Sales Byte : “Death by PowerPoint”

We all know that a dull PowerPoint presentation can be a big turn-off for potential customers. But it sometimes amazingly easy to fall into the trap of delivering one. All you do is write down all the good things that you want to say about your company. Stick it on some slides with your company’s logo and in your company’s colours. Top and tail it for the customer. What could be easier …?

To avoid the trap you must consider two things:

• What you say
• How you say it

How you say it – this is, of course, a huge area to tackle, and far too much to even attempt to deal with here. One tip that might help, though; prepare your presentation as if you were delivering it without slides, and use the slides simply to support your key points.

What you say – these are some simple tactics that may help.

A) Start and end with what your customer wants:

• Start with a summary of what you understand your customer is looking for
• End by re-visiting this summary and show how you have addressed each point

B) Everything in between should address one (or more) of these points

… and don’t forget, tell them at the beginning how the presentation is structured, and tell them where you are as you go through it.

More Sales Bytes (published by Rob Parker on the Momentum website)