 Great photo by Mikhail Nilov. From time to time, we at Copel Communications are invited to make a presentation, via Zoom, to a business or networking group, to talk about what we do and how we do it.
When the time comes for us to present, the Zoom host invariably asks us, “Would you like control of the screen so you can show your deck?” Imagine their surprise when we say, “No thanks. No deck.” So do these presentations, pardon our French, suck? We don’t think so. The feedback we get afterward generally says otherwise. So what’s our secret sauce? Why do we hate PowerPoint so much? What’s going on here, and, most importantly, how can you benefit from this approach? We don’t hate PowerPoint That line above (“Why do we hate PowerPoint so much?”) was pure bait. We don’t hate PowerPoint, simply because we shun it for our own presentations. Truth be told, we make a decent chunk of our income here at Copel Communications from writing PowerPoint decks for our clients! But our business is all about communicating. It’s in our name. And we can communicate this, quite well, thank you very much, without the crutch of a deck of slides. It’s been said that no one wants to hear a sales pitch, but everybody wants to hear a story. So the trick is to frame the pitch as a story. Have a hook. Use teasers. Sure, we’ll toss in a visual (not a deck), when it’s appropriate, such as the cover a brochure we’d written, or simply a photo of our long-suffering dog, just because. There are times when PowerPoint is unavoidable. If you’re a CFO presenting sales trends and forecasts to the board, you’ll need those line graphs and bar charts. If you’re presenting on demographic distribution, a scatter plot is de rigueur. But most of the time, if you do opt to use PowerPoint (or Google Slides, or Apple Keynote, or whatever), go for the minimum. Speaking of Apple. Watch any old keynote presentation by Steve Jobs. He used slides. (Trivia: the in-house app which Apple created to make his slide decks is what morphed into the app called, appropriately enough, Keynote.) And those slides are minimal. An entire slide would say something like “Lightest Mobile Phone on the Market.” And that’s it. Take a page from that playbook. Put the onus on your presenting skills (including writing, practice, and polish). Which segues, quite conveniently, to our next topic: Cognitive dissonance How many times has this happened to you: You’re sitting through some presenter’s PowerPoint, and they say, “There are three big things our company specializes in.” And at that point, they bring up a slide with four Big Things. And the first three don’t even match what the presenter is describing. So you’re forced to decide, on the spot: Which is more important? What I’m hearing? Or what I’m seeing? Because you can’t really do both at once, unless they’re verbatim. Meaning, you either 1) ignore the text that’s staring at you on the slide, and close your eyes, shifting your attention to your ears to listen to the presenter, or 2) you cover your ears (or mute your speaker) and read what’s on the slide, effectively ignoring the presenter. Gee. This, to us, is the all-too-common hallmark of PowerPoint sloppiness. If you’re going to show your audience Three Big Points, then have them match, on screen, what you’re saying, aloud. Even better: Have each bullet appear when you mention it. Don’t bring all three up on screen at once; when you do that, people don’t know whether or not to read ahead. You’ve already lost them. It sounds simplistic—heck, it is simplistic—but have your audience “follow the bouncing ball,” like a sing-along video. We think that many presenters are afraid to do just that, because it seems like it’s dumbing-down or pandering. But nothing could be further from the truth. It’s respectful of your audience. And it makes your points drive home. Where they belong. Our favorite quote from Jeff Bezos, who never allowed slide decks in his “six-page memo” executive meetings: “PowerPoint is easy for the presenter. But hard for the audience.” To recap: You can, and should, use PowerPoint, when it’s appropriate to do so. But use it sparingly. And if you can avoid it—if you can captivate your audience without it—by all means, do so. Need help with that next presentation, regardless of modality? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help!
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