Make It All About Them: Winning Sales Presentations

12   The Strategy behind the Materials

The materials that you select to support you in telling your story can have a profound effect on the experience that you create for your audience. When we conduct presentation workshops, people frequently ask questions like these:

• Should we use PowerPoint?
• Should we project our slides?
• Should we use handouts? If so, should we give them out before or after the presentation?
• What about iPads?

When people ask about using PowerPoint, they usually just mean, “Should we project our slides somehow?” Of course, the answer to this depends on the situation. This book focuses on the conclusion of a sales cycle—the part of the process that typically ends in a so-called beauty contest in which a few finalists are presenting to client teams often composed of four or more people. In more cases than not, it is appropriate to project slides that will make it easy for the audience to follow your points and for you to control the meeting. Earlier on in the sales cycle, the meetings include much more dialogue—with the client doing the majority of the speaking. So projecting slides would be inappropriate during that stage, as it would hinder the sales team's ability to get the client talking—which is essential in developing a thorough understanding of the client's needs.

Outlined here are some pros and cons of projecting your PowerPoint.

Projecting PowerPoint Slides

As we discussed in Chapter 11, PowerPoint can be incredibly powerful when you use strong and ...