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Presentation Innovation
March 26, 2007
Cozying up to the audience with high-tech
By Steven Elwell
Anyone can slap together a PowerPoint presentation, but with the latest advancements in presentation technology, it's now possible for your sales reps to engage the audience in ways that make the old PowerPoint slides look like cave drawings.
In the beginning there was the blackboard, and it was good—but not good enough. So along came the flip chart, the projector and decades later, the dazzling displays of PowerPoint. But still, the people fell asleep.
Even for those who've managed to keep audiences awake during their own presentations, it's become obvious that the very mention of static PowerPoint slides is an attention-killer.
"I think we're seeing a very clear trend," says David Slater, senior product marketing manager at Adobe Systems in San Jose, Calif. "There's a strong, growing intolerance for PowerPoint presentations with the old twelve-point font, the cheesy transitions, the car screech as a bullet comes across the street. You're really viewed negatively if you use that stuff."
Fade-ins and canned audio cues that have peppered presentations for years are slowly on the way out, and a new generation of presentation technology is emerging to fill the void.
"Future presentations will become more interactive," says Bob Lipp, president of Better Business Presentations, a Great Neck, N.Y.–based company that specializes in designing custom-made presentations. According to Lipp, presentations are shifting from monologues to dialogues, with a boost from Flash animation, special effects and video.
But snappier visuals are not the only new kid on the block. Air mice, audience response devices and digital ink are finding their way into sales pitches and board rooms everywhere.
The driving force behind the new gizmos? Erasing the barriers between speaker and listeners so that the presenter can get cozy with the audience. Vendors are catching on to the trend toward higher audience engagement, offering new lines of products and services that add some pop to sales pitches.
Take, for example, the TurningPoint Audience Response System, which gives the audience a chance to interact with the onscreen presentation. Using the Response Card, a hand-held number pad resembling a calculator, people watching a presentation can submit answers to quizzes and opinion polls, and then see the results displayed immediately in graphic form. The presenter can save this new data into the PowerPoint file for later review.
Originally designed to be used in classrooms, TurningPoint started going corporate about a year ago, according to Tony DeAscentis, vice-president of marketing for Turning Technologies, the Youngstown, Ohio, maker of TurningPoint.
"In the last six to twelve months we've seen people thinking outside the box and saying, 'I could use this for my sales presentation,'" DeAscentis says. He adds that since the Response Cards can be set to identify the responder or to gather information anonymously, TurningPoint can help cut through office politics to get honest results, or track the interests of a key decision-maker.
TurningPoint software is downloadable for free online (www.turningtechnologies.com), but using the audience response system requires a $695 receiver and an $89 Response Card for each user. Rental Response Cards are available for $9 per day.
Going Wireless
While it's common for a presenter to try to sit close to his audience, it's rarely convenient to sit among them. Wires and USB cables tend to latch a presenter to his laptop, cutting back on crowd-moseying while forcing the presenter to become a stationary, talking head.
The NewSoft Presto! Wireless Multimedia System offers one solution for freeing up presenters. Using a receiver that can be plugged into any projector with VGA connectivity, it automatically turns the projector wireless. Once logged on, the presenter can project images and video from their laptop from up to 200 feet away.
"Ninety-eight percent of projectors don't have WiFi, and wiring a room for it can cost up to eight hundred dollars with labor," says Johnson Yang, general manager of Milpitas, Calif.–based NewSoft. By contrast, the receiver and accompanying software go for $279.95. A laptop must have a license to connect to the receiver, and each additional license costs $29.95. While currently only available for Windows users, Mac software will be released this spring.
Another option for mobility comes with a lower price tag and a bit of a science-fiction bent. The Gyration GO Optical Air Mouse is a handheld wireless mouse, roughly the size and shape of an electric razor, that can control a cursor from 30 feet away, or up to 100 feet with the professional package. Unlike a TV remote, the Air Mouse has no line-of-sight limitations, so a presenter can move around the room, wielding the mouse like a light saber to flip through slides, scroll down pages and activate multimedia. The Air Mouse comes with a rechargeable battery and costs $69.95 for the standard model, or $179.95 for the professional.
