Produce Powerful Presentations (Collection)

28. Baiting the Salesperson: Selling Is about In-Person Communication

In the pressured world of business, multitasking and repurposing are equated with efficiency. These practices result in the inefficient use of Microsoft PowerPoint for both presentations and documents, with multiple variations of the latter: leave-behinds, speaker notes, uniformity of corporate messaging, and send-aheads.

Of all the many shortcuts, the worst and most common offender is the last: using PowerPoint for both the presentation and a preview of the presentation, as in “Send me your slides in advance.” The primary perpetrators of this duality are the solicited, the people in a position to make “yes” or “no” decisions. These power players, who are sought after to become ...