Undocumented Features

Powerpoint Presentations: A Great Road to Wander Off Of

October 25, 2007 – 4:24 pm

PowerPoint is a tool that people love to hate.  I avoided it for years in my career- which was a mistake, because it’s a powerful tool.  Like all powerful tools, however, it can be used for good and evil.

I have posted in the past several times with various pieces of advice on PowerPoint.  Now I offer one more piece of advice, and it’s a simple one:

Your PowerPoint slide presentation is a road map for a journey- a journey that you want to take with the people in the room.  Like a vacation plan, you are more likely to have fun if you wander off the path.

Great… thanks, Stacey.  What the heck does that mean?

What it means is this:  most all presentations are effectively a sales pitch- you are presenting an idea that you want people to buy into.  If you do your presentation without varying from the road, you will, and I guarantee this, fail to get the people in the audience actually involved in a conversation with you about the idea.  If you don’t get them into a discussion, your odds of closing the sale are much longer than if you get them involved. 

Granted, getting off your planned path can be dangerous at times.  Here are some pointers to help you in this dangerous territory:

• If the discussion brings up a point that you will be addressing later in the presentation, do not be afraid to say “That’s a great point, and we’ll be coming to that shortly,” then get back on task.  This is okay because a) you’ve engaged them and acknowledged them, b) you’ve gotten back on the road, and c) you can guarantee that they’ll pay attention, waiting for their point to come up again.

•  Don’t be afraid to say “That’s a great question.  I am sure we have those details, but I will have to get in touch with our experts on that to get you the details.  Can I get your contact info at the end, and I’ll get you that information?”  People don’t expect you to know everything.  They are turned off if you panic when asked about something you don’t know, though.  It shows a lack of confidence- and no one buys anything from an un-confident salesman.

• Do watch your available time.  If you’re getting too far off the path, do not be afraid to ask “You know, I think we have a lot more we can share about that, and we still have quite a bit of material to cover.  Can we schedule another meeting for you so that we can explore that part in detail?”  When you do this, you’ve acknowledged their interest, gotten back on your time schedule, you’ve gained commitment for another meeting and more face time, and most importantly, you’ve gotten the audience to commit to think about your idea more and invest more time in it.  Investment of their time thinking about your idea is investment in their buy-in to your idea.

Remember- conversation is key to buy-in.  Don’t be afraid to vary from your presentation in the name of making an idea sale.  The goal of any presentation is to sell an idea, not to show every PowerPoint slide in your deck.  The best sales presentations are the ones where you make the sale without even finishing your presentation.

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