I recently had the opportunity to view a number of sales presentations from a variety of companies – from start-ups to large, established enterprises. Frankly, I was amazed at what I saw. Pages and pages of slides stuffed with images, bullets and words. It seems that marketers today have bought into the concept that more is better – particularly when it comes to slide content. Uncluttered white space is out.
I used to be a marketer who created presentations from the “me” perspective. What do I want to tell my viewer? What do I need my viewer to walk away with? This perspective leads to lengthy lists of wordy, bulleted items relieved (or not) by densely packed visuals. To the marketer, everything is important. All of the details must be included. With a token slide or two on benefits, the presentation degenerates into a product laundry list.
The true result of these poorly crafted presentations is often hidden. The sales team mangles the message because it is incomprehensible in the content they are given. The prospect doesn’t make the connection between their problems and the solution the product offers. Sales are lost early in the sales cycle.
One of the biggest excuses I hear from marketing is that they have to create wordy slides because the sales team can’t give the presentation without them. Sales needs the words on the slides as keys to what to say. Let me give the benefit of the doubt to sales here. Good sales people know how to present effectively. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have a strong track record of reaching second base. In most cases, the problem isn’t the sales person, it is the presentation itself. If the presentations I recently viewed are a sample, the typical sales presentation that comes out of marketing simply isn’t functional.
The bottom line is that marketers need to deliver better sales presentations for sales’ use. The place to start is by communicating more clearly. It is time to un-stuff your sales presentations.
How do you know if you are a slide stuffer?
- Do you long to fill white space on your slides?
- Do you add photos and images that have no relation to the discussion to your slides? Pictures of people at keyboards, photos of buildings, images of product boxes, …
- Do you frequently reduce the font size of your bullets to fit everything you want to say on one page?
- Do you put more than three bullets on a slide?
- Do your bullets often wrap to two or three lines?
- Do you add animation to make the static content more interesting?
If you have answered yes to at least two of these questions, you have very likely developed slide stuffing habits. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy fix for slide stuffing. The root of the problem is actually deeper than the ingrained habit. I’ll explore the underlying issues in upcoming blog entries.
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