| ******************************************************************* Dave Paradi's PowerPoint Tip Issue #143 September 18, 2007 Published & Copyright by Dave Paradi of ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com Circulation 8,686 ******************************************************************* 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: Seattle Public Workshop September 28th - That's Next Week! Annoying PowerPoint Survey Now Open PowerPoint Tip - Throw out some slides Best of the Blog - Politicians and PowerPoint Dave's Travel Schedule ******************************************************************* Public workshop: Seattle, September 28, 2007 - register now! If you rely on presentations to sell your ideas, the Think Outside The Slide workshop in Seattle on September 28th will be the single best investment you make this year. Come away with concrete ideas that will help your presentations sell more with less preparation time. Details at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/powerpointseminar.htm. Space is limited, so act now. Don't live in the area? Forward this newsletter to friends or colleagues who would benefit and tell them that they should attend. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Annoying PowerPoint Survey Now Open Every two years I repeat my survey on what audience members find annoying about bad PowerPoint presentations. This month the 2007 version of the survey is taking place. It only takes two minutes to fill out. The benefit of participating is that you will help all of us avoid making key mistakes in the future. Please take a couple of minutes to complete the short survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=TzWkZi7eD0pPQPvasbIA4A_3d_3d ------------------------------------------------------------------- PowerPoint Tip: Throw out some slides Like most professionals, you are an expert in your field and you are asked to speak on the same or similar topics frequently. To save the time of recreating all your slides from scratch, you have a file that you usually use and it works pretty well. Let me encourage you today to throw some of those slides out. Why? Because I know (and you do too) that you have improved and you can think of more effective ways of presenting certain points. So why keep using the same old slides? Throw out the ones that don't work and create new slides. Your whole presentation will get better as a result. Every few months I do this for my slides. About two months ago when the last revision was made, I threw out over 50 slides. Why? Because there was a better slide that had been created or I had newer material that was stronger than the points on that slide. Let me give you a couple of examples. I eliminated some slides in the area of adding photos because my audiences didn't want that level of detail. A good lesson for you is to watch your audience when you cover really detailed parts of your presentation. Are their eyes glazing over? If so, adjust the detail level to match your audience. Now if I have a situation that requires the detail, I will put the slides back in. I also cut out a slide in the section on audio and video that I found I could consolidate with a similar slide, saving me time and my audience from hearing similar information twice. Where can you possibly consolidate information that may be similar, such as policies or features of two products? Cut slides to keep the focus on the most important information. And then I added slides from recent research I have read or restructured some slides based on some presentation coaching I received this summer. All of the edits made it a much better presentation at the end. Want to see the new version? Come to the one day Think Outside The Slide workshop in Seattle next week on Friday the 28th. Seats are filling up, so don't miss out. Register today at: http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/powerpointseminar.htm . ------------------------------------------------------------------- Best of the Blog - A new way to distort graphs As I was flipping through a magazine today I came across a new way to distort graphs that I had not seen before. They used some statistics from the KPMG consulting organization. Here is the original graph that KPMG created: <graphic of simple bar chart showing results> Well designed and clear. Now here is what was published in Backbone magazine: <graphic of bar chart slanted to the right about 15-20 degrees> What is with the bizarre slanting of the graph? It distorts the reality of the message and makes the source of the data look bad because viewers think the original graph was this confusing. The KPMG graph was well designed, but the above graph is confusing because the viewer can't really tell where the bars on the graph end. The longest bar at 66% looks like it goes to the 75% mark on the horizontal axis. Not sure if they thought this would look "cool" or not. But it sure is confusing. 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: September 28 Seattle, WA one-day public workshop - register at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/powerpointseminar.htm September 27-30 Seattle, WA 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 14 - Toronto, 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? Check out my many articles at: http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Recommended tools I use in my business: KickStartCart shopping cart system: http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/default.asp?pr=31&id=42487 Credit Card Processor PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/row/mrb/pal=8ADSGLU62YXWW Webinar provider GoToWebinar: http://snipurl.com/webinarhost ------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. 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