Powerpoint presentations are extremely easy to string together with a minimum of training. That is both their strength and their problem. Sales presentations are complex undertakings that demand effective communication of your idea. But as well as what you are communicating, you need to think about how it is communicated. powerpoint design can either strengthen your presentation – adding to its impact and convincing your listeners of your ideas – or it can really detract from it. If that’s the case, it may not matter how good your ideas or competitive your tender. If you lose your audience with a flawed presentation, they’re not going to be interested.
That’s why Powerpoint has to be used with a pinch of salt. It’s a fantastically useful program and, deployed well, it can add significantly to the effect you are hoping to have. However, it has become the expectation that sales presentations ought to be accompanied by a Powerpoint presentation. That adds a pressure to put something – anything – together, even if it is low quality. Needless to say, relying on an amateur slide presentation is a recipe for disaster.
Part of this is just our culture’s love of multimedia. The more parallel strands of information we can consume, the better. So a talk isn’t complete without visual representations of what you’re saying – pictures and, better still, movie clips. The problem arises when these distract from the main content rather than adding to it. Simplicity is vital. But additionally, the presentation needs to contribute something distinctive. We’ve all attended lectures where the spoken content is mirrored on the screen – and, quite probably, in a handout too. Thus the message is simply triplicated, and you could equally read the handout in five minutes than sit through the hour of speech. It’s frustrating and a waste of time – and something to be avoided in your own presentations.
So, Powerpoint presentations have to complement, not replicate the content of your sales presentations. Careful powerpoint design will enable you to communicate more effectively, rather than taking away from your spoken message. This is vital, since the expectation that a talk will be accompanied by overheads can lead well-meaning but misguided speakers into hamstringing themselves and losing their audience on what would otherwise have been a fascinating talk. If that costs you a contract, then it’s easy to see that a little training or outsourcing can be an investment that is worth making and can pay for itself over and over.
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