presentations4you

It always amazes me when I see a manager automatically printing in color slides that he or she has just received, or when color printing is almost automated when checking slides during preparation. What quality output do you need? Ninety percent of the time, black and white printing will do the job. Heavily colored pages can cost as much as 3 times more than lightly colored ones and 10 times more than B&W.

The average price of color printers has reduced significantly over the years. Still, you really have to consider the total cost of ownership, as the cost of ink cartridge replacement is often the determining factor. With fast speeds and impressive print quality, we are tempted to press the color print button too extensively, forgetting about the cost. Color printer manufacturers sell their machines by advertising increased comprehension, easier reading, increased message retention, and other marketing bling-bling. But shouldn't we be more careful in selecting color output?

Color is a luxury and should be limited to printing out final documents for handouts for specific situations, like a presentation to customers. Some corporations are now removing color printers from certain locations and putting in place simpler, faster and more cost-effective B&W printers. Let's settle for monochrome output!

Another tip: to reduce ink consumption by printing PowerPoint slides, choose grayscale or pure B&W in the print dialog box (Mac: print/output menu). Your background will disappear and white text will become black. See color and grayscale output results below.

Last Friday at 8:30 am, I attended a strategic meeting in a corporation. Agenda was the analysis of different options to launch a new product. Investors, external experts and advisors as well as the management team were there. Only 1 h 30 was dedicated to the meeting as people came for free and their time schedules were tight.

The GM, who came late, started with a presentation and asked not to be interrupted, keeping the questions at the end of his 40-slide presentation. Pfff! Opposition was immediate, and aggressivity mounted in no more than 15 seconds.

I knew that all so-so slides had been printed, so I suggested that everyone take 10 minutes to read the whole set before getting started with the Q&A right after, to focus on the issues and escape the reading exercise. Frustrating for the GM, but what else could have been done?

All participants quickly agreed. The meeting was excellent and the inputs were great. This was an elegant and efficient way not to bore precious contributors and ruin the meeting.

Next time you draw up your presentation, re-read my Powerpoint guide and keep it short!

Not sure you can manage it perfectly? I'm there for help.

Your new 5-page presentation includes a few pictures and you'd like to send it to a couple of people. But for whatever reason, you'd prefer to send it in pdf. Your presentation weighs 1.8 MB. There are ways to reduce the size of pictures, but it's another issue. PowerPoint 2003 on XP offers you a perfectly working pdf conversion tool right in the menu. Your 2MB ppt file becomes a 545 KB pdf. Not bad. This might change with Office 2008, though.

Things are different on a Mac, if you use PowerPoint. Keynote offers smarter export flexibility than PowerPoint, but you might prefer staying with PowerPoint. Great. Converting any file into pdf is a bit longer. What to do? You "print" it saving it in pdf. But, o surprise, your PowerPoint file of 1.8 MB is now above 7 MB in pdf! There is a simple turnaround: open your pdf file in Acrobat Professional, go to File>Reduce file size and there you are: 260 KB!

I recently talked to the boss managing a team of high flyers in a speedy environment. Subject: looking for someone to draw up slides for his team. He said to me:

"Your style is a bit disturbing, either too picture-full or too shiny and probably too disruptive with our practices. Well, we don't like it. We are used to our own communication patterns. We'd rather prefer a more traditional approach.

Sure thing we have to improve, because our presentations don't always work ideally. Our people tend to improvise and draw up slides with too little discipline. What we would like to do is to have a standard, a kind of model, rather classical, so that our customers recognize our style. Furthermore, we would like to have someone who can draw up the slides like we want, and follow the same standard. Can you help there?"

Sure I can. Let me reformulate here in this article a few key points of communication best practices, related to the quotation above.

After more than 30 years of top management practice, I have learned four major lessons in communication:

ONE --to convince people, you'd better excel in communication. Have a plan. Have a structure. The presentation software is a by-product. No more than that. No PowerPoint? No problem. I say: no slides = no problem! Providing you have learned to communicate efficiently.

TWO --most managers fail to deliver a clear and convincing message. Although they hope they do. They usually don't. 80% of the presentations are bad or to the max "so-so".

