We spent a fair amount of time reviewing, crunching and analysing the numbers from the 2010 Business Presentation Survey…and then pulling together a webinar to explain to the hundreds of interested parties on quite what the results meant.
If you were one of the unlucky ones who didn’t quite get on the webinar invite list (we were over-subscribed – sorry!), then fret no more. Using the wonders of PowerPoint Repurposing, we’re able to bring you the edited highlights of both webinars here on YouTube.
So grab a coffee, sit back and enjoy the show (we’d also respectfully recommend having a pen and paper handy as you’re likely to want to scribble down a lot of the findings and suggestions).
From the high octane big pitch presentations (normally in conjunction with our partners, Sales Engine) through to slides for speaking engagements for authors and the like (we’re in the thick of a project for a woman who climbed Everest at the age of 22…amazing story but more on that at a later date).
One particular type of presentation that seems to get our customers in a fluster is that of the CPD or Continuing Professional Development presentation. There’s no getting away from it – these presentations are fraught with complexity and pitfalls.
But why?
The answer is pretty straightforward. A CPD presentation needs to tread a very fine line:
It needs to be independent enough to satisfy the CPD assessors (they don’t want the CPD process to be a thinly veiled sales exercise) BUT have enough commercial content to keep the marketing department of the Provider happy (after all, it costs money to send people out to deliver these presentations!). On top of all this, it needs to grab the attention of the audience who may just be there to pick up their CPD points and grab a free sandwich.
Like we say, it can get very complex…
The good news is that we’ve got ourselves a bit of a reputation for getting the balance just right with clients like Corus, Rockfon, SIG and Altro now equipping their CPD specialists with top notch presentations.
We believe we’re the only company out there with a dedicated CPD specialist (the aforementioned vagaries of CPD presentations mean that this is pretty much a must in our opinion). He’s called Roy and he’s very very good.
As part of the rollout of this specialised service, we’ve created a separate CPD section on our website.
For more details of the service, interviews with existing CPD provider customers and information on how to contact our CPD specialist expert, please click here or head on over to www.cpd-presentations.co.uk.
Here’s an idea we’ve adapted from a man we admire at Eyeful – Seth Godin (something of a bald-headed genius).
Next time you have to prepare a presentation try this – put together a slide deck that has a slide for every 10 seconds.
Sounds tough, I know, but try it.
Think how little each slide can have on it – maybe one picture or one idea. Instead of 4 bullet points a slide could only have 1.
Now if you take this to it’s logical conclusion, you’ll have a 180 slides for a 30 minute presentation. Each slide designed to share information, move your story along or simply underpin your message.
That’s a lot of slides, a lot of content…and huge opportunity to mess up.
If the presenter and their slides are not in sync, chaos reigns and the only message delivered is that the babbling madman on stage doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about!
OK, so the concept of a 10 second slide isn’t really that practical but it does highlight the need to have an enormous amount of synergy between your talk and the slides.
And by synergy WE DO NOT MEAN READING THE SLIDES (sorry to shout but we find that rather upsetting) – we mean working in tandem with the slide deck to support and punctuate your message.
Get this right and PowerPoint magically transforms from a teleprompter into an effective presentation aid.
Get in sync with your slide deck – your audience will be forever grateful…and it may save you a few grey hairs along the way.
We’re extremely grateful to the hundreds of you who took the time to complete it - your feedback and experiences have provided an amazing insight into how businesses approach presentations in 2010.
The task now ahead of us is to process the hundreds of responses and draw insight from them. And then, as promised, we’d like to share the results and analysis with you.
So is Death by PowerPoint really killing businesses?
Are new cloud-based applications like Slide Rocket and Prezi having an impact?
Does Apple’s Keynote software hold the key to a better presentation experience?
And are companies changing their approach to business presentations in line with their social media and online strategies?
All these questions and more will be answered in our webinars on the 3rd August (UK & Europe here and US & Canada here).
We have limited spaces so please click here to register for one of the following events to ensure you have a front row seat as we share the results, provide the latest insight and offer analysis of how businesses really view presentations:
The late great Charles Mingus was not just an amazing jazz musician (cue obligatory finger click), he was also a wise man.
“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple”
We could leave this blog there – this single line sums up our approach to building slides rather nicely. However, let’s embellish this idea slightly:
When you are putting together a slide within a presentation (having done a storyboard first naturally…) think about how you can best get across the information to your audience and invariably the best way is the simplest way.
Take for example trying to describe the offside rule in football (who says we’re not topical). There are many, many ways to describe this rule particularly taking into account some of the changes over the years but in essence it boils down to 3 key things happening:
To be offside a player must be in the opposition’s half
There must be fewer than 2 people from the other team between the player and the goal
The person must be in front of the ball to be offside
We’re naturally ignoring passive, active and all that for the purposes of this demonstration, but how best could you describe this with a PowerPoint slide(s)?
