Okay, so the other day, I opened up a presentation with this photo. It was Storytelling for Sales Professionals. The caption read, ”Let’s look at the underbelly of your preparation for customers - how do you REALLY get ready for a sales meeting?”Yea, they laughed. (I was so grateful. Isn’t it nice to get a laugh?)
The point I hoped to make was that the more experienced you are the less likely you are to prepare because you know you COULD walk in and wing it. So, what if you actually PREPARED? I wanted these well-compensated sales professionals to realize they might make MORE money if they put some thought into it.
Whether you’re in sales, customer service, marketing, engineering, IT or any other profession, the biggest problem with PowerPoint is really this:
Too many words.
TOO MANY WORDS!
Why Audiences Hate PowerPoint
A few years ago, while writing Speak Like a CEO, I interviewed a talented graphic artist who worked in a law firm and was just about going blind trying to edit their slides. She explained it to me. The best slides visualize a concept. But most speakers don’t take time for that creative step.
Your audience should see it and get it. Instant recognition. If they have to read it they stop listening - and you have enough to compete with today, from Blackberries to Starbucks coffee stands in the back of the room beckoning people to side conversations with cream and sugar.
Instant Recognition
I once saw a respected physician wake up a morning crowd on a dull, ”homework” topic - health care, by showing a slide kind of like the one above; a bunch of people waiting in line for an escalator instead of taking the stairs. Women in black pant suits were spitting out their coffee as they guffawed over the shot. This Ph.D. could have presented us with lots of data like a big, important researcher, but she chose instead to make an impact.
Don’t you wish more speakers would?
Over 40 and Blind
Here’s something to think about. Most people in your audiences are over 40 and can’t see the statistics, even with their glasses on. Of course they aren’t going to admit this. They’ll just sit there and pretend. More bad news for you.
I’m not suggesting you can’t use words, but do so sparingly and mix it with interesting graphics, photos and process models. Today, in two seconds, you can find a photo of just about anything in the world. Be daring! PowerPoint is so easy today that even a monkey can look like a pro. All it takes is a concept and a little imagination to wow your audience.
But It’s Different in My Company
Of course, I can hear all the crabby people out there saying, “You don’t understand our business; that isn’t our culture; people expect complex, data driven slides.” Okay, okay, have it your way. I know that many companies expect, no, demand more complexity in the PowerPoint.
Howevever, just today I was on the phone with a very frustrated SVP of a Fortune 100 company, railing about the fact that when HE walks in to talk with his CEO he knows he’d better present it on one page. Then he attends presentations by his analysts and notes they’ve copied and pasted entire excel spread sheets at 4.5 point type into a PowerPoint presentation. He doesn’t even know where to begin to change the culture.
Where to Start
Let’s just start simply: at least make it legible. Separate the graphics into different pages and make it so that you don’t have to walk up and stand next to the screen to decipher it.
Show and Tell
Next, go back to Kindergarten and remember ”show and tell.” If I hear one more person introduce a slide and say, “As you can see our projections are...” Guess what? I can’t see it. You spent 4 hours creating this fancy model and you’re giving me 7.5 seconds to interpret it. Give me a break.
So with show and tell - take the audience on a journey. Tell them where to look and what it means. For instance:
“You’ll note that the blue line represents European sales, the orange line, Asia Pacific, and the yellow line, North America.” Okay, that wasn’t so hard, right?
Why this Matters
Your audience has a choice. They can either listen or read. I’ve yet to meet the human being who can do both at the same time. Try it sometime when you’re in the audience and a speaker is presenting complex material. Listen? Read? Go back and forth? No matter what you do you’ll miss something.
I have a friend who never uses slides. Ever. She says, “Go to any presentation and look at the speaker and the screen. One hundred percent of the audience will be focused on the screen. This is counterproductive.”
What Else can You Do?
Another friend creates his visuals live. On good old fashioned flip charts. The audience is always enchanted. He talks, gets an inspiration, picks up the magic marker and - voila. Whatever is lost in snappy, four color “smart art” is more than improved by the sponteneity of the moment. He’ brings the audience into the artistic effort; they’re paying attention. It’s about them.
Sooooo...let’s say you really want to prepare some nice slides. You know, tell a story.
Take it from movie producers. Storyboard.
After you’ve outlined your talk, done your research and finalized your plan, take a concept from each section of your talk and capture it in a picture.
The former Chief Medical Officer for United Health tells me that several weeks prior to a presentation (you have to start early) she lays out sheets of 8 x 11 paper on the floor, and draws with crayons. She never sits down at the computer until she’s done the crayon thing. I stole this idea. Now, in our boot camps and workshops, we use the crayon exercise - asking people to think about a single concept they want to capture. You wouldn’t believe what people can do with a few crayons and five minutes to think.
A Few More Tips
No time like the present.
• Think about how you can shake things up.
• Spend 20 minutes on line looking at photos
• Study presentations that grab you and ask why
• Count the words - then cut them in half
• Free up your mind. What would you do if it WERE the culture to be interesting?
• Set out to design a presentation that wows people
And have fun. It should be a little more fun.