There is a relatively new presentation tool out there called Prezi.  It is a different way of organizing your thoughts for presentations and presenting them in an interactive format.  While Prezi is cool because it is different, it is not the solution for bad presentations as some have made it out to be.  I have read some blog posts saying it is impossible to be boring with Prezi.  My answer to that is never underestimate the human potential.

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First things first.  In my opinion, never . . . .NEVER distribute your handout notes before you speak.  NEVER! (Was that clear enough?)  If you do that, you will lose a majority of your audience who will skim through the notes before you even start.  Then they will pull out their Blackberry’s and check their e-mail, play some silly game or tweet on twitter.  They will not be giving you their undivided attention, they will not be engaged.

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Just as I thought I had nailed down all the reasons why one should not hand out their PowerPoint slide deck to their audience, I find another good reason.  Dave Paradi, author of  “The Visual Slide Revolution” runs a blog on PowerPoint.  Dave operates out of Mississauga, Ontario in Canada.  His recent post talks about cropping pictures and how the cropped part of the image can be regenerated if the PPT compression feature is not performed on the picture.

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Non-linear presentations are really a valuable tool for cold calls as discussed in Chapter 2.  However, what about the regular sales call to an existing client? 

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You spent hours upon hours preparing your presentation for that important sales meeting.  You have organized your pitch and now have a presentation that will inform, persuade and entertain.  You now are in front of the client and on the third slide, the client throws a curve ball at you and wants to talk about some obscure product that you offer but you didn’t plan for this in your presentation.  Frustrated, you shut off the computer and pull out your handy brochures and continue the meeting.  All that preparation time for nothing.  Have you been there?

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