It's More Than Show and Tell

From 1998 TO 2001, there are hundreds of success stories of tech evangelists who were able to secure millions of investment dollars for their business ideas with just a seven-minute PowerPoint presentation.

Most of these incredible incidents took place in Silicon Valley. Those were the dot-com days of boom, boom, boom. I was then with a $50-million dot-com company, and I sat through dozens of similar presentations. They were so slick and convincing that at the end of the session, the audience were almost begging the presenter to take all their money!

Today, few people are going to give you money, based on a mere seven-minute slide show of sales projections, market studies, business confidence level and other mumbo-jumbo. But strangely, although people are now more cynical over such presentations, yet almost all companies expect their managers and sales and marketing guys to know how to use the Microsoft PowerPoint (PP) software to produce some decent slideshows

Even insurance sales people, property agents and Primary Six kids are expected to be effective users of the software.

[The seven-minute time limit was supposed to be the average time you and your prospective investor spent together, from waiting for the lift until he reached his office. To a savvy evangelist, that was all he needed to present his case.]

Learn PowerPoint while waiting to finish NS

For those of you about to complete your National Service and start your job hunting, I suggest you sign up in a private school to learn the basics of PowerPoint and to practise creating slideshows and making presentations.

For those starting out in a new job who already have elementary knowledge of PP, you should learn its advanced techniques so that your slideshow looks classy. Most executives I know have a simple grasp of PP but their presentation really sucks.

In my experience, the group with the poorest PP skills are a bunch of university professors teaching master degree programme in communications. They knew all the theoretical issues of communications and all except one used PP in their lectures but their presentation was so bad it was a surprise that the students learnt anything. I am not making it up – I was one of the students.

So, unless you aspire to be a professor, you have to buck up on your PP skills if you want to advance in your career. You may be doing lots of excellent work in your company but unless you are able to show-and-tell convincing to your bosses and your clients, you are not going to go far.

Back in 2003 when I was a senior marketing manager for an online company, my boss, my sales director and I went to make a presentation to the office of an aeroplane manufacturer who was interested in advertising on our Web site. Our PowerPoint presentation to them would have to be so compelling that they would be convinced. As it turned out, the presentation was successful and the ad dollars flowed in.

Here were the steps we took. Do what we did, and you too can make a success of your presentation:

1. All three of us went through every slide and rehearsed a week in advance. Usually, in marketing, you go alone, but if it is a very crucial session, ask your boss to come, or to delegate a colleague to help you. During rehearsals, get other colleagues to sit in and ask critical answers. If you can answer them confidently, you would find it easier on the actual day.

2. We were absolutely kiasu – each of us brought his or her laptops (three altogether) with the slideshow file in both. I also had the file on a floppy, just in case! We took along our own power plugs, extension cable, battery rechargers and a portable projector. We simply assume that the client has nothing in his meeting room to help us, other than electrical outlets.

3. We went to the meeting an hour earlier so we could set up our stuff and do a last-minute practice to ensure nothing absolutely was likely to go wrong.