Designing great sales presentations

Dave Paradi's Think Outside the Slide approach helps presenters get results by showing them how to transform overloaded text slides into persuasive visuals.

He is the author of "The Visual Slide Revolution" and co-author of two "Guide to PowerPoint" MBA-level textbooks, part of the Prentice Hall Series in Advanced Business Communication. Dave's ideas have been featured by the Wall Street Journal, the Globe and Mail, Financial Post, Hoovers online, Microsoft, Presentations magazine, SellingPower magazine, BusinessWorld India, Presenters University and Harvard University.

Tell us a little about your background. How does one get started as a presentation guru?

Well, of course as a little boy you don't say, "Gee, when I grow up, I want to be a specialist in helping people present more effectively." It was something I had to discover. Or rather, people discovered it for me.

While working in the mutual funds industry, I developed a new standard for exchanging electronic information which I then promoted in a series of presentations around the country. People started coming up to me after I presented to say, "Wow, that was really effective. I wouldn't have thought of doing it that way-why did you do it that way?" Though at the time I knew what made an engaging presentation, I hadn't really given a lot of thought to why. This started me on a journey of research and study to figure out why certain things are effective when delivering presentations, and what types of visuals or slides work best.

What were you doing in those presentations that people responded to so enthusiastically?

I think what was unique compared to the typical presentation was that I didn't stand there and read bullet points. I used visuals instead. In a survey I did last year of over 600 people, the number one thing that annoys audiences is when the presenter simply reads the slides.

What do you think are the most common mistakes that salespeople make when they are preparing and giving presentations?

I would say the biggest mistake is not taking enough time to prepare. If you don't prepare well enough, a number of things happen. First of all, when time is an issue, people tend to simply do a "brain dump" onto their slides. I see this all the time when I am travelling-look in any airport lounge or on any plane and you will see people doing this. Very ineffective.

When you don't prepare, you don't have time to develop visuals. Research tells us that visuals connect better with our audiences than text. But if you haven't taken the time to prepare, you don't have the opportunity to create the visuals that you need, so all you can do is "brain dump," which causes you to end up with overly dense text slides.

What type of visuals do you feel are most engaging?

The best visuals are the ones that will enable you to have a conversation with the audience. A good presentation is not a one-sided lecture, though unfortunately this is the model that most of us saw in school: the professor simply lectures with visuals behind them.

This is not the type of presentation you want in a sales situation-you want a conversation. When you put up a visual, it encourages conversation because you have to talk about what the visual shows. It also enables you to ask an audience questions, so that you aren't just a talking head: What do they see? What do they feel about what you are saying?

In sales, relationships are the most important thing, and you cannot build a relationship if you're the only one speaking. You need feedback from the audience to make the presentation relevant to them and supply the information they need to make a buying decision.

Besides enabling conversation, what other key factors would you say make a great presentation?

All great presenters do a thorough job of analysing who their audience is and what that audience needs to hear from the presentation. Too often a salesperson will take a standard deck from marketing and simply run through it in a way that says, "I am here to present our brochure, which you could have read, but I will nonetheless show you in slide format."

The prospect then feels that the presentation didn't address their questions and their issues. But if the sales professional did not take the time to analyse the audience and situation beforehand, they cannot customise the presentation.

How can salespeople collaborate with marketing departments to create better presentations?

Since it's unrealistic for marketing to create customised materials for every sales presentation, what I suggest is that sales professionals work with marketing departments to create a library of visual slides which they can select from. The library will contain probably 70-80% of the slides you would need and cover the main messages you would want to deliver across a variety of different situations.

When you have a library as a sales professional, it allows you to do three things. First of all, it cuts your preparation time dramatically, because instead of creating everything from scratch, you simply pick and chose visuals so that 80 percent of the presentation can be done in a few minutes.

Secondly, it allows the sales professional to really focus on what a particular audience needs, because they have the time to develop that 20 percent of the presentation that will be customised to their specific audience.

Lastly, it allows salespeople to present using primarily visuals instead of text, because they've invested the time with the marketing department upfront to create the visual slides they need. And ultimately, you have a consistent message being delivered that is also customized for your audience.

The survey results referenced in this interview are available online at: http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/survey2007.htm

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