I hear it all the time. It usually comes from people in the Communications or Marketing department. They’ve been reading this blog — and others — about how to create powerful, persuasive presentations. But executives at their organization are comfortable with the old way of using the slide as a teleprompter, even though the audience […]
The role of persuasion and emotion in training
I’ve always thought that persuasion and emotion were best left to sales and proposal presentations. After all, in an instructional setting, isn’t persuasion like propaganda? But in my course, High-Persuasion PowerPoint Presentation Program, I’m discovering that I was wrong. Actually, a couple of my students have taught me this. Imagine that you are training employees […]
Death to agenda slides!
Someone sent me an example of a sales presentation. The second slide’s title was Agenda and it had several bullet points. The presentation reminded me how much I hate agenda slides. Agenda slides say: It’s all about me, the presenter. This is what you’re going to sit through They announce that the meeting will be […]
The difference between a persuasive and an informative presentation
I think that most presentations can be classified as persuasive or informative.These two presentation types can cover quite a range — more entertaining or less, informal or keynote,for example. What is a persuasive presentation? Some presentations are for the purpose of selling a product or service. Other presentations try to sell an idea. For example, […]
The #1 thing employers want most in a new hire
Are presentation skills important to employers? Sometimes I think that employers speak out of two sides of their mouths. On one hand, they seem to let their employees give awful presentations without negative consequences. (How can there be negative consequences when everyone is doing it?) Not that every employer is that way, but many don’t […]