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3 common mistakes that presenters make when creating clever slides

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Childhood habits that can kill presentations

Take a moment to travel back to your schooldays. What were some of the thumb rules you followed to score more marks in your school examinations?
Let me make a guess…

Rule 1: Write more
The more pages you filled the more marks you got in your exams. It made the evaluator feel that you knew a lot. So, you learn the habit of fluffing up your content in presentations as well.

Rule 2: Make it look beautiful
Decorating your answers with highlighters and sketch pens got you more marks. So, you learnt the habit of decorating your presentations.

Rule 3: Sound knowledgeable
Using jargon and acronyms made you look intelligent. By littering your answers with some technical words, you could impress your evaluators into give you more marks. So, you learnt the habit of using technical mumbo-jumbo as your weapon against objections.

Unfortunately, those very habits that got you more marks in your school might be killing your sales presentations.

The rules that your customers follow to evaluate your presentations are very different. Here are some of their rules:

Rule 1: More is bore
Your audience is allergic to long winding presentations. The moment you put up that bullet point slide with 6 points and 4 sub-points your audience take a walk mentally. You need to say it in a crisp and clear manner to score more with your audience.

Rule 2: Bling is cheap
Your audience won’t fall for that cool animation or a ‘Zen’ picture. Your slide should make your message memorable by explaining your ideas in a visual way. Concept diagrams are a very useful tool.

Rule 3: Jargon is rude
It is not about what you know; it is about what they learn. Jargon puts a distance between you and your audience. Always talk at their level to win them over.

So, play by the new rules and unlearn your old habits. You will score more in your sales presentations. Happy selling!

Dont trigger the SCAN IT button in your audience’s head

How do you read a newspaper?

Do you go through every word written out there? No.

As soon as you pick up the paper, you quickly scan through the headlines. If any of it attracts your attention, you read the first paragraph. If it still sustains your attention, you skim through the rest of the content.

You follow exactly the same method whether it is about reading the books in your library, articles on the net or to going through any detailed information.

Why is this information of how people read important to you as a sales presenter?

When you present a slide that looks like this…

 

Audience sees a lot of information presented at once. So, they automatically start scanning your slide. This is how their attention spans across the slide:

As you can see, the detailed graphs at the end, which were probably important are completely ignored.

How do you avoid this declining attention span, as a presenter?

Follow this simple rule – 1 slide: 1 thought i.e. ‘One slide should carry just one thought’. This reduces the material you put on your slides. Your audience therefore takes the time to understand and assimilate the information. Your message gets read and retained longer. 

Will you follow this simple tip? Happy selling!

Are you making ‘Flea market’ slides?

Ever wondered what differentiates a flea market display from a showroom display? 

Why is it that one feels noisy and exhausting, whereas the other feels organized and reassuring? 

Why do you feel compelled to bargain in a flea market, whereas you happily give more for the same item in a showroom? 

Why does it feel that a flea marketer cares only about your wallet whereas a good salesperson in a showroom cares about YOU?

The reason is – these two visual formats give you very different psychological cues.

Forcing a decision versus building a relation:

A flea market display says, “This is all I have got. Make a decision quickly and get out. I don’t care about you enough, to customize my display to match your needs”.

A showroom says, “I want to build a relationship with you, so I will take the time to show you what you want to see”

Spreading the attention versus focusing the attention:

A flea marketer spreads the attention of the audience over all his items equally. So, the customer doesn’t have the time to consider any single option long enough to appreciate its value.

A showroom salesperson focuses the attention of the audience on a few items that interests him. He helps the customer to make his decision by providing the necessary information.

Naturally, the results these two formats achieve are in line with the visual cues they provide. For sales and marketing presenters like you, there are some valuable lessons hidden in these two formats.  

Whether you like it or not, the slides that you create for your presentations leave certain cues about your approach to customers. These cues determine the results you achieve.

Let us see the slides equivalent of the two formats:

I call the first - ‘Flea market’ slide format and the second as the ‘Showroom’ slide format. 

Take a minute to see the cues these slides give. 

• One is about ‘My wares’ and the other is about ‘Your needs’
• One spreads and diffuses the audience attention, and the other focuses the attention
• One makes you close your eyes and the other opens your mind

So, choose the right format to sell your value by understanding the cues given by your slides. Let your slides be your ally, not your enemy. 

Happy selling!