Adding Pizazz
Sometimes the limitations of PowerPoint force a presenter to take the minimalist route when he'd prefer a more elaborate production. Adobe Systems, the company responsible for Photoshop and other graphic software, has extended its reach into the corporate scene with Adobe Presenter. Viewed as a toolbar that pops up in PowerPoint, Presenter offers users a simple way to create a running narration to play over slides. Using the audio-editing software, a presenter can insert her own sound bites to each slide, or even prepare a full speech to play along with the presentation.
"Presenter is intended for non-professionals," says David Slater, Adobe's senior product manager. "It was designed for regular people who view a computer the way they view a hammer—like a tool. It's not for the Mac huggers out there."
Although Presenter is most commonly used to create a fully narrated presentation for the Web, it can be used with a live audience to play video within a slide, or to add colorful audio. A slide-branching feature provides a way to turn presentations into "choose your own adventures," where the audience can pick the option or product they'd like to hear more about, and skip right to that section of the PowerPoint deck.
Slater adds that the learning curve for Presenter isn't very steep. "Once you have decent PowerPoint skills, it doesn't take very long to pick up on Presenter," he says. The license to run Adobe Presenter starts at $1,200.
Taking a cue from Monday Night Football, another piece of technology gives presenters the chance to scribble across their slides with digital ink. The SMART Board from Smart Technologies is a touch-sensitive whiteboard that lets users draw notes, capture screens from videos, and control applications from the display instead of from the laptop. Presenters can use their finger or a stylus and save all mark-ups right into the presentation.
"PowerPoint is typically a linear, one-dimensional program, and this allows you to stage the information in a way that's much more engaging and interesting," says Rick Kennedy, director of corporate market development at SMART Technologies.
Like Turning Point, SMART Board came to the corporate world from the classroom. Kennedy says while the initial transition for business users was slow, the product line has expanded to make SMART Boards easier to transport and use on the road. Now, for example, there's a model that folds out of its own shipping container, which has been put to use by the U.S. military in Iraq.
SMART Boards come in several other models, from regular projectors costing from $1,000 to $3,000, to high-resolution LED screens that are fixed onto flat panel TVs for up to $15,000.
Of course, all the gadgets and software out there are no more than sparklers if they're not attached to a strong, well-crafted message—they'll glitter and flash for a bit before burning out, leaving the audience with nothing substantial. Public speaking coach Victoria Chorbajian of Chorbajian Speaking Enterprises in Basking Ridge, N.J., advises focusing on one or two main ideas for the audience to take home.
"If you think you have an hour and then suddenly you're told you only have ten minutes, you should be able to know what your top messages are right away," she says. "Technology should be used to enhance or elaborate on a key point."
Chorbajian suggests using proper pausing and eye contact while involving the audience whenever possible. "The focus needs to be on what we should say as a presenter, not the slides or the audio clips," she adds. Though it never hurts, as Richard Gere once sang in Chicago, to give 'em the old razzle dazzle.
Sidebar: The Easy Way Out
Some companies will do your presentation homework for you
It's OK—not everyone's a born artist. So for those presenters who know what they want to communicate but lack the left-brain creativity to make it pretty, companies like Better Business Presentations in Great Neck, N.Y., offer designers for hire. The company (www.betterbusinesspresentations.com) creates visual imagery that enhances presentations by gaining audience attention and increasing message retention. All their work is done in digital format, so it can easily be repurposed for the Web or an e-mail blast.
"Presentations that throw a lot of words at an audience, hoping some will stick, rarely achieve their goal," says company President Bob Lipp. Strong visuals are the antidote, he adds, and they're essential for impressing the audience.
Thoughts? Send your comments to edit@salesandmarketing.com. Please use "Letter to the Editor" as the subject line.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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