THREE --the style of your presentation is no issue. It's up to you to choose the right illustrations and use the right template. On thing is sure: if you don't put pictures or graphs, but text only, why don't you send a report beforehand and discuss it during your meeting? A presentation shouldn't be a reading exercise.

FOUR --to have someone draw up your slides supposes that you have a goal, a clear structure, sound contents, and that the person in charge knows what you're talking about. --Oh! you just said you have all this on hand? Lucky you. I hope you can pay that person according to his/her skills and that you know the ROI. That he/she won't leave next week... I also hope that your team members come up with a clear set-up of their contents. Frankly, I doubt this conventional scheme works well. To me, preparing content for a communication can be done in no more time by doing it directly on PowerPoint. If you need some refinement, of course, you can have a graphic artist working a couple of hours on your slides, avoiding primitive and cheap clip-art. Or have an assistant giving a better look to your charts or excel sheets.

This having been said, let's go back to the main issue: efficient communication. Did you ever ever ever videotape your presentations, I mean the presentations of your team? Did you review them systematically?

You definitely should. Not easy, I know... but essential.

A last question: how do you measure presentation success? To me, it's about getting a contract, closing a sale, having a "go" for a new project, getting approval from a board for any kind of substantial matter. Agree? --When did you last measure? Do you measure consistently after each presentation? Shouldn't you?

CONCLUSION: we tend to have a couple of preconceptions, of prejudgements on matters where we don't excel, but think we do, like presentation techniques. To zero-in on your team's performance, shouldn't you do some benchmarking with the top guys? Think about it a minute. I have a plan for you to be discussed if you want to capitalize on this.

First things first: send me a recent presentation so I can understand what your contents are and give you feedback. I'll send you a secure address to do so. Let's fire off! Read this article here before shooting.

00:00 Too often people making a presentation lack confidence and it shows up. If you are well prepared, know your stuff, focus on your goal and have rehearsed accordingly, you can't miss it. Provided you concentrate. Before your firewalk, capitalize on your inner strength. YES! you'll succeed and convince. Take 1 minute to zero in on your inner strength!

01:00 You still feel a bit stressed? Not well in balance? Come on, it's now a question of breathing. Take another minute to exercise. It would be a good idea to do it now. And, of course, right before your firewalk... BREATH.

02:00 Inner strength? --All set. Breathing? --All set. Now concentrate on facial and gestual expression. Be sure you don't gesticulate. Or have a dreadful face. Smile. Make eye-contact. Relax. Know all this? Perfect. Let's see. Put yourself in front of a mirror and look at yourself. Looking self-confident? Start with your introduction. Look at your face, your arms! What do you think of your attitude? Excelling depends on YOU. Expand on this and you're ready to fire off on all cylinders! 03:00

Strong determination and morale combined with good preparation should automate inner strength perception by your audience. Showing relaxation can be easily reached through breathing mastery. Self-control translates into positive facial and gestual expression. These techniques are part of my Black Belt Presenter™ 2-day intensive and hands-on workshop.

Read also another article of interest here. 

Last Friday, frankly speaking, I thought it was a good idea to draw up a few slides, 6 in fact, to communicate to a small group of people the main advantages of a collaboration tool to be used by a client of mine. Simple slides, with a sound structure, meaningful screenshots, self-explanatory contents --so I thought-- and a good conclusion.

As I wanted to get my message accross quickly before a larger meeting on the project, I attached the presentation to an email and asked for feedback. Pfff.... No great enthusiasm. Impact was so-so. Nothing to do with the software. Nothing to do with the project. Nothing to do with my slides, I know what I'm talking about. The point was: the stuff was rather complex and I was not there to sell it live. Full stop. My big fault. Slides are not that better than Word documents or classic emails if the contents are not easy for the reader to grasp.

Lesson learned: great slides with strong content might be too short to drive readers' conviction. They need more. Remember, your customers and your colleagues are overwhelmed with emails. With or without attachments. And they might be either lazy, bored or uninterested to care about your magnificent message. Have you ever experienced this?

In these circumstances, live communication pays off much better. Or a couple of well-prepared phone calls might be much more profitable. If your slides are ready, and you can't refrain yourself from sharing your marvel, well then you can send them after the call... Verba volant. Scripta manent. You probably will have a winning combo. But make sure your slides are not poorly drafted, otherwise you'd ruin your live communication...

