 In previous posts you'll have seen me trying to turn you from the 'dark-side' (re-purposing dense text and marketing-speak heavy, corporate slide decks) to telling stories, using images and, especially, whiteboarding to communicate ideas in presentations and tech demonstrations. BUT slide decks aren't going away anytime soon, and are still the default communication tool for most people in corporate PreSales, Sales Consulting and Sales. PowerPoint can be used for 'good' PowerPoint, in the right hands, can be used for 'good', to create some truly astounding and memorable visuals and even 'Oscar'-standard movies and animations. Check-out or follow my good friends at Eyeful Presentations to see what I mean. The reason for this post, though, is to ask you to download and check out Duarte's latest free PowerPoint template; it's truly brilliant.  I'm a big fan of Nancy Duarte's work. Her book, slide:ology is an absolute must for every PreSales professional's required reading list. As a summary, Duarte's five rules are:
Of course, if you have downloaded and run the PPT template (it's a self-running slide show), you'll want to know how it was done. So, check out this PCWorld article walk-through from JD Sartain (with lots of screenshots), it covers:
...it practically researches and designs best practice slides itself.. As a complete Google 'fanboy' (G Suite, Pixel & Nexus phones, Chromebooks, Eddystone beacons & Chromecasts), I can't talk about slide presentations without mentioning Google Slides. OK, it isn't anywhere near as functional as PowerPoint, but check out its new 'Explore' functionality...it practically researches and designs best practice slides itself (See the 3 minute video below). As some of my American colleagues might say, 'it's awwwwwesome'. Don is the Founder of Winning Skills Ltd. Talk to Don about building Presales organisations, best-practice PreSales skills and processes and how to build the perfect 'Wow' demo. Let's connect on LinkedIn or talk at don@winningskills.co.uk  How to present through your audience's smartphoneYou've got a slick presentation, its memorable, you've got an engaging story-line but you still don't seem to be able to get all your audience's attention; they've still got their faces in their smartphones. Sound familiar? Do you get angry about it? Do you think its rude? Are they telling you your presentation is boring? Recent research has found that smartphone users (i.e. most of us) check their phone more than 1500 times a week and four in ten said they've, at one time or another, checked their Emails automatically without even thinking. As a presenter, you might think there's nothing you can do about it; attention-spans are shortening and we're all addicted to the real-time connections smartphones give us. Maybe there's a way to turn a negative into a positive...how about presenting through their own smartphones. I've been playing around with www.swipe.to. Its currently free and easy to use. Here's how...
Try it out and tell me what you think? Are there other ways of doing this? Check out the Microsoft smartphone addiction video...OK, its a quite dated but its still so true... |
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