powerpoint presentations are rarely thought of as great sources of innovation. Many of us can recall a number of meetings attended where Powerpoint design was employed but to no clear benefit of either speaker or audience. But Powerpoint is often used badly, particularly in the case of sales presentations where some of the worst offenders insist on merely repeating on-screen what is already being said. This is a mistake; when Powerpoint is utilised to its full capacity it should complement and supplement the speaker’s message.

Before we go any deeper we should take note of the possible multidimensional nature of a presentation: a presentation can engage an audience visually, aurally and, if you take questions from the floor, orally too. It’s therefore the ways in which we give and receive messages in these ways that makes for a presentation’s success or failure. Ideally, the speaker should try to achieve the optimum standards in communication by combining all of the above. Of course, some topics or forms of address will lend themselves to varying percentages of visuals, speech/sounds and audience participation, but take a typical sales pitch as a key example.

When it comes to the domain of sales pitches we must remember that audiences are growing increasingly savvy about how they approach products and services these days. They are well aware of their existence as impressionable consumers surrounded by advertising on an everyday, sometimes all-day-long basis. Think of the average worker in London: he or she wakes up to an alarm set on a smartphone that no doubt has a number of applications containing promotional material in addition to their primary function. Then the radio or TV is switched on and more adverts are encountered. And that’s even before a tube or bus journey has been taken where billboards, posters, flyers and free papers abound. But this is not to say consumers do not want to be alerted to products that interest them, it just means it can be difficult to convince them that what your business is offering is really worth their while.
Imaginative powerpoint presentations can help the seller out enormously.

Straight away, through human presence, the speaker is in an advantageous position as body language will aid the on-screen visuals and sound in terms of increasing audience engagement. The speaker can in fact think of him- or herself as a story teller weaving sales presentations into enticing narratives. Powerpoint design then becomes a prop rather than a repetitive piece of machinery.

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