We have all learned how to do a PowerPoint. It has been around since 1987, so it has touched all of us. Just because it was first or has been around the longest doesn’t mean its the best. Any slide-based presentation tool has major flaws. It’s not their fault that they weren’t designed to engage an audience. They were designed to support a speaker. When you want to engage your audience with a sales presentation, stop risking it with PowerPoint.
Why Shouldn’t I Learn How to do a PowerPoint?
There are several risks with using PowerPoint. You have a linear tool that can only go forward and backwards. It supports your needs. If the audience has a question, you may have to circle back and lose your audience in the process.
There is no big picture to give a spatial relationship to the structure of your details. Imagine that your car, for instance, is the big picture. The driver door is a smaller part, and the handle even smaller. The lock mechanism inside the lock is an even smaller part. Now what if I ask you, “What color is the car?” You need to “zoom” back out from the inside of the lock, then you can see the whole car again and the parts of it as a whole. That, my reader friends, is a spatial cognitive response that mentally happens in the audience’s mind. Knowing how to do a PowerPoint doesn’t let you mentally visualize the whole concept like that.
PowerPoint destroys conversation with bullet-listed text and image heavy slides. The working memory of humans is a complex combination of senses used to process what’s going on in short bursts. Slides clog up the working memory with their dense context and lack of metaphorical relations. Even knowing how to do a PowerPoint with designs that miss these pitfalls, the slide based approach is still linear and flat.
Is There Any Hope For Presentations?
Yes. There is a solution. You can ditch using a slide-based approach. A 3D, high resolution, and multiple sense engagement approach will cure this.
Use visual aids you can hold. Your audience can see you manipulate it. This will boost cognitive engagement and open up conversation after the presentation. Who doesn’t want to touch the speaker’s toys? Those brave souls will come up and engage in conversation with you just to touch your props.
You will still need something to fill the screen behind you. Prezi is the answer that solves the PowerPoint dilemma. The open canvas allows for a big picture concept to be laid out. The spatial cognition of your presentation comes to life with sending out one mental visualization to the audience.
The resolution within Prezi is infinite. The picture quality never lowers, unless the image itself is limited. Prezi also gives you the power to present in a non-sequential way. You want conversation to happen. You need the power of circling back to a topic and keeping the big picture in sight. The open canvas and zooming features make all this possible.
How Much Worse Is It?
This is only a few line items of why learning how to do a PowerPoint is the wrong approach. If you want to learn how using PowerPoint damaged NASA and GM, download the whitepaper below or contact us if you’re ready to migrate to Prezi.
At wOw Prezi, we rebel against PowerPoint’s status quo and are in a mission to save the world from deadly PPTs, helping sales teams to transform stiff, slide-based presentations into fruitful, revenue-generating conversations.
Get in touch with our team of Prezi Experts to find how we can help your salespeople thrive with Conversational Presenting and the Power of Storytelling in Sales.
