Guest Post by Marshall Makstein
PowerPoint is not the enemy, but can be a powerful communication secret weapon, if used well.
If you were in a contest to win a million dollars by pitching an idea to a small group of investors for starting a new company which would you choose:
1. Send them a detailed 100 page business plan a week before the meeting, and ask these extremely busy investors who have their own successful companies to run (and a few too many start-up businesses to oversee and keep tabs on) – to read your detailed plan. Then at the pitch meeting with them, speak to a few highlights of the plan and ask them if they had any questions. What do you think the chances are that they read your detailed business plan or anything beyond the summary page – if they even took the time to look at more than the title?
2. Send them the detailed 100 page business plan and ask them to review it. Then you meet with them and take the first ten minutes to present the key highlights of the plan with some powerful, effective, easy to understand PowerPoint visuals that support your presentation speech. You make sure they know you expect them to ask questions at any time. You brought copies of the detailed business plan, so you could answer some questions by pointing them to answers in the document (that they probably forgot to bring, or lost in the pile of plans they are asked to review). You might have an appendix of the plan in the PowerPoint deck with all of the key data that you might be asked about and can quickly show supporting data to the answers if asked about it.
Creating this PowerPoint deck might take a lot of work. I might even hire a professional graphic artist to assist with a few of the key graphics. In the end it will insure that I get the opportunity to present my idea thoroughly and accurately by having the long form detailed document, my speech, and powerful visuals to point out the highlights and support the words in my speech.
For an opportunity to win a million bucks to get my business started, I’d do what ever it took to insure my one shot at pitching it to the investors could make it happen. I’d use every tool available to me.
Now, if I were in the military and presenting information on strategies and information that may change the course of history and literally result in the life or death of people, not just the financial success of a company – I would use every available tool to communicate that information as effectively and accurately as possible!
If used effectively, maybe the bullet points in a PowerPoint used by the military could actually save lives by avoiding the use of real bullets that kill people.
Marshall Makstein is the President of eSlide, a graphic design company that specializes in professional quality presentations which communicate information quickly, accurately, and effectively.
