| ******************************************************************* Dave Paradi's PowerPoint Tip Issue #144 October 2, 2007 Published & Copyright by Dave Paradi of ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com Circulation 8,621 ******************************************************************* 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: Get one-on-one advice in your city with www.MeetWithDave.com Annoying PowerPoint Survey - Take it now PowerPoint Tip - Standard Set of Slides Best of the Blog - Dealing with poor projectors Dave's Travel Schedule ******************************************************************* Get one-on-one advice in your city Want to sit down with me for an hour and get personalized advice on your PowerPoint slides? Now you can! I am launching a new service called MeetWithDave.com. It gives you the chance to get an hour of my time when I am travelling in your area. Current times are available in Ottawa, ON, Washington, DC and New Orleans, LA. Go to http://www.MeetWithDave.com for details. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Annoying PowerPoint Survey What annoys you about bad PowerPoint presentations? Take two minutes to fill out a quick survey to let me know. Please stop reading the newsletter and go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=TzWkZi7eD0pPQPvasbIA4A_3d_3d to fill out the survey. ------------------------------------------------------------------- PowerPoint Tip: Standard Set of Slides In my PowerPoint Presentation Effectiveness System, one of the key steps is to create a standard set of slides to draw on when creating your presentations. Why is this such a good idea? Today I'll let you know. One objection I hear regularly to this idea is that having a standard set of slides eliminates the opportunity to customize presentations. And today you need to create custom presentations if you want to survive in the highly competitive business marketplace. I agree that you need to customize, but having a standard set of slides doesn't hinder your ability to do so. By a standard set of slides what I mean is a set of slides that covers the majority of the common ideas that you present. It is not intended to be restrictive. It allows you to have a library of slides you commonly use to save time creating every new, customized presentation. The standard slides have a common look and feel. They have one idea per slide so you can pick and choose slides from the standard set when you create each presentation. And it gives you only one place to go for slides instead of searching through different files every time. Let's see how this would look in two specific situations. If you are in sales, your standard set of slides would include some introductory slides, slides on each popular product or service, slides on the purchasing process, slides with customer testimonials and others that would be included in the majority of your presentations. For a finance professional, your slides would include monthly graphs of the key figures you track, trends that executives need to be aware of and regular analysis that you perform that is critical to making operating decisions. Look back at the last few presentations you have done. Which slides did you pull from a previous presentations? Which ones do you know you'll be using again? That's where your standard set of slides starts. Put together the slides that you regularly use into a standard set and draw on the slides in that set when you create your next presentation. You will cut down on the time you spend creating every presentation because all the time searching or recreating previous slides is eliminated. Learn more about how the standard library of slides is a critical part of the PowerPoint Presentation Effectiveness System on my site at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/systemoverview.htm . ------------------------------------------------------------------- Best of the Blog - Dealing with poor projectors I have been corresponding over the past few weeks with a subscriber in an Asian country who is having challenges with projectors. He is trying to educate builders in his country about the need to make buildings accessible for those with disabilities. He is in a wheelchair, so he has great credibility when speaking on this topic. He uses photos that are powerful demonstrations of the points he is making. The greatest challenge is that the projectors that are supplied for his talks are usually old models with bulbs that are past their prime. He recently shared that he had spent much time fixing a set of photos that looked great on his laptop, but when projected, looked much poorer than he had hoped. What advice did I give him? I shared two strategies that might help him and help you when faced with situations where the projector is not very good. First is to prepare your slides, then arrive at the venue early and test to see what one of the photos looks like. If it does not appear good, try adjusting the Brightness and Contrast settings in PowerPoint for that photo until it looks good. Then quickly change the other photos with the same method so that all photos look the best they can given that projector. The second thought is to create your slides and then make one or two extra copies of the slides. In each of these extra copies, adjust all the pictures the same way. So in copy #1 you would adjust all of the pictures to appear darker for situations where that will make them look better with the projector. In copy #2 you would adjust all the pictures to appear lighter for situations where that will make the pictures look better. Then, when you get to the room, test the three versions (normal coloring, darker coloring and lighter coloring) and use the one that looks the best that day. If you are in situations where you have no control over the projector, you will have to come prepared with more options to be able to best handle the situation of that day. As you see what works better on a consistent basis, you can refine the options you bring. 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: October 10-12 Washington, DC October 18 Barrie, ON half-day workshop - register by calling Lori at 1-888-687-3181 October 19 Hamilton, ON at the CAPS booth at CSAE October 25 Ottawa, ON October 26 Huntsville, ON October 29-31 New Orleans, LA at PowerPoint Live - register at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/powerpointlive.htm November 6 - Oakville, ON November 14 - Toronto, ON November 22 - Oakville, ON December 6-9 - Halifax, NS January 23-24 - Cincinnati, OH 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? 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