We’ve gone Greek mad this month in our presentations, but all in the name of winning you more business.
Recently, I was sent out to an organisation to discuss early-stage sales process in respect of telemarketing. I became involved in a discussion about delivering effective presentations. One of the attendees was kind enough to point me in the direction of Cliff Atkinson’s excellent book Beyond Bullet Points (BBP).
A note of caution: please don’t let the presence of the Microsoft name on this book put you off. Their involvement stems purely from the fact that Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 is Cliff Atkinson’s tool of choice, hence they published the book.
True, BBP is grounded in the classical elements of storytelling as originally defined by Aristotle and used in every film ever made. But, if all this sounds a bit highbrow for you, trust me it isn’t. It’s all about working out what each slide is designed to achieve from the perspective of your viewer and catching their attention at each stage.
Cliff also provides some excellent resources, albeit for a low-cost subscription, on his website. You can also read an extract from the book here.
Like you, I have to admit to being fairly sceptical. While I have great respect for the individual who recommended this, like many of you I’ve sat through what must be hundreds of hours of turgid, monotonous PowerPoint presentations, many from some of the World’s largest companies. I’m not sure I believed there could be an alternative! I was pleasantly surprised!
Essentially, what this book does is provide you with a process to create compelling presentations that combine classical storytelling techniques with the use of visual media, enabling you to separate yourself from the read-as-they-go brigade of verbatim PowerPoint presenters. So what does that mean for you, the productive seller.
Well, before I tell you that, let me talk you through my encounter with Beyond Bullet Points. I was called upon to deliver a tender presentation, proposing a complex learning solution, to a group of public sector managers. The solution I was proposing was radical and high risk. I needed a presentation that would not just create a vision but really inspire people to drive it. Time to test drive Beyond Bullet Points.
I received my copy of the book with one week to go until I was due to deliver my presentation. I was busy every day, so I had no choice but to prepare the presentation in the evenings. This meant reading the book as I went.
Firstly the layout. Aside from the introduction, which gives a brief overview and sets down the minimum requirements to run PowerPoint, the book opens with a story. I won’t spoil it for you, let’s just say it makes engaging reading and does a fantastic job of illustrating the BBP approach. The clarity of the layout and style allowed me to quickly get to grips with enough BBP methodology to build a credible presentation, even if I didn’t have time to study all of the book in detail.
The book goes on to explain the science and research behind BBP before drawing you into creating your first five slides (Act One in BBP parlance). And the great thing about creating these? You’re not going to use PowerPoint!
All your initial work is done using the BBP story template (a Word document), which comes on the enclosed disc along with a number of other resources. This template guides you in the creation of a powerful, narrative-based presentation, using simple headlines and single, clear images that define your messages in an engaging way.
You are encouraged to think about your role and the role of your audience, before tying this into your desired outcome. You generate a headline for each slide, relative to the desired effect (where am I, who am I, what challenge do I face). You don’t think about images at all at this stage, and you definitely don’t create any bullet points!
There is a lot of information about creating tension (remember, this is a story after all) and focusing the audience on a call to action (vital for us productive salespeople). All of this hangs off the BBP mantra of clean, effective, visual slides that combine a single headline with a simple, highly relevant image.
In Act One you prepare your audience by “orienting, interesting, engaging, motivating and focusing them”. Act Two is all about the meat of your presentation. Planning the rest of your slides (again using the story template), writing headlines, prioritising slides and sequencing them. Act Three draws your story to a resolution by re-using some of your slides, including your call to action, albeit with some graphical changes.
One of my principle concerns was how valid a story-based approach would be for a serious sales presentation. The reaction to my presentation blew this concern out of the water. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that I received many plaudits from a group of managers who sit through (often turgid) PowerPoint presentations on a daily basis. Words like “inspiring” and “powerful” were bandied about, with one manager even saying that it had motivated them to try and address the subject that very day! Experience has shown that Cliff’s view of the importance of a story-based approach is accurate:
“One objection to using Beyond Bullet Points (BBP) is the misconception that a story structure is not appropriate for informational presentations. The thought that people don’t need to be engaged or motivated when faced with new information is based on the mythology described in Chapter 3 that assumes that you can pour facts into the passive minds of your audience and the will automatically ‘get it’. The research reality is that people need to actively engage new information, so offering them tools and techniques to do so will help them learn better. Why pass up the opportunity to engage your audience, when doing so can increase focus, and involvement?” Cliff Atkinson, Beyond Bullet Points, Page 98.
Quite simply, Beyond Bullet Points means that your sales presentations are going to be powerful, engaging and hence more productive. Not only are they going to win you more business, you are going to revolutionise your use of PowerPoint as a tool to influence, inspire and motivate people. That has to be a good thing.
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