Too many salespeople prepare a PowerPoint deck for a virtual sales meeting and spend over 95% of the time with the prospect sharing the slides. This makes the slides the focus and the video of the salesperson and the prospect small beside the slides. While the slides are important, they shouldn’t be the only focus.…
Author: Dave Paradi
Dave Paradi has over twenty-two years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written ten books and over 600 articles on the topic of effective presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. His focus is on helping corporate professionals visually communicate the messages in their data so they don't overwhelm and confuse executives. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 1.2 million times and liked over 12,000 times on YouTube.
How much does a conference care about the education it provides?
If you are thinking of attending an association conference this year or next year and want to make sure it is worth the time and effort, here’s one question to ask the organizers: “Do you pay the concurrent session educational speakers a fee to speak or do you just offer to cover some of their…
The biggest mistake salespeople make using the company standard PowerPoint deck
Too many salespeople take the deck that the Marketing department provides, fill in the prospect’s name and organization and think they are prepared for the meeting. Using the deck this way is the biggest mistake salespeople make when using the company standard PowerPoint deck. The deck has detailed information on the company and its products…
3 Tips for virtual presenters from Adele’s One Night Only TV special
We recorded and watched the CBS TV special Adele One Night Only that was broadcast on Sunday November 14, 2021. I was struck by the production and how well done it was. As I considered the show after it was finished, I realized business professionals who present virtually on Teams, Zoom, Webex, Google Meet, and…
Share the Slide Show window instead of your single screen when using PowerPoint on Teams or Zoom
Why presenters share the full screen The typical approach for many presenters with one screen who want to share PowerPoint slides in a Zoom or Teams meeting is to first share their full screen. Then they start the PowerPoint Slide Show so the attendees see full screen slides. The problem is that attendees see your…
Sales Professionals: How you use the standard PowerPoint deck Marketing provides tells prospects how much you value them
Should you use the standard PowerPoint slides that the Marketing department provides to all sales professionals? Absolutely Yes! Why? Because it provides you with the approved messages and is on brand with colors, imagery, and feel. But don’t use it as is. And don’t do the bare minimum that too many sales reps do. They…
Create a sliding timeline visual in PowerPoint to show many time periods or events
If you have many time periods to show in a timeline visual or you have many events to show on a timeline and cramming it in on a single slide would look too crowded, consider splitting the timeline across two slides. In the video below you will see how to create a sliding timeline that…
Monthly recap of resources; Issue # 501 November 2021
Welcome to this monthly recap of my latest articles and videos along with other resources that will help you create more effective PowerPoint presentations and deliver them on virtual platforms like Zoom and Teams. Follow the links below to access each item. My latest articles and videos 11 ways to use PowerPoint to incorporate consultative…
Quantifying prospect pain or cost of the problem on a virtual sales call using a spreadsheet
One of the key parts of a consultative selling approach or the Sandler Selling System is to quantify the cost of the problem the prospect is having. By getting clear on the cost of the problem, it allows the prospect and sales professional to determine if the solution will provide a positive ROI for the…
Timeline visual templates in Excel from Microsoft
Microsoft makes downloadable timeline templates available at https://templates.office.com/en-us/timelines. Note that some of the templates are classified as Premium templates (denoted by the diamond icon) which are only available to those who have a subscription to Microsoft 365. When looking at these templates, be careful to select a template that creates an accurate time scale. Most…