How many times have you seen a sales presentation where the slides were plastered with so many different logos and designs that you feel like you’re watching a car race? The marketing people will hate me for this, but I recommend that you remove your corporate logos whenever possible from your sales presentations, because they don’t do what you want them to do and they can even sap your persuasiveness.
The unspoken premise behind prominently featuring logos is that there is some correlation between persuasiveness and the number of logo-to-eyeball strikes. What can it hurt to have your corporate name imprinting in their minds while you’re talking? That kind of reasoning is why the average Westerner sees 3,000 corporate logos a day, according to The Economist. If that ubiquity worked as intended, why would a recent poll involving 700 brands reveal that over 90% of them could disappear and no one would care?
The same article noted that trust in brands has been diminishing for three decades, which in my opinion is caused by the sheer overload of commercial art on our consciousness. It has to spark some sort of unspoken resistance. The minute someone starts touting themselves we go into a defensive mode. Sure, there are some brands that buck the general trend, but chances are yours isn’t one of them.
In addition, Richard Mayer’s studies have shown that the removal of extraneous visual elements can improve retention and transfer up to 105%.[1] So if you want your listeners to remember and act on your message when they make a decision, it might help, and it certainly won’t hurt, to take off anything that does not directly contribute to the message you intend to deliver.
If your logo can’t convey a brand identity during your presentation, what can? Here’s a novel idea: how about the presence, professionalism and knowledge of the presenter?
I was once asked to work with a team of engineers who were slated to deliver presentations at an upcoming conference. I asked to see their existing slide decks before I showed up and was dismayed to see that they averaged 863 words per presentation for a 30 minute talk. Every presentation contained tons of information but very little explanation, and almost no persuasion.
So when they showed up for the workshop, expecting to deliver their presentations and get a few cosmetic suggestions for changes, I made them start from scratch and do a complete makeover. I told them to craft a 3-minute version of their 30-minute presentations. Although they almost mutinied, they finally agreed to humor me and set to work. They struggled, but the exercise got them to strip out everything that was not central to their message, and clearly exposed the structure of their logic. At the end of that exercise, they were feeling pretty good about themselves—until they heard their next assignment: to craft a 30-second version.
If you’re remodeling an existing structure, occasionally “a little putty and paint will make it what it ain’t”. But sometimes the existing structure is so flawed that your only hope is to tear it down to its foundation and frame and start over. What’s the best way to do this? Envision a scenario where you show up for your presentation and the key decision maker tells you that he unexpectedly has to leave for the airport, so could you please give him the two minute version? What would you say and how would you say it?
The core message is not that hard if you look at it as the answer to two questions in the listener’s mind:
- What do you want me to do?
- Why should I?
If you can get it down to a crisp, hard core, building it back to a much longer presentation is easier to do, as you add stories, compelling evidence, and “nice-to-knows”. But this time, everything fits, and everything you add is in support of the one simple message.
What if you can’t get it down to a hard core message? Call in sick.
Where were the slides?
Today being Martin Luther King day, I’ve been thinking about the incredible power of visuals in speeches—but not the pre-packaged kind you get with slides. King’s Dream speech worked so well for many reasons, but one of the most important was his ability to seize the audience’s imagination through mental imagery. He didn’t need a big screen set up on the white marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial to get us to picture scenes of black and white children playing together “on the red hills of Georgia”, or to imagine freedom ringing from “every hill and molehill of Mississippi”.
All he had was words, and words were more than enough.
Technology adds so much to our capabilities that we sometimes forget what we give up in return. I wonder if PowerPoint has sapped our power to evoke mental images through words, and if so, does it matter?
I do believe it matters, because mental images can be more persuasive than actual visuals. Actual visuals are good because they are processed instantaneously, and because everyone sees the same image[1], but these advantages may actually be disadvantages in terms of the persuasiveness of the image. Mental images can be more persuasive because they enhance memory, intention and emotion.
