******************************************************************* Dave Paradi's PowerPoint Tip     Issue #147 November 13, 2007 Published & Copyright by Dave Paradi of ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com Circulation 8,529 ******************************************************************* Please forward this newsletter to sales executives and professionals who want to achieve greater sales rep productivity and deliver presentations that close more sales.  If this newsletter has been sent to you by a friend, sign up to get your own copy at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/newsletter.htm . ******************************************************************* In this issue: Visual Slide definition recognized in the media PowerPoint Tip - Wide screen laptops Best of the Blog - Are you in Sales? Don't answer "No" too quickly. Dave's Travel Schedule - new date in Chicago, Feb 2008 ******************************************************************* Visual Slide definition recognized in the media Last Monday, Harvey Schachter of the Globe and Mail's Report on Business section cited my definition of a visual slide that was in this newsletter two issues ago.  I also had a request from Sales & Marketing Magazine to use the definition in an upcoming column. Clearly, the idea that a visual slide is not defined by what is absent but by what is present on the slide and the impact it has on the audience has made sense to people.  If you are looking to make your slides more visual, check out my e-book "Transforming Text Slides Into Visual Slides" at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/transformtext.htm . Missed the definition?  Here it is again: "A visual slide is not the absence of text; it is the presence of a visual that encourages a conversation with the audience." ------------------------------------------------------------------- PowerPoint Tip: Wide screen laptops Almost every laptop sold today is a wide screen model.  The native display resolution is great and allows you to put applications side by side when working.  The problem is that most projectors are not wide screen and are lower resolution.  This can cause frustrating display problems for presenters when the higher resolution is sent to a projector that doesn't handle it very well.  There is something you can do about this potential problem. In PowerPoint, you can set the Slide Show Resolution to be different than the regular resolution that your laptop normally uses.  This is helpful because now you can output a resolution that is more compatible with projectors and have less issues when presenting. This setting is in the Set Up Show dialog box. I set my Slide Show Resolution to 1024 x 768, which is commonly known as XGA resolution and is the most common native resolution for projectors in use today.  What this means is that when I switch to slide show mode, my display switches to the XGA resolution and the projector only sees a resolution level that it works well with. So how does it look on my laptop screen?  Well, it depends.  It depends on your graphic chip set and display settings, but one of two things will usually happen.  Either your laptop screen will show a horizontally stretched version of your slides, or it will show a display that has black bars on each side and is not stretched.  In both cases, your laptop will show only the same number of pixels as the projector shows, which is exactly what you need when presenting. One practice that also tends to help is to put your presentation into slide show mode before connecting to the projector.  This seems to help because the projector only sees the correct resolution from the start.  Otherwise, I have found a few situations where the projector picked up the wider display resolution and got a little confused. By setting your Slide Show Resolution setting to one that is more compatible with projectors, you reduce the probability of display problems when you present. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Best of the Blog - Are you in Sales? Don't answer "No" too quickly.    Someone recently wrote that my site and work seems to be focused on sales professionals and wondered if my ideas would apply to a technical group. The concern was that an internal group in the organization was not a "sales" group. Your department may not have a title that has the word "Sales" in it, but I bet you are in sales. Hear me out. Do you ever present to executives to gain their approval for a project? Do you present monthly financial figures and recommendations for managers to approve? Do you teach others procedures or skills that you want them to use on the job? Do you hold regular update meetings to keep everyone on the team motivated towards the goals? If you answered "Yes" to any of these four questions, you are in sales. In all of the cases above, you are "selling" your ideas to others inside your organization. You want them to "buy" your viewpoint or recommendations and take action. So you should be working to make your PowerPoint presentations as effective as possible so that your projects get approved, recommendations implemented and colleagues motivated to be successful. If you've been wondering if your internal group could benefit from a Think Outside The Slide workshop, the answer is definitely "Yes". Other recent blog posts at http://pptideas.blogspot.com : ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave's Travel Schedule I work with sales teams who struggle with the quality of their sales presentations and the productivity of the sales reps in creating the presentations. Sales executives would like their sales reps to easily create presentations and deliver a customized and consistent message every time. My research based PowerPoint Presentation Effectiveness System helps my clients achieve greater sales rep productivity and deliver presentations that close more sales.  You can save money by booking me to speak to your organization or conference when I am close to your area for other clients.  Here's where I will be in the next few months: November 14 - Toronto, ON November 19-20 - King City, ON November 22 - Oakville, ON December 6-9 - Halifax, NS December 10-11 - King City, ON December 18-19 - Mississauga, ON January 23-24 - Cincinnati, OH February 25 - Chicago, IL E-mail me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com to discuss how my Think Outside The Slide(tm) sessions can help your organization be more productive and improve communication throughout the organization. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Privacy Policy: I will never sell or distribute your e-mail or information to anyone. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Need articles for your newsletter?  Check out my many articles at: http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the books, e-books and other learning tools at: http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/resources.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------- If you want to read back issues of this newsletter, click on the following link to go to the Archives: http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/archives.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------- Microsoft, PowerPoint, Windows and other terms are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.  Microsoft product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation.  All books, products and seminars are independent publications and are not affiliated with, nor have they been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Microsoft Corporation.