If you are like most of the business world’s CEOs, COOs, managers, presidents, vice-presidents, sales managers, sales superstars and yes, even professional speakers, your slides probably suck.
You might spend a few million on a consultant who will tell you that making a slightly thinner coffee cup will save you $20 million a year and then send your sales staff out into the world with boring, childish, mind-numbing slides in a sad attempt to connect with your customers.
I have spent the last decade trying to “fix” bad PowerPoint for companies from New York to Hong Kong. I have seen just about everything. What amazes me is why. Why do the leanest, most powerful, most productive and most successful companies on our planet still show their staff, their customers and the world lousy, horrible PowerPoint?
It is time to face this huge blind spot in corporate communications and marketing. It is time to Fix your lousy PowerPoint!
If you want to improve your PowerPoint here are 5 things you can, no, you must do.
- Make presentations a critical priority. Understand this is about your corporate or personal brand — that thing that you just spent $5 million on with a fancy super-hip ad agency. Bad presentations are not about a small flaw in a small approach to small meetings. This is about the quality of your corporate image. Your brand. Are you serious about quality? About respecting your clients and staff? Are you serious about how you portray yourself in the world? You may consider an executive presentations coach for yourself and your team.
- It is about the person not the slides. The audience wants to hear the speaker’s take, their opinions and their recommendations instead of having them read a laundry list of prepackaged marketing talk. Build slides accordingly. Let those images support the speaker — the true star of the presentation. Be sure to invest in your people with training that will boost their presentation abilities.
- Get 80% of the text and data off the screen. Simplify your message and your slides without dumbing it down. If you have to show large quantities of data be sure to guide your audience to what is important while minimizing what is not. Focus on your one BIG idea. Your audience won’t remember the 15 features or benefits that you droned on about. They may just retain your single, big core message.
- Invest in quality design and images. Would you ask some 8-year old with crayons to design your new corporate headquarters? Then you should be willing to demonstrate quality in your presentations as well. Top-notch images and designs project professionalism and they cost money.
- Tell stories, or if you are not comfortable with the “s” word, call them examples or case-studies. Stories are a powerful and direct connection to emotions. And emotions will touch you audience in a way that numbers and facts cannot.
PowerPoint seems like such a minor irritant in the corporate universe but presentations (with or without PowerPoint) are at the heart of countless business communications. It is an incredible opportunity to stand out — far above your boring competition.
