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3 min read

Waterboarding Clients with PowerPoint? Try Whiteboarding Your Story

By Mark Gibson on Aug 11, 2022 12:00:00 AM

I don't condone torture, nor do I consider Waterboarding an acceptable treatment for detainees of any race or religion.

If you want to read more about Waterboarding, please follow this link, or if you feel strongly about the ill-treatment of foreign prisoners in US custody click on this link, as the rest of this story is about the misuse of PowerPoint by sales, marketing and technical people in front of innocent audiences.


Having to sit through bad PowerPoint presentations can seem like a mild form of torture for the audience, inflicted usually by a sales or marketing person under the guise of presenting a solution or informing the prospective client in more detail, the worth of your offerings.

I was at the recent Marketing conference in San Francisco, attended by high caliber marketing professionals and saw a lot of bad PowerPoint presentations delivered by marketing executives. Presumably the excuse for the poor presentation being, I didn't have time to create a stunning presentation for this one-off industry event, so I created this one on the plane on the way over, anyway they were peers not prospects in the audience. What constitutes a bad PowerPoint presentation?….many factors, I like Seth Godin's take on really bad PowerPoint, but let's agree that you know you are in one when it's happening.


PowerPoint is a great presenters tool, but terrible for the audience unless handled with great care, preparation and rehearsal, yet we still do PowerPoint to our peers and ourselves, laboring lengthy, bullet-laden, text heavy and product-centric rants that fast become boring and invoke deep smart phone trances.

Topics: value proposition whiteboardselling powerpoint
3 min read

Resources for Creating Engaging Powerpoint Sales Presentations

By Mark Gibson on Jul 10, 2022 12:00:00 AM

In May this year I posted an article entitled "A Guide to creating engaging Powerpoint Sales Presentations"

Topics: messaging value 4-mat powerpoint
2 min read

I've no time for a PowerPoint Sales pitch, Just Give me the Big Idea

By Mark Gibson on Oct 27, 2021 11:23:06 AM

Is it my imagination or have you too noticed that the average length of time for a sales call has gotten shorter lately?

I'm interested in comments from sales leaders on their experience with this metric as I have been unsuccessful in finding any hard evidence to support a change in buyer behavior that has reduced sales call duration.

We are aware that buyers are fully capable of exploring options on their own and don't need salespeople to convey product information.
 
Topics: powerpoint visual confections big idea selling
4 min read

A Guide to Engaging Sales Presentations - Do not use PowerPoint

By Mark Gibson on Oct 27, 2021 11:23:06 AM

On Wednesday last week, I had the pleasure of sitting in a one day course entitled "Presenting Data and Information" presented by Prof. Edward Tufte.

Topics: powerpoint visual storytelling edward tufte
4 min read

10 Reasons to Leave the Laptop and PowerPoint behind on a sales call

By Mark Gibson on Oct 27, 2021 11:23:06 AM

With so much at stake in every prospect encounter, why would I promote the idea of leaving the laptop, PowerPoint presentation and LCD behind?

I've been working with sales and marketing teams for the past 8 years as a consultant to help align sales and marketing messages and create clarity around value creation. With one or two exceptions from the hundreds of presentations I've seen, they all follow the same format.

It's all about me, my big office, my stuff, my awards, my customers (slide 4), my partners, my products, my compelling features and my unforgettable and highly differentiated benefits. 

It's like there was a gold standard master PowerPoint presentation written 20 years ago and every presentation since has inherited the format....only the buildings and the names change.
If you want a good laugh and some introspection take a look at the Chicken, Chicken, Chicken video below (Thanks to Neil Warren for making me aware of this).

Topics: presentation skills powerpoint visual storytelling communication skills.
1 min read

The Hero's Journey and Basic Storytelling - Video

By Mark Gibson on Oct 27, 2021 11:23:06 AM

In my prior post, I introduced Visual Perception, which is part 1 of a three part video series from the Webinar, Your PowerPoint Sucks - and what you can do about it.

You can view other posts here
Part 2:  Your PowerPoint Sucks - Basic Storytelling.
Topics: storytelling powerpoint the heros journey joseph campbell
3 min read

PowerPoint Vs. Prezi - Guy Kawasaki and Dan Heath Tell Stories

By Mark Gibson on Oct 27, 2021 11:23:06 AM

This post started at the insistence of a colleague who knew of my work with WhiteboardSelling and wanted me to check out Prezi as an alternative to PowerPoint.

Topics: effective presentations whiteboard selling powerpoint
9 min read

Is Your PowerPoint Sales Presentation Boring Your Audience to Tears?

