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.

Use Reading View to Show PowerPoint slides in a window instead of full screen

What is Reading View Reading View is a view in PowerPoint that runs your PowerPoint Slide Show in the PowerPoint window instead of full screen. You can resize the window to be as big or small as you want. It runs all animations and transitions, links work, and slides show exactly as they would in…

6 ways to improve virtual sales presentations with content other than PowerPoint slides

Virtual sales presentations on Teams or Zoom are here to stay. Not every sales presentation will be delivered virtually but sales professionals need to improve their virtual presentations to keep prospects and clients moving along the buying journey. The basic Teams or Zoom skills you learned in the past won’t be good enough in the…

Reporting related results; Slide Makeover #102

CPG sales, marketing, and product managers report on metrics that are related to performance but measured in different units, such as dollars, cases, or percentage. Because the reporting is driven from a database, often the table of numbers is copied onto a slide. This makeover shows how to visually show the comparison using a scaled…

New Teams Presenter modes; Issue #497 August 24, 2021

Microsoft Teams has recently introduced Presenter modes that allow you to put your video on top of or beside a screen or window that you share in a Teams meeting. This seems to work regardless of whether you share a window or a screen and the content can be slides, a browser, or any other…

5 ways to use video clips to improve virtual sales presentations

Comparing values to a standard; Slide Makeover #101

CPG sales, marketing, and product managers report on sales or margin for each product compared to the industry average. Because the reporting is driven from a database, often the table of numbers is copied onto a slide. This makeover shows how to visually show the comparison using a dashed line on a column graph. Discussion…

Comparing results to goals; Slide Makeover #100

CPG sales, marketing, and product managers report on sales or margin in each channel compared to the goal for that channel. Because the reporting is driven from a database, often the table of numbers is copied onto a slide. This makeover shows how to visually show the comparison using a multiple-width overlapping column graph. Discussion…

Showing variance to plan; Slide Makeover #99

CPG sales, marketing, and product managers report on variance to a previous plan for product sales in a category. Because the reporting is driven from a database, often the table of numbers is copied onto a slide. This makeover shows how to visually show the variance using a steps to a total graph. Discussion of…

3 tips to improve virtual sales presentations with Zoom sharing features

Virtual sales presentations on Zoom are here to stay. Not every sales presentation will be delivered via Zoom but sales professionals need to improve their virtual presentations to keep prospects and clients moving along the buying journey. The basic Zoom skills you learned in the past won’t be good enough in the future as your…