MarketSense

Making PowerPoint Visuals Speak - Creating Visual Mini-Stories

Nothing kills a sales presentation (or any presentation) more than pages and pages of slides with lots of bullets and text.

You are about 10 minutes into a sales presentation by company XYZ. The presenter brings up a slide that has three bullets on it. The presenter starts talking about those bullets,

but your mind is already taking the short route and reading the bullets. While the presenter drones on in the background, you immediately see where he is going. You are done with the slide, but the presenter is still in the process of talking through the first bullet point. You are ready to move on, but he isn’t so you tune out.

The whole idea of a sales presentation is to allow your audience to see themselves in the vision you create.

A vision is a visual mechanism. Bullets with words are a verbal mechanism. How easy is it for your audience to see themselves in a vision painted by bullets?

I love to board talk my presentations. When I board talk my presentations, I carefully select my most compelling concepts and create a flow from one point to another. More importantly, I interact with my audience in a way that builds a visual that not only draws in but includes the audience. No wonder board talks are so effective. They help build that personalized vision for the audience.

Achieving this same experience is a lot more difficult to do with a PowerPoint presentation. But we can leverage board talk techniques which will help us create more compelling visuals for our canned PowerPoint presentations.

Rule #1: Prioritize your concepts by the impact you expect them to have on your audience. Use only the most compelling ones.

To do this effectively, the marketer has to go beyond the words and really understand the impact of the ideas he/she is trying to communicate. In our example, there are three competing ideas being communicated. Chances are by focusing on one, the audience can extrapolate the other two. Do you really need to call out all three? Isn’t one impactful concept better remembered than three equally boring marketing claims?

Rule #2: Develop the flow of your main concepts by focusing on contrasts.

Contrast compares the before and the after. It is typified by movement of some sort. It helps you define flow. By understanding the underlying contrast in your main concept, you start to focus on the visual idea to support it.


In our example, contrast adds details. Low customer retention means that a business is constantly striving to add new customers to replace customers who are leaving. It is like a zero sum game. Improved customer retention means that a business is building momentum in the marketplace. More and more customers are being exposed to the product and signing on.

Rule #3: Identify the visualization that will illustrate your concept in a way that ensures the impact you want to achieve.

There are many ways to visualize concepts. Rule #3 asks you to choose a visualization that is dynamic. If we used a static graph in our example, you would never create the emotional feel of the momentum that customer retention can achieve. By using animation to build the visual bit by bit, you start creating the feel of that momentum.

Putting the 3 Rules Together

The secret of using these three rules is that you are creating a mini-story around a critical concept you want to communicate. This mini-story allows the audience to engage with the concept. It helps them build an emotional crescendo that leads to the “aha moment”.

The final product of using these rules is the combination of story and visual that begins with the before. Both develop and build together until they reach the climax. That climax is the point of maximum conceptual impact. You repeat this for slide after slide after slide.

Sales Presentation Design – Tell Their Story

I have been exploring sales presentation techniques in the past few blog entries. We’ve seen the how an audience’s attention span constrains our presentation length. It also forces us to reconsider the order of information in the presentation. We need an attention grabber to focus the audience’s attention on the presentation. We want to put our most relevant and potent information at the front of the presentation when we have the audience’s maximum interest. That takes us through the first 5 minutes of the presentation.

Our goal in the next 10-15 minutes of the presentation segment is to engage the audience so that we maintain their attention as long as possible. The best way to do that is to organize the presentation around a storyline. We need to tell a story.

But what story do we tell? Potential storylines include the story of our company, the story of our product, or the story of our successful customers. However, the best story to tell is not any of these. The best story to tell is the story of the prospect we are speaking to.

The first reaction I get when I recommend this course of action is “But how do I know the prospect’s story? Each prospect is going to have their own unique story.”

When you first start selling a new product, it does seem like each prospect has a unique story. But after you have talked with a number of prospects, you will see patterns emerge. In these patterns you will find pain points shared, circumstances replicated, and common issues. From these patterns you can craft common scenarios and an underlying framework for your storyline.

At this point you are probably wondering, “But what about us, our products, our services? Where do they fit in?”

Your company, your product, services, and solution are supporting cast members in the story. Remember, this is not your story. It is the prospect’s story. Your company, product, services, and solution are not the main characters.

In your first sales presentations to a new prospect, you are not selling your product, services, or solution. You are selling the idea of transformation. You are creating a vision of how much better things could be. Your company and product are the means for achieving that transformation and that vision.

Before anyone can sell a prospect a particular product or solution, the prospect must decide that they want to solve their problems, address their issues, and improve their circumstances. They must desire transformation. They must see themselves in the vision. When they do, this vision becomes a powerful motivator in the sales process.

They are not going to find that vision in the story of how your company was formed.

They are not going to find that vision in the feature details of your product.

They are only going to find that vision in a story that starts and ends with them.

It is time to take stock of your sales presentations. In your review, identify the following:

1. Estimate what portion of the presentation is about you, your company, your product, and your solution. Estimate what portion of the presentation is about your prospect. If 80% of the presentation is NOT about your prospect, you have work to do.
2. What is the transformation you are suggesting? Do you clearly compare and contrast before and after effects? How well does this transformation apply to your prospect’s situation?
3. How visual is the vision you are painting? How easy is it for the prospect to visualize themselves in the vision you are creating? Is it relevant to the prospect’s situation?
4. Is there a discernable storyline and plot in your sales presentation? Is it easy for someone to give? Is it easy to follow?
5. Do you need more than one scenario to plug into your storyline? How different are the situations, transformations, and visions you need to develop to match the different prospects you see?

