Meetings – Dispatch Announcement

Sales Presentations that achieve their aim

The purpose of sales presentations is to secure bids, and PowerPoint design is nowadays key to this aim. The issue is that PowerPoint presentations are a double-edged sword as far as most businesses are concerned. In the minority of cases they are carried out extremely effectively. Unfortunately, this is by no means the rule. In most instances PowerPoint slideshows are deficiently constructed, with little concern for the way that the intended audience might engage with information, or for the narrative of the series of slides as a whole.

The result of this oversight is to put off whole audiences from the pitch you are making. People tend to think that PowerPoint shows will reinforce what they are saying: if someone isn’t listening well then they might take in the same information if it is presented on-screen. This is not so. The two media complement each other. This means that if you duplicate everything (often word-for-word – a common mistake) you only detract from the message, since this decreases attention and distracts from the message. A little training can teach effective design, which reflects PowerPoint’s unique capabilities and treats its contribution as very different from the spoken word.

Simply, people don’t absorb information in the same way. Some are more aural, liking spoken presentations. Others prefer visual input. Catering to both means allows you to multiply your effect. Additionally, there are things it’s almost impossible to show verbally. But a chart or graph can convey complex data quickly and simply, meaning your don’t have to try to articulate it yourself.

Effective PowerPoint design is not as simple and intuitive as many people say; the ease with which the software can be used is deceptive. PowerPoint presentations don’t need to be the remit of experts, but all too often it’s only too clear that sales presentations have been put together by amateurs. It doesn’t matter how competent they are in their area of expertise, or how important in the organisation. Communication is a specific skill, and communicating by PowerPoint is an even more specific one. Anyone can write, but firms hire copywriters to provide compelling words; anyone can add up, but you hire accountants and book-keepers to manage your budget. The same is true with PowerPoint: it’s not something you can leave to chance, and the rewards of a decent pitch are considerable.

Please visit http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/

Powerpoint design to really give you the edge

So many people working in sales bemoan the tedious meetings they have had to put up with at the office. They lament the length of time they have had to sit through ideas repeated, regurgitated and served up unattractively on a screen. Powerpoint presentations are often mentioned in such complaints, as if an innocent piece of software might be acting alone on a mission to induce severe ennui. But this is not the case, or at least simply accusing powerpoint design does not get to the essential element of what people are complaining about. Only when Powerpoint is abused does it generate boredom. It is important to state, therefore, that good, exciting, even inspiring sales presentations can be created using Powerpoint – it is a tool for our hands and minds to do with what they will.

Evidently, it is not straight-away obvious how to embark upon changing a working lifetime’s accumulation of bad habits. Old habits die hard, as the saying goes. This is why there are companies out there with a direct aim to help ease the bad Powerpoint design users out of their old ways and into illuminating new ones. These will know how desperately people in business need their sales presentations and Powerpoint presentations to work to their full capabilities. And their results are quite striking to say the least – in some instances these companies might improve their clients’ sales success by up to 35%.

It wouldn’t be worth just automatically enlisting the aid of specialists though. Indeed, people working in sales will hardly need telling that they should take a while to consider how their particular company might benefit from assistance in optimising their sales presentations skills. No company is the same, and it is the very idea of uniqueness that can really be promoted via the medium of Powerpoint presentations in order to convince others round to a given company’s perspective. The notion of underscoring difference to achieve maximum success is surely evidenced in the clients of Powerpoint presentation service providers – those who have come top of the class in good powerpoint design practice are as diverse as Colgate-Palmolive and Santander.

Please visit http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Video conferencing has taken off in the corporate world, but is there a demand for this technology for personal use?

The uses of video conferencing in the business world are well documented, as the need for many businesses to communicate frequently with colleagues around the world grows increasingly in our modern day ‘global village’. Telepresence video conferencing is so well developed that we can fairly accurately create the experience of a face to face conference with participants from Texas, Adelaide and Dublin all able to take part from the comfort of their own offices. It seems interesting, though, that audio visual conferencing seems to be struggling to take hold of the personal communications market. Although Skype is very popular for those who want to communicate with friends and relatives abroad, there seems to be very little demand for mobile telephones which allow us to see the person we are chatting to.

In its early days, video phone technology was very pricey, costing users about 90 dollars a month. These days, however, modern technology has reduced the costs to next to nothing. Webcams and highly advanced smart phones mean that cost is no longer a factor in discouraging people from using video conferencing. In its early days, many people thought that videotelephony would become ubiquitous, but it is still used fairly rarely.

This may in part be because videophone calling tends to be a poor substitute for real face to face conversation. The conversation tends to be focussed around a video screen and a small camera, and participants tend to look at the screen rather than the camera, which prevents them from having direct eye-to-eye contact with each other. Some have theorised that videotelephony may be less popular than expected because people actually prefer less direct communication. Texting, instant messaging and email are significantly more popular than video calling, which suggests that written conversations which can be executed at one’s convenience is, for most people, preferable to recreating the experience of face-to-face conversations. Similarly, some people see video cameras as an intrusion. ‘Why does my friend need to see what I am doing?’ ‘I don’t want to feel I have to look nice for a phone call,’ and ‘I don’t feel comfortable being watched’ are all common responses when people are asked about this kind of technology.

It does seem intriguing that video conferencing has proved so popular and effective in business, but most of us are reluctant to embrace it on a day to day basis. Perhaps telepresence video conferencing puts too much pressure on us to be fully involved in a conversation, when secretly we quite like to be able to do the gardening or cook dinner while chatting to our friends and family. Audio visual conferencing does seem to be here to stay, though. Perhaps we had better just get used to it.

Please visit http://www.edgevision.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Powerpoint design – a useful skill in the modern business world

Powerpoint presentations can make or break a sales pitch, and for this reason, many companies devote a not unimportant amount of time to the way their Powerpoint presentations are made. The Microsoft presentation program has become so crucial to sales presentations that an entire industry has grown up around powerpoint design. Although Powerpoint is not used exclusively by business people, it was rebranded as Microsoft Office PowerPoint to underline its role within the office suite. The program has come a long way since its beginnings in the 1980s, as this article outlines.

The first version of what we now know as Powerpoint was created by Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin of the company Forethought, Inc. The initial product was called ‘Presenter’, but was renamed to ‘PowerPoint’ in 1987 because of trademark related issues. Microsoft acquired the software for $14 million dollars in the same year. Perhaps the most important change in the product came with PowerPoint 97. Before then, presentations were always linear, moving from one slide to the next. Powerpoint 97 allowed customers to use transitions and effects in a non-linear, film like style without needing any programming skills. Powerpoint 2000 introduced a clipboard that could hold several objects at one time, and relegated Office Assistant, which some users had found more annoying than useful, to a more minor role.

Powerpoint presentations present a number of advantages over more traditional ways of presenting information. The ease of use of its presentation software can save a great deal of time for those who might have otherwise used other visual aids, such as flipcharts or overhead projectors. Its accessibility may even encourage people to make presentations, or encourage presenters to incorporate visual aids into their work, therefore making the average sales pitch somewhat more engaging for the audience. Still, making the most of this software does depend on proper use, and it is important not to assume that, just by using the program, a presenter can make his address more interesting than it would have been otherwise.

Indeed, careful thought should be given to powerpoint design if sales presentations are to be well executed. The technology behind Powerpoint presentations has been continuously developed over the last 20 years to enable users to communicate their message in the clearest and most engaging way possible, so all they need to do is to make sure they understand how to get the best out of the program, and then get presenting!

Please visit http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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