PowerPoint 1.0 was first available to the public in April of 1987. It could only be used with Macintosh computers, and it was only capable of generating black and white pages of text. Nevertheless, people were awestruck — especially in the business sector. “I can’t describe how wonderful it was,” Bob Gaskins, PowerPoint’s creator, told The New Yorker magazine in 2001. “When we demonstrated at trade shows, we were mobbed.”

In 1990, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint were all integrated into Microsoft Office, giving the fledgling presentation technology the exposure that led to its widespread use. Today, Microsoft says that more than 30 million PowerPoint presentations are made every day. The technology has more added features than most presenters know what to do with — it’s now quite possible to incorporate 3-D graphics, brilliant color and even streaming video.

“We use PowerPoint rather extensively,” says Steve Weber, information services manager at Coastwide Laboratories, a Portland-based distributor. “We used to be the kings of the 3M overhead projector, but PowerPoint allows for so much flexibility and customization — it’s great for sales presentations or internal meetings.”

“You can make a PowerPoint template that really fits the customer you’re presenting to,” adds Kevin Garrison, a contract manager who is also with Coastwide Laboratories.

Although some companies are using PowerPoint effectively, many are using it just because it’s there — without leveraging the presentation technology’s most salient benefits, says Nereus Dooley, a learning-technology consultant with Marquette University in Milwaukee.

“PowerPoint presentations can be great for business sales presentations,” he says. “I’ve sat in on some great presentations that clearly demonstrate a product’s benefits, and they can be very convincing. The problem is that too many presenters get so focused on the technology that they forget about keeping solid content.”

In other words, simply configuring a presentation for PowerPoint doesn’t make it a good presentation. Presenters still have to ask themselves tough questions about who their audience is and what content is most compelling, says Andrew Shedden, a presentation consultant with Broadfield Communications, Chicago.

“Sales representatives who think that PowerPoint presentations are impressive are sorely mistaken,” says Shedden. “They may have been impressive five years ago, but not so now.” What is impressive is when compelling data and excellent content are used in tandem with PowerPoint’s array of visual features.

Achieving Balance
Those “old school” salespeople know that information is paramount in producing a good sales presentation. The problem is, most of them don’t know how to organize that information when it comes to PowerPoint, says Edward Tufte, professor emeritus of graphic design and computer science at Yale University.

“In a business setting, a PowerPoint slide typically shows 40 words, which is about eight seconds worth of silent reading material,” Tufte explains. “With so little information per slide, many, many slides are needed. Audiences consequently endure a relentless sequentiality.” When information is stacked in time, it is difficult to understand the context of each idea, rendering them less powerful, he adds.

Effective PowerPoint presentations clearly demonstrate a single concept on each slide, but that doesn’t mean that one sentence per slide is enough to present that concept to the audience, says Tufte. In fact, audiences usually become annoyed when every PowerPoint slide merely contains one sentence that is being spoken. “Visual reasoning usually works more effectively when relevant information is shown side by side,” he says. “Often, the more intense the detail, the greater the clarity and understanding. This is especially true for statistical data, where the fundamental analytical act is to make comparisons.”

For example, a distributor who is selling carpet extractors to a high-level potential customer should consider making a presentation that highlights his or her product’s benefits in comparison with one or two competitors, says David Simmons, information technology director for JanPak, a multi-regional sanitary supply distributor headquartered in Davidson, N.C. This kind of presentation is more convincing than simply putting up slides that say one-sentence affirmations, such as, “Cleaning professionals choose our product over the competition 3-to-1.”

Although a single phrase or sentence is not enough to make a strong comparison, too much data can be just as ineffective, says Dooley. “PowerPoint isn’t good at presenting a lot of text,” he says. “It’s hard to read, so it becomes a distraction. The audience is trying to read all the textual data, but they’re also trying to concentrate on what the presenter is saying. They don’t know what to focus on.”

Alarming Bells & Whistles
There are jan/san executives who swear by PowerPoint presentations that use the newest and flashiest features, but Simmons isn’t one of them. Such presentations can wear thin on the nerves of a potential customer, he says.

“If you’re able to demonstrate product effectiveness, then it might be worth it, but if there’s too much sound and too many colors, people won’t get the message that you’re trying to convey. The psychological impact is that people might be so mesmerized by the PowerPoint presentation that they don’t pay attention to the content.”

“I don’t even demonstrate how to use certain sound effects on PowerPoint unless a client asks for them,” says Dooley. “I once observed a presentation that used a feature that slowly punches each letter up on the screen like a typewriter. It took about 10 minutes to get all the letters up for the first slide, and people were really annoyed. That’s one of my least favorites.”

Too many special effects detract from the message that a presenter is attempting to make clear. Even though an audience might be entertained or amused by the presentation, that doesn’t mean that an order will be placed, which is the primary goal for a salesperson. “At a minimum, a presentation format should do no harm,” says Tufte. “Yet [this] PowerPoint style routinely disrupts, dominates and trivializes content. Thus PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play — very loud, very slow and very simple.”

Better Sound Bites
As technology improves, salespeople have better avenues for pitching their products clearly — and impressively. “Now, the technology has improved so much that you can do embedded video and other video-based presentations,” says Simmons. “The problem is that most people don’t know how to use that technology yet. Once you know how to harness that technology, you can really improve your presentations, but there’s still the distraction factor.”

Embedded video, like QuickTime, allows video clips to be seamlessly woven into a PowerPoint presentation that might already include text and graphics. Before this technology became mainstream, salespeople had to switch to a video on another machine — a DVD player or VCR — or they had to rely on the PowerPoint data to explain the product benefits. Now, audiences don’t need to just rely on sales data, they can also observe product benefits from the same presentation.

These presentations are so new, however, that only the most sophisticated distributors are implementing them. “The hard thing about video is actually transferring the video to the presentation,” says Dooley. “If it’s a regular QuickTime file — in other words, streaming video — then it’s often difficult to download it and dump it in your PowerPoint file. Fortunately, there are a number of third-party vendors that specialize in integrating streaming video and PowerPoint.”

Industry Issues
For JanPak, only the most savvy salespeople attempt to leverage the benefits of PowerPoint for their sales presentations. “If you’re not astute in how to use it, then it’s just going to be troublesome and get in the way,” says Simmons. “At our company, only a few salespeople see it working for them, and they’re usually the ones who ask for more training,” he says.

A few years ago, JanPak offered optional PowerPoint training classes for all salespeople, but there wasn’t enough interest generated to justify their existence. “Some people benefited from the classes, but now we just train the sales managers in how to use it, and we provide extra training for those salespeople who want it.”

Another consideration for distributors who are thinking about utilizing PowerPoint for both sales and internal presentations is the cost. Microsoft usually charges $200 for a PowerPoint license for each computer. “That’s another reason we decided to just do it for the sales managers,” adds Simmons. “The way the Microsoft rules go, every machine using PowerPoint has to be licensed. However, what we do is purchase Microsoft Office licenses, which are $400 per machine, but they also come with Microsoft Word and Excel.”

Don’t Dumb Down
The foundational problem with most PowerPoint presentations is that the presenter relies too much on the technology, and ignores the original message that the audience needs to hear, says Tufte, who has published several books on visual presentations, including The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint and Visual & Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Decision Making.

“Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience,” he says.

 

 

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POSTED ON: 2/1/2004