Online Reputation Management, Important Tips

Author: Philip Yaffe

How often have you attended a presentation where great attention apparently went into designing the slides - and apparently none into how they were used? Or the speaker played with the slides as if to entertain rather than edify?

Such idiosyncratic presentation techniques have helped give rise to the calumnious term “death by PowerPoint”. PowerPoint and other types of visual aids can significantly enhance a presentation if properly used. And significantly detract from it if improperly used.

It is normal for each person to have his or her individual style for using slides. Such individuality often adds to the effectiveness of the presentation; however excessive individuality damages clarity and comprehension, putting effectiveness at risk.

Fortunately, this problem can be easily resolved. By recognizing and applying three fundamental principles of slide presentations, you can make “death by PowerPoint” completely disappear.

Fundamental Principles of Slide Presentations

1. Use the Slides; Don’t Be Controlled by Them

It is important to recognize that slides are a visual aid. And the most important part of this term is “aid”. Too many speakers seem to believe that if they show enough slides, their presentation will automatically be successful.

The opposite is true. No matter how good the slides, if they assume center stage, the presentation will almost certainly be less effective than it could be.

2. Show that You Are in Charge

Keep in mind that the greatest visual aid is YOU. People come to hear what you have to say because they believe that you have something important to impart to them. So they want to see you, hear your voice, and watch your facial expressions, and observe body movements in order to better understand and evaluate your data and ideas.

If you start your presentation by immediately turning off the lights, and keep them off until the presentation is finished, it is almost as if you are not there. It would be easier and more convenient just to mail the presentation to the audience as a videocassette or DVD and let them play it at their leisure.

3. Present a “Win-Win” Situation

To be truly effective, slides must:

• Help the speaker deliver a better presentation

• Help the audience better understand the presentation

It is not a question of either/or. The speaker and the audience must both benefit; otherwise, neither one will. This means that you must deliver a good presentation both in terms of content and slides.

It is generally a good idea to prepare the first draft of your presentation without any slides, then return to your text to see where slides are really needed. This will ensure that you do not drown the audience in slides - and that each slide will be truly useful.

If you take these three fundamental principles fully on board, you will be well on your way towards an effective presentation. Here are a few practical suggestions to make your already good presentation even better.

A. Use Build-up Slides

Let’s try an experiment. Open a newspaper or magazine to any page. Keep looking at it, but try not to read anything on the page. It is virtually impossible. The moment the eye is confronted with text, there is a natural urge to read it.

Putting too much text on a slide has the same effect. The speaker may expect the audience to pay attention only to the part of the text he is talking about and ignore the rest. In reality, while the speaker is talking about the text at the top, the audience will almost certainly be reading the text below.

The result is significant loss of attention. Since attention ensures better comprehension, using text-heavy slides is detrimental to speakers and listeners alike.

To maintain attention, introduce text gradually, not all at once.

In the days of 35 mm and overhead transparencies, this was achieved by using “build-up slides”. For example, instead of showing five bullet points on a single slide, the speaker prepared six sides. The first one showed only the title; the rest of the screen was left blank. The next one showed the title plus bullet point 1; the rest of the screen was left blank. The next slide showed the title plus bullet points 1 and 2. The same was done for each succeeding slide. It was only on the last slide that the full text (general statement + bullet points) became visible.

Producing six slides was of course considerably more expensive than producing only one. But it was also considerably more effective.

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Author: Thotsaporn Khumwaree

The second thing we did to make it easy for our salesmen to sell new safety products was to help them get in the door in the first place with strong advertising and public relations support. In industry, Cadillac has a well respected name for plastics. We wanted to capitalize on this goodwill as well as let the world know we had the finest line of safety products available anywhere.

We chose to advertise in both horizontal and vertical markets, repeating our message over and over again, “Cadillac Plastic is THE SOURCE for safety products to meet OSHA requirements.”

For some industries, such as construction, we grouped certain products together to make a kind of mini-safety products package. Our salesmen really liked this because it made it easy for them to organize the call. And dollar sales figures proved we were right.

Through our public relations department, we offered our catalog free of charge to all interested (and potential) customers. And our publicists worked overtime to keep editorial interest in Cadillac’s new line high. We furnished articles and pictures and as much helpful information as we had available to trade magazine editors who were also struggling to understand OSHA. This paid off in the form of a thick stack of press clippings from many of the most highly respected and widely read industrial publications.

Finally, all inquiries Chat resulted from advertising or PR were carefully sorted and distributed to our sales force. This served as a steady source of already knowledgeable potential buyers as well as a stimulant to the salesmen who felt pride in the recognition given to the company they represented.

We had come a long way in our launching of the OSHA-Spec line. Our people had learned about the products, and orders were starting to flow in. But we still had one problem to solve. How could we keep our sales people motivated to sell the line?

Keeping salesmen motivated

Again, our answer was to make it easy. We kept up a high level of enthusiasm among our people through recognition of outstanding efforts.

The backbone of our recognition program was an internal bulletin we named the Ollie-Gram. This was a “personal” message from Oilie Osha written in a light, breezy style. In our Ollie-Grams we publicized exceptional orders and passed along selling hints. If a particular branch or district was doing well, we spotlighted it in an issue.

To further generate enthusiasm, we created a new status of salesman called a Safety specialist. People who demonstrated a special flair for safety products were given additional training. In turn, they assisted other sales personnel in making difficult calls, selling more complex equipment, and closing large orders.

Finally, we formed a special club to reward exceptional efforts. We held a contest using criteria that were fair to all people in all parts of the country. Winners were announced monthly and were awarded membership in our exclusive Safety-First Club. We gave each winner a gold tie with a special Safety-First insignia, which became quite a status symbol. Standards were kept high to keep the group exclusive.

At the end of the calendar year, we rewarded the club members with a special luxury trip. After the trip, a special Ollie-Gram was published with many pictures so that nonmembers could see what they were striving for.

For further recognition, we presented an engraved plaque to each club member. A club roster for each year hangs in our Hall of Fame at corporate headquarters for all to see.

In summary, there isn’t much more to say other than that our safety products introduction was the most successful in our company’s history.