Presentations in Action - Jerry Weissman [24]
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 investors in or customers of the presenter’s line of business, wield so much weight that their requests are difficult to refuse.
One such decision maker wields his power differently. He is a senior vice president of a Fortune 500 company, and he spends 7 million or 8 million euros every month buying products and services for his organization. Whenever he is solicited by a vendor seeking an appointment, his standard reply is, “I don’t have a lot of time for meetings; just email me your slides with information about your product/service and I’ll see if I’m interested.”
If the vendor agrees, the vice president deletes the email when it arrives, without opening it. His reason: “If a salesperson succumbs that easily, either he can’t be a very good salesperson or he hasn’t much faith in his own product or service. That person has yielded the selling process to an incomplete impersonal summary. Selling is about person-to-person communication.”
The vice president responds differently if the vendor doesn’t take the bait. If the vendor offers to send a fact sheet or an executive summary—a true document created in Microsoft Word—as a preliminary to a face-to-face meeting, the vice president accepts. When the meeting occurs, the presentation—created in PowerPoint—functions as an illustration of the presenter’s story. Then the vice president can get a complete picture, ask questions, and truly evaluate the salesperson and his or her product or service.
Don’t take the bait. Send a document ahead, and bring the presentation along.
29. PowerPoint and Human Perception: Scientific Support for Graphics Design
Dr. Stephen Kosslyn, who chaired the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, has spent 35 years focusing on how the brain recalls visual stimuli in the form of mental imagery. He is also a prolific author, with two relevant works about presentation graphic design: the book Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations and an article he wrote with Robert Lane (published on the excellent presentation design site indezine.com), called “Show Me! What Brain Research Says about Visuals in PowerPoint.”
In his article, Dr. Kosslyn provided scientific validation of the fundamentals of human perception that are also fundamental in television and cinema—and, therefore, applicable to presentations. Video- and filmmakers craft their programs and films on the basic premise that audiences’ emotions can be driven by how the human sensory system processes sights and sounds. If directors or editors want to create a pleasant or positive experience, they assemble their audio and video images in smooth, synchronized sequences. If they want to create tension or disturbance, as in suspense, war, chase, caper, or Western stories, they assemble those images in disruptive, asynchronous sequences.
Presenters always want to create only favorable impressions upon their audiences, but in their desire to validate their important ideas, they bulk up their PowerPoint slides with loads of data and jabber away as they click through them. Instead of impressing their audiences, they lose—or, worse, alienate—them.
Dr. Kosslyn explains why: “Viewers must try to read the text, look at the picture, and pay attention to the speaker’s words, all in a short time span. Most of us fail to do all three and either: ignore the text and listen to the speaker, or try and read the text and miss the speaker’s words.”F29.1
This disastrous disconnect occurs because the instant a new image appears on the projection screen, the audience suddenly shifts their attention to the screen and away from the presenter, and they do so involuntarily, driven by