Exitlog | Leaving Impressions

The greatest PowerPoint you’ll read this year… sadly, not a chance.

As most will have experienced through yawning, cringe-worthy conferences in boardrooms around the world, PowerPoint does not make great reading material. Nevertheless businesses are increasingly using it this way.

The Pitch, Agency Credentials and the Big Sale — meetings of abound. And a lot of hours, people’s valuable time, go into attending these sessions. The carbon footprint alone for the coffee and tea brewed and the subsequent plastic cups going to the landfill is itself worrying. Equally worrying is the growing trend of using PowerPoint not just as a device for boardroom persuasion but as the justification for the proposal.

The judgement on these presentations is usually assessed on style and delivery. While the deal itself is evaluated on the balance of the content of the leave-behind document. Extra points are awarded to the proposal for the presenter’s style and charm (if at all demonstrated).

Style is still an important part of presenting. While written proposals seemed to have withered.

In one meeting last year a business (who shall remain anonymous and ashamed) were looking to close a deal worth £1m in total sales. The presenter was dressed slimly by Ted Baker and went through 9 perfect slides. His presentation was slick, a well-oiled act. At the climax his co-presenter slid over a CD-ROM of the slides and added, “We’ve put together a few notes that confirms our projections, and can really help you meet your goals.”

A few notes indeed. The meat of the deal was documented in the other 32 slides appended to the introduction they’d just witnessed. Many of these slides had lists of 8pt text and densely annotated bar and pie charts. With this kind of detail the projector would have struggled to render any of it legibly. The winning pitch also left a CD-ROM — along with a spiral ring-bound document. In it was a detailed outline of their approach, projections and costs. The type was set a very readable 12pt and had a table contents as well as page numbers.

There is an essential difference between reading and listening. Critics claim that PowerPoint tends to be a simplistic linear guide that does little more than reassure the presenter. Occasionally it may even inform the audience. The critics are probably right. But PowerPoint at least does this job well. Speaker support, now there’s a thought for all those boardroom novelists.