Understanding Audience Attention Span

In the last blog entry I talked about grabbing the audience’s attention when starting your sales presentation. Dragging your audience’s attention away from the variety of thoughts milling around in their mind is crucial to a successful sales presentation. Engaging your audience in the presentation helps build retention of the ideas you present.

So, how long do you think you have your audience’s attention once you have captured it? 10 minutes? 30 minutes? 60 minutes? As long as you have something interesting to say?

It is generally acknowledged that an average adult attention spans last 15-20 minutes (see video discussion from M62 Visual Communications). Others suggest that attention starts to wander after 7 minutes. Based on my experience, marketers design their sales presentations based on what they want to say, not on how long they are likely to maintain their audience’s attention. We would all be hard-pressed to fit everything we wanted to tell our prospects into 20 minutes. This means that some portion of what we are trying to say will be lost on the audience as their attention wanes.

So, what happens when we can’t condense what we want to say into a 20 minute presentation? Is all hope lost? The good news is that attention spans can be concatenated together (see video discussion from M62 Visual Communications). Two things are important to understand when concatenating attention spans.

1. You must give your audience an opportunity to break their attention before you regain their attention in a new span.
2. The attention in secondary and tertiary attention spans will be less than the initial attention span.

Rule #1: Design your presentation so that each segment is no longer than 20 minutes. Incorporate an attention break between segments when concatenating segments together.

It should also be understood that the audience’s attention within the average 20 minute attention span isn’t constant. Until you have grabbed the audience’s attention, their attentiveness is very low. Once you have grabbed the audience’s attention, their attentiveness decreases. This means that you don’t want to save your most interesting information for a big bang at the end.

Rule #2: Design your presentation so that your high impact content is arranged just after you grab their attention at the beginning of the presentation.

Of course, the way you present your content as well as the subject and applicability of the content for the individual all play a factor in how long you actually maintain your audience’s attention. This only strengthens the case for rule #2.

Though I have focusing on attention span as it relates to sales presentations, these same principles can be applied to other marketing collateral such as general presentations, white papers, eBooks, etc. Tune in to my next blog entry when I focus on presentation design.

Setting the Contract – How you Grab your Audience’s Attention

Your sales team has scheduled an hour sales presentation with a new prospect. Your sponsor has gathered together a variety of interested individuals to attend the presentation. Some of these individuals may know something about your company. Other individuals may not have had a chance to learn about your products. Yet, other individuals may be brimming with in-depth questions they are dying to ask you. Each of them could be doing something else with their time.

The first thing you and the sales team needs to understand is that the 60 minutes you have needs to be carefully crafted so that it can capture and sustain the attention of the individuals gathered together. From your own personal experience, you know that when you walk into any meeting, your attention is likely to be on a variety of other concerns. What you may not realize is that unless the presenter does something to immediately grab the audience’s attention away from those other concerns, he/she is likely to never capture the audience’s attention.

Rule #1: Select an opening that will immediately interest all members of your audience.

Of course, this is easier said than done. The tactic I have found most successful is what I call “setting the contract”. In most early sales calls when the sales team hasn’t met the presentation attendees, a typical meeting starts by going around the table and having each attendee introduce him/herself. The “setting a contract” technique leverages this common practice. However, instead of just stating who you are, your title, and what you do, it adds one very important question.

“Setting the Contract” Question: If you could leave this meeting having your most pressing question answered, what would that question be?

Once I present this question, I then “set the contract” with my audience. I promise to address each of the questions the members of the audience want answered in the course of this presentation. I usually write each person’s question on a board and use it to hold myself accountable at the end of the presentation.

Here is why this technique has been so very successful for me.

• It immediately engages each individual.
• It demonstrates to each individual that their concern is heard.
• It promises each individual that if they pay attention to the presentation, their question will be answered.
• It encourages respect among the individuals at the table because each voice is given equal value.
• It shows the individuals that the other viewpoints at the table will enhance the value of the presentation. Often, other questions an individual may have show up on the combined list.
• It diverts individuals from posing their pressing questions early in the presentation and potentially preempting, diverting or derailing the flow of the story you want to tell.
• It eases the presenter (who would normally fall into “tell” mode) into a listening mode frame of mind.
• It offers the presenter insight into what really matters for the individuals who are spending their valuable time in the meeting.
• It helps ensure that the presenter understands the key issues before starting the presentation.
• It gives the presenter time to consider how to enhance the presentation to cover the top-of-mind questions.
• It gives the presenter a check list he/she can revisit at the end of the presentation to make sure that all questions were indeed answered (and the contract honored). By reviewing these questions at the end of the presentation, everyone leaves the meeting with a sense of accomplishment.

You may think that this will take a lot of additional time. The truth is that is does take more time, but that you will often get that time back in the course of the presentation. I have almost never been asked preemptive and disruptive questions in the presentation when this technique is used. Those types of questions can send a presenter down a rat hole and cause the audience’s attention to be lost. With the help of these questions, I customize the presentation to address the audience’s interests. This often results in fewer questions being asked during the presentation.

Obviously, this technique will be unreasonable for large audiences. However, establishing a contract with your audience at the start of the presentation is always a good plan because it helps set expectations. It can be either preceded or succeeded with some other device that helps the audience transition their attention to the presenter.

Are you a slide stuffer?

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.