presentations4you

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...