Powerpoint design is something that anyone can do – and people with little or no training often do create Powerpoint presentations for all manner of reasons. In the best cases these are for internal use. However, when someone without any real talent or experience is creating something for use in your presentation story, you have a problem: you are trusting the future of a product or service to a very weak link in the chain.
The catch is that Powerpoint is so easy to use that it’s very much a victim of its own accessibility – or, more accurately, your sales pitches are the victim. Everyone has been to a bad presentation where Powerpoint is used in such a way that it not only adds nothing – it detracts from the overall effect. In the worst cases, you will have a speaker delivering a monotone address from the front, with exactly the same material appearing overhead on a slide show. Contrary to popular opinion, this does not make boring material any more memorable. It just serves to send people to sleep.
Powerpoint is an extremely powerful tool, if used properly. It needs to be integrated with your talk from the beginning, not added at the end as an afterthought (because that’s exactly what it will seem to be to your audience). Similarly, you shouldn’t repeat the content of your talk verbatim on the slides. Although there’s some scope for drawing out facts and figures you want people to remember, the slides should complement, not duplicate your spoken presentation. One other point to remember is to keep your slides short. Long sentences that distract the audience are unhelpful; pithy information is what you want. Keep it sparse – both the content and the number of slides. Down overload people. Use the slides to do something you can’t do with the spoken word, such as present a graph or chart that illustrates a key point.
Powerpoint design is critical to a successful presentation story, but comparatively few businesses recognise the role that convincing Powerpoint presentations play in securing a bid. So important is it that there are companies dedicated to creating successful, integrated pitches, making the most of Powerpoint through years of experience.
They can also offer training in how to use the best techniques, releasing your spresentation story from the mediocrity that so many suffer from – to the detriment of the audience’s attention and your business.
To find out more about our presentation design service please visit https://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/