juarezlowe

During my one year as a brand manager, I learned how to use Power Point. I learned how people misused Power Point. I sat through  ”brief” presentations of 200 slides or more. I prepared slides linked to videos, jpgs and Excel spreadsheets and jpgs. 

Setting up my own business was a totally different ball game. As some entrepreneurs write, the change was as drastic as night and day. Presentations to clients were sometimes done in the lift or on the way to the car park. Surprise, surprise, these presentations were shock horror, without Power Point slides!

My business now has 5 trainers and we work with Petronas, Maybank, Johnson & Johnson, YTL, MIDF, IBBM and Kuwait Finance House. At the end of every month, as a good former MNC trained brand manager, I conducted an analysis of my business. I determined where the business was from (which company & industry and which was the most profitable). 

Around 8% of my business resulted from making Power Point presentations. 92% of the business resulted from meetings/presentations without using Power Point slides. In all the meetings, I did have slides prepared. It was just that the meeting went quite well without the slides. 

Not setting up a projector made the presentation feel a little more relaxed. Feedback from my clients showed that most of them were tired of endless slides. Most meetings would begin by questions on what exactly the client needed. To summarize, you should always have a set of slides in case, but you may find that more than 90% of the time, you may be better off without them. Obama’s Democratic national convention speech was over 45 minutes long, extremely riveting and given without a single slide.

Some of your clients may feel a need for slides and will want to sit through a Power Point show. If you do have to prepare some slides, take a look at  www.presentationzen.com and the post below on Pitfalls in Presentation. This is quite a comprehensive guide to presentations that advocates getting to the point and making a focused presentation.