This Element is an excerpt from Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, Updated and Expanded Edition (ISBN: 9780137144174) by Jerry Weissman. Available in print and digital formats.

Master the right ways to use animations in business presentations--and avoid animation techniques that can kill your presentation!

We’ve all been in the audiences of far too many presentations that unleash all the bells and whistles of the animation in PowerPoint with a frenetic, pyrotechnic display that challenges a Fourth of July celebration. This phenomenon is like putting a 14-year-old boy behind the wheel of a Ferrari Testarossa....