your talking points, write your example right after your core message. That way, when you're in the room, you naturally flow from the point to the proof without having to think about it.

N - Narrow It Down to Three Points Max

Here's where discipline comes in. Once you have your purpose, your core message, and your example, you're allowed a maximum of three talking points per slide. Not five. Not seven. Three.

Why three? Because three is the number the human brain naturally organizes around. It feels complete without feeling overwhelming. Think about how often the best communicators in the world use the rule of three. It's not a coincidence. It's cognitive science.

So, when you're building out your talking points, force yourself to narrow. If you have six things you want to say, cut it to three. If you have four, cut it to three. Be ruthless. The points you cut aren't lost.

They can live in your Q&A prep, your leave-behind document, or your follow-up email. But in the room, you stick to three.

T - Transitions That Connect the Dots

This is the most underrated part of any presentation and the part that almost nobody prepares for. The transition between slides.

Most presenters click to the next slide and either go silent for two seconds while they figure out what to say or blurt out "so, moving on" which is the verbal equivalent of a shrug. Neither builds momentum. Neither keeps the audience engaged.

A good transition does two things. It closes out the previous slide with a one-line summary and it sets up the next slide with a reason to care. Something like: "So we've established that the market is growing. The real question is, are we positioned to capture it? That's what this next slide is about."

That's it. One sentence back, one sentence forward. Write these transitions as part of your talking points. They are not an afterthought. They are the glue that holds your entire presentation together and makes you sound like a polished, intentional communicator.

S - Stress Test with a Dry Run

You've done the work. You have your purpose per slide, your core message, your example, your three talking points, and your transitions. Now you have to stress test all of it before you walk into the room.

A dry run is not optional. It is the step that separates presenters who feel prepared from presenters who actually are prepared. Run through your entire presentation out loud, using only your talking points as a guide. Not a script. Your talking points.

Pay attention to where you stumble. Where you go blank. Where your transitions feel clunky. Those are the spots that need more work. Go back, refine those talking points, and run it again.

Daniel did two dry runs before his conference presentation. The first one was rough. He stumbled on his transitions and realized his talking points for the middle section were too vague. The second run was sharp. By the time he walked on stage, he wasn't nervous. He was ready.

The POINTS Framework Summarized

Step	What It Means	What to Do
P - Purpose	Know why each slide exists	Write one sentence: "This slide exists to..."
O - One Core Message	One big idea per slide	Identify the single most important takeaway
I - Illustrate	Back every point with an example	Add one anecdote, analogy, or real case
N - Narrow Down	Maximum three talking points per slide	Cut ruthlessly, save the rest for Q&A
T - Transitions	Connect slides with intention	One line closing the last slide, one line opening the next
S - Stress Test	Rehearse with your talking points	Do at least two dry runs out loud

The Biggest Talking Points Mistakes We See Presenters Make

After working with hundreds of presenters across industries, we've seen the same mistakes show up over and over again. Here's what to stop doing immediately.

1. Treating Talking Points Like a Script

The moment you write full sentences and try to memorize them word for word, you've already lost. A script makes you rigid. It makes you sound rehearsed in the worst possible way, like a customer service rep reading from a manual. Talking points are meant to be directional, not dictatorial. Write phrases, not paragraphs. Cues, not monologues.

2. Having Too Many Points and Prioritizing None

If everything is important, nothing is. We see presenters show up with eight talking points per slide and no clear sense of which one actually matters. The audience can feel that confusion. Narrow it down, prioritize ruthlessly, and trust that less will always land harder than more.

3. Ignoring the Audience Completely

Your talking points are not about you. They are about what your audience needs to hear, understand, and walk away believing. We see presenters build talking points entirely around what they find interesting or what they want to cover, with zero consideration for what the person sitting in that room actually cares about.

Before you write a single talking point, ask yourself: what does my audience already know, what do they need to know, and what do I want them to feel by the end? If your talking points don't answer those three questions, start over.

How Talking Points Help You Handle Nervousness and Stay Present

Presentation nerves are not a personality flaw. They are a physiological response to perceived threat. Your brain genuinely cannot tell the difference between standing in front of a boardroom and standing in front of a predator. The problem is that anxiety and presence cannot coexist. When you're nervous, your brain goes into survival mode, and the first thing it drops is access to your prepared material. That's why people blank out mid-sentence. That's why Daniel's mind went completely empty the moment he imagined walking onto that conference stage. A full script makes this worse, not better. It gives your anxious brain even more to lose track of.

This is exactly where strong talking points change the game. When anxiety spikes, your brain needs something simple and solid to hold onto. Three focused talking points per slide is manageable under pressure. That's something your brain can grab even when everything else feels like noise. But here's the deeper truth: the presenters who look the most confident in the room are not the ones who memorized everything perfectly. They are the ones who trust that they know their material well enough to let go of perfection. When you've done the work of narrowing down your message, finding your examples, and rehearsing your transitions, you stop performing and start communicating. That shift, from performing to communicating, is what the audience actually responds to.

Where to Keep Your Talking Points

This is the question nobody talks about but everybody needs answered. You've done the work. You've built your talking points using the POINTS framework. Now where do they actually live so that they're useful to you in the room and not just a document sitting forgotten on your desktop?

Presenter View Is Your Best Friend

If you're presenting from PowerPoint or Google Slides, both platforms have a built-in presenter view that shows your notes on your screen while the audience only sees the slides. This is the most practical place to keep your talking points. You're not holding paper, you're not glancing at your phone, and you're not breaking eye contact to look at a separate screen. Your talking points are right there, invisible to the audience, available to you the moment you need a quick anchor. Keep them short in this view. Three bullet phrases per slide maximum. If you're writing full sentences in your presenter notes, you're writing a script, not talking points.

A Single Printed Reference Sheet

If you're presenting in a setting where you have a podium, a table, or any surface in front of you, a single printed reference sheet works brilliantly. Not a printout of every slide with notes. One clean sheet that lists your slide titles down the left column and your three talking points for each slide right next to them. Glancing at it takes half a second. It keeps you grounded without making you look unprepared. Daniel used this exact approach for his conference presentation and found it far less distracting than flipping through printed slides.

Daniel walked onto that conference stage three days after our creative director told him to prepare his talking points. He used the POINTS framework, did two dry runs, and kept a single reference sheet on the podium in front of him. He didn't blank out. He didn't lose his thread. He delivered the presentation cleanly, confidently, and came back to us afterward saying it was the best he'd ever presented. The slides got him in the room. The talking points got him through it.

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Why Hire Us to Build your Presentation?

If you're reading this, you're probably working on a presentation right now. You could do it all yourself. But the reality is - that’s not going to give you the high-impact presentation you need. It’s a lot of guesswork, a lot of trial and error. And at the end of the day, you’ll be left with a presentation that’s “good enough,” not one that gets results. On the other hand, we’ve spent years crafting thousands of presentations, mastering both storytelling and design. Let us handle this for you, so you can focus on what you do best.

How To Get Started?

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Just click on the "Start a Project" button on our website, calculate the price, make payment, and we'll take it from there.

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