By Mark Gibson on Oct 27, 2021 11:23:06 AM

The PowerPoint Cringe

I’ve developed a conditioned reflex when I know I’m going to have to sit through a PowerPoint presentation. After nearly two years of working on whiteboarding to communicate with buyers instead of presenting to them, I feel a certain uneasiness and find myself shifting in my chair, stomach sometimes churning and often - my jaw clenching when the presentation starts.

This is a conditioned response and natural reaction to the way the majority of 
sales and marketing presentations unfold; the slides are dense and chock-full of words, the medium is dull, the delivery is product-centric and tedious and the presentation style is generally uninspiring – exactly the type of atmosphere you want to avoid when trying to inspire people to action!

However, I recognize that there are certain situations in which PowerPoint is unavoidable.  Conference organizers may require that presenters deliver information using the same slide template; corporations may insist that you use the corporate slide deck or potential customers may specifically request a PowerPoint presentation.

In these cases, how can you use a PowerPoint presentation without boring your audience to tears or losing out on the engagement levels that other delivery styles allow?

Here’s one rule that’s worthy of repeating – “Never give a presentation you would not want to sit through.” (Nancy Duarte)

In truth, it is possible to create engaging PowerPoint slides, but it takes a lot more effort than most people think.  Unfortunately, because the vast majority of presentations are created the night before they’re used, preparation is rushed, the ideas are jammed-up against each other and it’s no wonder the majority of them fail to achieve their intended outcomes.

The worst offenders are often our sales and marketing leaders, who beat us over the head with bullet after bullet at the annual sales kick-off meeting.  By avoiding their example and adhering to the following guidelines, you’ll increase your odds of both connecting with your audience in a delightful, authentic way and delivering a message that’s both well-received and retained.

Topics: sales kick-off presentation skills powerpoint
3 min read

Using Visual Storytelling to Get Your Next Job - Case Study

By Mark Gibson on Oct 27, 2021 11:23:06 AM

"I'm sorry to tell you that we are restructuring the company and we have to let you and twelve others go."

Ever been laid off? I have - and chances are that at some time in your life it could happen to you. Layoff's happen, it's a fact of life in our time and it's no big deal. Companies re-organize, merge, get acquired, have a bad quarter and suddenly, headcount becomes a problem.

After 9-11, there were hundreds of thousands of sales and marketing professionals in the Bay Area suddenly unemployed. Long gone is the era of my parents (grand-parents for many readers), when you joined a company and expected to work a lifetime and retire on a pension at 65.

What happens when you do get laid off? How do you get back into the workforce and perhaps more importantly, how do you win the job you really want, when there are potentially dozens or even hundreds of others applying for the same job? Hint - be different!

Wil Loesel (www.linkedin.com/in/wloesel) worked for Time Warner Cable as a sales manager and was recently laid off due to a restructuring. Wil visited my Website earlier this month and viewed our "Your PowerPoint Presentations Suck Webinar" and decided to apply some of the ideas he learned in the Webinar to differentiate himself in his job search.

Wil's Story

"I had an interview for a B2C Manager position on May 5th. I had prepared a presentation a week earlier for another company I was interviewing at and was working on tailoring it for my interview the next day. I watched your webinar the evening prior to my interview and decided I wanted to change my entire presentation.

I stayed up all night (until 8am) revising the presentation. I then slept for 2 hours, woke up and kept working, all the way until my interview. I wrote and memorized talking points and stories for each slide (keeping the slides visual, using only a word or two and a picture) and let my voice present the story."

Wil's Before Slides

There is nothing wrong with Wil's before slides, it's just that they are typical, the same meaningless graphics, too much information and have a memory retention lifecycle for the viewer of one mouse-click.
This is one of the worst slides in Wil's old deck, but it's so familiar. I've seen something like this many times and when I see it my eyes glaze over it and move on. 

The slide below is popular at the moment. I have seen a derivative of this several times at industry conferences and Webinars already this year. It is unreadable and has too much information to be presented effectively.



Wil's After Slides

I have reduced the size of Wil's "after" slides to cover the points in his management philosophy section, because I can... you will still be able to get the key idea from each slide that Wil wanted to discuss, when the slides are shrunk. The images are clean, one main idea per slide, are easily understood and the images create meaning to support his point. It's Wil that is talking, the slides are doing their job as visual aids.

Topics: sales powerpoint visual storytelling
8 min read

Whiteboard Storytelling vs. PowerPoint - a Comparison

By Mark Gibson on Jan 10, 2019 12:00:00 AM

Microsoft PowerPoint has been installed a billion times on Mac and Windows systems since launching in 1990. With an estimated 95% market share of the presentation market and more than 500 million users, Microsoft PowerPoint is a behemoth in the market and their collective competitors, mere minnows.

Topics: storytelling powerpoint whiteboard storytelling baseline selling