It could be that you simply list those 3 points although people will read it before you can talk through it – but simplest would probably be 3 simple pictures demonstrating those 3 actions. On the other hand, there are at least 100 ways (and we’ve counted them) that you could describe this and leave even the most ardent football fan bemused.
But back to our man Mingus and his visionary quote.
It’s interesting to note that Mingus was a pioneer of his craft and his example parallels nicely with presenting. If you present complicated areas simply and get people to understand them (without being condescending) then you have created a powerful connection.
Don’t waste your opportunity to make a connection by over-complicating your message.
For those of you who like a challenge then do send in your best PowerPoint interpretation of the offside rule – the best one gets some a PowerPoint Amnesty Action Pack!
Very occasionally we avail ourselves of the local pub on a Friday evening. Normally the conversation veers from finding out what people have planned for the weekend (it would seem DIY and shopping are very big with Eyeful gang at the moment) to chatting through work related topics.
The hot topic over our most recent pint was “how do we get people to think differently about creating a presentation?”
You see, we recognise the frustration that many presenters face – they know what they should be doing but rarely have the time implement this best practice.
It’s all too easy to click on the PowerPoint icon and start filling slide after slide up with bullet points. We needed to create something that would prompt them into action immediately rather than trying to fix a problem when they were in the thick of it.
As Matt carefully placed his pint down on a beermat (he’s a man who shows a lot of care for a pint), it came to him. The Eyeful Presentations beermat!
So that’s exactly what we’ve done – printed up thousands of them for distribution around the offices of the world.
Every morning, as you place your precious mug of coffee or tea onto your desk, you’ll be reminded of the 3 key checks you should be considering every time you create a new PowerPoint presentation.
So drop us a line if you’d like us to stick a handful of these handy coasters/presentation saviours in the post to you. We respectfully suggest that to ensure Life after Death by PowerPoint in your business, you apply liberally across as many desks as possible.
We’ve said it before and no doubt we’ll say it again – we truly feel a lucky bunch to be working with the great and good in business today.
For example, take our recent work with OI Software. They had an urgent requirement for an important event and called upon Eyeful to help them out.
Urgency is often part of the deal when dealing with presentations for events so we took it in our stride and delivered what we believe was a top notch end product. As the interview below demonstrates, they thought so too.
What made it all the more special was the gratitude shown by OI Software up to and after the event.
We’ve had the pleasure of working with them since and, to a man, they’re an extremely nice bunch. Oh, and their new presentations are rather fancy too…
As we move into the final few days of the election palaver, it’s worth learning some very stark lessons from what has been a first for us in the UK – the TV debate.
Now we’re not highlighting our political bent here at Eyeful but watching Nick Clegg move from a nobody to a genuine contender has showcased just how important a good presentation can be. And what the first TV debate demonstrated really well was just how this works in reality.
We’re quite passionate about how much of a difference a good presentation makes so we’re very pleased to see just this in practice during the first live televised debate two weeks ago. Nick Clegg took himself and his party from being a third placed party tipped to lose seats to become a genuine runner in a three horse race.
This real example only goes to show how many businesses fail to cotton onto this. How many times have you seen a presenter with a quality story fall flat on their face? Or how many times have you seen a skilled presenter waiver as people realise that they’ve got nothing to say?
The message is clear whether you’re a politician or a sales person (and there are a lot more similarities but we can’t go into those right now…), if you’ve got a good message and can get your audience to listen to it and the retain the key parts of it, you could be at the start of a mutually rewarding and long standing relationship.
We’re not saying that the honourable Mr Clegg is well on his way to Downing Street. However through the art of a good presentation he has demonstrated just how much of a contender his party now is.
Excuse the rather blunt analogy but it does rather convey an important message – making something look slightly prettier doesn’t make it any more effective.
In some ways, cosmetic tweaking can even highlight the lack of underlying quality – a pig remains a pig no matter how you dress him up!
Back in the real world, much the same can be said of the world of presentations.
Many presenters are guilty of trying to use an array of animation techniques to direct attention away from a set of slides devoid of any real content.
More often than not the reason for people using this shortcut is lack of preparation time. And nowhere is this time pressure more evident than in your sales team.
As the new year’s quotas start to bite, sales PowerPoints are being furiously polished to try and disguise any deficiencies.
Our advice? Don’t waste time disguising – it’s time to improve the guts of the presentation. We call it Presentation Optimisation.
Now put the lid back on that lipstick and put it back in the drawer.
