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Wednesday, April 14, 2004
The Real Role of Powerpoint, by David Weinberger
In the new blog mag "Worthwhile", David Weinberger weighs in with his opinion on PowerPoint.
He begins the article with this sentence:
"I spent yesterday consulting with a company whose salesforce is having trouble explaining exactly what its software does..."
and had to smile, since it seemed to me that I was in a meeting with a similar topic last month. I met with a CEO and his top salespeople, who hired me to design a Power Packed PowerPoint to solve their problem.
At that point, I stopped reading David's article, and remembered what I had said in the meeting, "Why do you need to explain what your software does? Who cares?"
Sometimes it's amazing that I get paid to be a communication consultant, when I'm so awfully abrupt. Worse, I seemed to be cutting my own throat. They wanted me to make them some PowerPoint, and I was telling them they didn't need it. Was I insane?
Well, sure. But it's more insane to develop a PowerPoint presentation that doesn't help you meet your objective, which in this case, was selling the product.
My point, of course, was to get the CEO and salespeople out of their egos, and into their customers' hearts. Stop yapping about your product, I preached, and start talking to your customers.
It's Sales & Marketing 101: Benefits v. Features. PowerPoint doesn't sell your product: your salespeople do. Explaining how your product works doesn't sell the product: demonstrating how your product makes your customers' lives better does.
Anyway, David Weinberger wasn't in my meeting, but we must have lead parallel lives on this particular day. Except toward the end of the article, where sadly, his company ended up building PowerPoint mythology, anyway.
My meeting ended much differently: I ended up with a consulting contract for sales coaching and motivation, instead of for developing sales PowerPoint. I am, however, developing PowerPoint webconferencing material for customer service and training.....after the sale.
Read the David's Worthwhile Blog, The Real Role of PowerPoint >>>
¶ 4/14/2004 11:12:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
In the new blog mag "Worthwhile", David Weinberger weighs in with his opinion on PowerPoint.
He begins the article with this sentence:
"I spent yesterday consulting with a company whose salesforce is having trouble explaining exactly what its software does..."
and had to smile, since it seemed to me that I was in a meeting with a similar topic last month. I met with a CEO and his top salespeople, who hired me to design a Power Packed PowerPoint to solve their problem.
At that point, I stopped reading David's article, and remembered what I had said in the meeting, "Why do you need to explain what your software does? Who cares?"
Sometimes it's amazing that I get paid to be a communication consultant, when I'm so awfully abrupt. Worse, I seemed to be cutting my own throat. They wanted me to make them some PowerPoint, and I was telling them they didn't need it. Was I insane?
Well, sure. But it's more insane to develop a PowerPoint presentation that doesn't help you meet your objective, which in this case, was selling the product.
My point, of course, was to get the CEO and salespeople out of their egos, and into their customers' hearts. Stop yapping about your product, I preached, and start talking to your customers.
It's Sales & Marketing 101: Benefits v. Features. PowerPoint doesn't sell your product: your salespeople do. Explaining how your product works doesn't sell the product: demonstrating how your product makes your customers' lives better does.
Anyway, David Weinberger wasn't in my meeting, but we must have lead parallel lives on this particular day. Except toward the end of the article, where sadly, his company ended up building PowerPoint mythology, anyway.
My meeting ended much differently: I ended up with a consulting contract for sales coaching and motivation, instead of for developing sales PowerPoint. I am, however, developing PowerPoint webconferencing material for customer service and training.....after the sale.
Read the David's Worthwhile Blog, The Real Role of PowerPoint >>>
¶ 4/14/2004 11:12:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
