The $200,000 Presentation

Before you pay for all the bells and whistles to try to win new business, be sure to spend time on the people doing the presenting

By Carmine Gallo

Over the last few weeks I've been working with a division of a Fortune 500 company on a $200,000 presentation. That's not a typo. Part of the reason the presentation was so expensive to produce was because it contained several highly stylized animations demonstrating technologies still in the research phase. These animations took months to create and cost tens of thousands each.

I didn't produce the slides, but I consulted on the overall design, content, and delivery. The presentation will be used by a team of marketing managers around the world to offer previews of the company's future products. I share this example to demonstrate just how much companies are willing to spend on presentations in the hopes of winning new business. Obviously, if you're going to commit anywhere near that much money on your actual slides, you'd better spend some time on the people delivering the presentation, which is exactly what this company did.

I also want to emphasize that whether you spend $200 on a presentation (the going rate for PowerPoint 2007 software) or $200,000, there are three basic principles worth applying to every persuasive presentation.

1. Keep it visual. Expensive presentations don't look like the ones you're used to seeing in boardrooms across America. For starters, there is very little text. Words are what you say, not what your audience sees on the screen. I recently saw some research that suggested the average PowerPoint slide has 40 words. But the best presentations only have 40 words in 10 slides! Mission-critical presentations contain loads of photographs, images, graphics, video, and little text. Many slides have no words at all. Visual displays of information are far more compelling and memorable than text.

2. Be consistent. Company presentations are often shared with a team. Someone creates the presentation (or outsources the design) and sends the finished product to every person responsible for delivering it. That's where the process typically ends. Not in this case. We held several workshops. It was mandatory for every presenter to attend each session. During this time, we would discuss each slide: its headline, theme, supporting points, and strongest quotes. Every presenter had plenty of room to add his or her unique personality into the presentation, but the main message of each slide had to remain consistent.

3. Deliver it dynamically. The speaker is at the center of the presentation experience, regardless of how much the presentation cost to produce. And becoming a better speaker doesn't cost anything—except time. It takes practice to deliver a great presentation. During rehearsals for the $200,000 presentation, one weakness was evident among all the speakers—low energy. When giving formal presentations to groups of 10 or more, your energy level must be higher than that of your audience. You can do this by raising the volume of your voice slightly above your normal speaking voice, and by adding inflections to your delivery to avoid speaking in a monotone. Having a warm smile on your face doesn't hurt either.

Presentations are critical to winning new business. To truly stand out, both the content and delivery must be engaging, interesting, and persuasive. Even if you're not spending a dime on the design, be sure to prepare like you spent a fortune.

Carmine Gallo is the communication skills coach for the world's most admired brands. He is a popular speaker and the author of several books including Fire Them Up! His upcoming title, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, will be published by McGraw-Hill in October. More of Gallo's columns are available in his ongoing series.

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