When is the last time you were subjected to a presenter in love with their own PowerPoint slides? I think you know what I mean. You, the audience, did not matter near as much as what the presenter had on their precious slides. Personally I’ve been subjected to TOO many of these presenters.
One presenter had slides FULL of sentences too small for me to read. But he could – and he kept looking at them and reading them. There was no stopping him – he was going to read EVERY word he wrote. Think that was bad enough? What if you were his co-presenter? YES! I was.
I had coordinated the sales calls and created the PPT (taking his submitted slides), formatting the information to make it audience-friendly by removing most of the text, inserting graphics instead of words when possible, removing detailed tables, etc. After all, I had taught a presentations class with specific tips on how to/not to use PPTs effectively just that month. Guess what? He took the PPT at breakfast and re-inserted HIS slides!
We were in front of a VERY high level leadership team at a Fortune 100 company. I watched my months of hard work evaporate as the audience checked out during this 25 minutes oration. The more they checked out, the more my co-presenter hurried reading his slides to them. And his volume kept going up as he tried to gain their attention! Oh boy. Might I add this was not a rookie…this was a very experienced sales pro.
Too often in sales the focus on the presentation trumps the focus on the audience – your buyers. And sometimes an idea from outside the “sales” world can make us step back and challenge ourselves to be better. Pecha Kucha is a great idea to apply and adjust your presentations.
Pecha Kucha is a presentation format in which information is easily and efficiently shared. The presenter shows 20 slides for 20 seconds apiece – less than 7 minutes! Pecha Kucha was started so that designers could make their presentations quickly and many ideas could be shared in a short period of time.
This YouTube video is a great example of Pecha Kucha – the video by author Daniel Pink is entertaining and interesting with an “emotional intelligence in signage” message. The ideas Daniel shares can also be applied to WHAT you include on your PPT slides.
Do you think you can present what you do in the Pecha Kucha format? It might be a bit extreme, but there are some good pointers. Think about your “presentation”. Does it:
- Get to the point very quickly?
- Provide just enough detail to engage your audience without boring them?
- Provide a starting point for more discussion?
- Use PowerPoint or other visuals as an AID to what you are saying – not a written script?
- Focus on what is important to THIS audience?
I like challenges and any type of methodology that can help me be more effective and efficient (two of my favorite words. 🙂 It just may be that Pecha Kucha will be an easier way for me to get the idea across to future co-presenters NOT to read their slides!
What do you think? How can we use the Pecha Kucha concept to increase our presentation impact?