Memory: When someone is getting ready to decide or to act on your presentation, you want them to remember how they felt when they heard the presentation and the arguments for taking the recommended course of action. Because creating the image actually takes work, the effort of creating the image will get the listener more involved and engaged, and they are more likely to remember the image or have it pop up in their minds when they are getting ready to act on the information. That’s why all memory systems are based on mental images.
Intention: People are more likely to perform the actual behavior if they envision themselves doing it. One study that tested actual consumers’ sign-up rates for cable service found that those who were asked to imagine having cable service were more than twice as likely to sign up than those who just got a description of product features.[2] The impact of imagination on actual performance is well-known by athletes who use routinely use mental imagery to gain an edge.
Emotion: When you use words to evoke an image in the listener’s mind, each listener sees their own personal version. Because it’s theirs, it can be more real and more meaningful—hence more persuasive. Even better, when you can get them to picture themselves in the image, it tends to increase the likelihood of the behavioral change.[3]
How to create mental pictures
Make it a priority. You’re already spending a lot of time trying to find the right visual for your slide presentation. Why not spend some of that time figuring out how to generate the virtual image in their minds? You don’t have to give up slides, but try a little harder to use them less.
Use concrete words, vivid details, and analogies. Familiar objects are easier to picture and remember, especially when they’re vivid and dramatic vivid they are.
Make them the hero of their stories. Stories are powerful image creators, and they are even more powerful when you make the listener the hero.
Give them time. If you take the time and trouble to get your listeners to create a mental picture, don’t erase it immediately by immediately launching into facts and figures. Pause long enough to let it sink in and work its magic.
Imagine
Imagine this scene: Dr. King sets up on the National Mall—and delivers a PowerPoint presentation! Would we remember his words today?
[1] Which is why mental images are NOT recommended when clarity or precise understanding is called for.
HOW many more slides do you have?
Like most professional presentations trainers, I have some pretty definite ideas about how to improve the use of PowerPoint, and I certainly make those ideas known when I work with clients. The general idea, of course, is to use fewer slides, much less text and add relevant visuals, remove irrelevant visual objects such as logos, disclaimers, and ornate designs.
In many cases, following these principles requires presenters to do an extreme makeover on the look of their slides, and this is where I often get pushback. People will tell me that their audiences (especially their bosses) are used to a certain type of slide, and if they present anything that looks too different they run the risk of having the discussion about the slides drown out the discussion about the content.
For example, one of my clients runs regular ops reviews that feature a slide deck template that calls for a lot of text, and several slides with four graphs on each. I think it looks busy and confusing, but it’s what they’re used to and nothing I say can get them to change. While I get frustrated at this, maybe they’re right and I’m wrong. After all, I am a big proponent of expressing your ideas in the way that best suits your listeners.
Maybe culture is too strong a word to describe a company’s PowerPoint practices, but I think not, based on how widely accepted those practices usually are, and how reluctant people are to deviate from the norm. The funny thing is that most people individually agree with me, but worry that their colleagues won’t get it.
To show how powerful this culture can be, I’d like to quote a passage from Robert Gates’s new memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
“Meetings and conferences, I said, should be more interactive. A briefing should be the starting point for the discussion and debate, not a one-way transmission belt. If they had to use PowerPoint, I begged them to use it sparingly, just to begin the discussion or illustrate a point.”
“Again, changing the Pentagon’s approach to briefings was a singular failure on my part. I was not just defeated—I was routed.”[1]
The Secretary of Defense is one of the most powerful people in the land, running an organization of over 2 million people, and even he was powerless to change its PowerPoint culture!
What does this mean to you? You might want to keep this in mind when you prepare your next all-important sales presentation. I certainly don’t advocate preemptively admitting defeat, but it might be a good idea to run your presentation by a coach for a culture fit test.
The general rules about slides that I summarize in the first paragraph are certainly important, but they also have to be balanced against two other important general rules:
Speak in the language your audience will understand.
The best slides are the ones that don’t get noticed.