Every professional handling his/her field of expertise needs to be self-confident. This applies to presentations too. "Conditio sine qua non" is that you have to be fully ready to get your stuff transmitted appropriately. This is called preparation. You know, this is where so many business people fail: poor preparation. Not only in presentations, of course. Ready-made excuses are there to be served: lack of time, unskilled co-workers, last-minute changes, other priorities, etc.

The real thing lies elsewhere: deep in yourself. Because if you have to expose yourself in front of an audience to present YOUR material, you'd better be the best! Or fail. Or at least deceive. In your position, deceiving can be worse. This is true for managers, sales professionals, small cap or major corporation CEO's.

What is the issue? If you're less than confident, everybody will notice. If you're overconfident but fuzzling round with your papers and hands, it might be worse. Overconfidence in presentations happens when we are blind, underestimate our presentation challenge and think that everything will be alright. We might be the best at what we are doing in our job but be disappointing in communication.

Let me formulate the essentials that I have taught to managers and CEO's in these circumstances:

1. Get prepared. I mean it: PRE-PAR-ED!
2. Rehearse. Again and again. Don't say you're doing OK. Chances are you're doing poorly.
3. Put a videorecorder in front of you. Don't say you don't have the time. Don't hire a Yes-man who won't be critical.
   
4. Have a simple mindmap or a concise guideline on one page if your communication is complex and you really have to sit.
   
5. Control your gestures. No, you are not in control yet.
6. Don't improvise. Don't extrapolate, unless it's short and it sounds like a very well thought out initiative. Hard to do.
   
7. Control. Yes, it's a key word. Being in control, you can be cool and communicate smoothly.
8. Still intending to take the printouts of your slides with you, I see? --If you master your subject, everything should be in your head.
9. You won't read anything, you said? Great: you have invested the time necessary.
10. The time of sharing has come. Nothing will happen if you don't interact and make eye contact.

 
This seems natural, isn't it? But why are so many presentations so poorly delivered, really? Ever thought that yours could require some improvement, too?

Hear me well: I'm not saying that we should all have a Steve Ballmer like style. Or the Steve Jobs' one, for those who are on the other planet. We need our own style. Full stop. But what these guys have in common, although star years separate them from each other is: great preparation, efficient communication with their target audience, professional technical set-up and perfect backup in case of emergency. Close your eyes and think of this a minute: how do you rate yourself here, from 1 to 10, 10 being excellent?

Below 8? You deserve more. I can give you a boost for your next crucial presentation in a few hours of one-on-one coaching, wherever you are located. But before, let's talk and have a look at your goal.

Sales professionals know how hard selling is in today's fierce competitive markets. Although presentation technique mastery should be part of the art of selling, not all sales professionals excel in presenting their stuff.

The question to ask yourself is this simple: "How can I maximize my buyers' attention, interest and readiness to act now and sign the contract or place the order?"

I just finished a short session with an excellent marketing and sales team and it might be of interest to you to get some fresh feedback on what to do to perform a memorable sales presentation that pays off.

These are a few conclusions of the 3 days of this tailor-made Black Belt Presenter™ workshop. Audience was 100% marketing and sales this time.

1. What do you want to achieve? What's your minimum result?
   
2. Forget about your company. 2 slides on it and basta. Concentrate on your goal.
3. Personalize your slides. Show that you know your prospect. But don't overdo.
4. Have a clear structure. I know I repeat this again and again, but without a clear structure, you're dead.
5. Identify the level of people you will address. Design your presentation putting yourself in their shoes.
   
6. Know how to open your presentation.
7. Tell a succcess story that is related to your goal. Be precise and sound real!
8. Be simple. Don't overestimate the level of concentration of your audience.
   
9. Kill your hesitation and possible verbal tics, the "er", "hmmmm" and others. Attendees might count them...!
10. If you read your slides, it's because they are poorly designed.
11. You have too many slides. For sure.
    
12. Videotape yourself. It will hurt, but you'll see what you have to improve.
13. Know how to close. It's about ACTION!