The clock struck two as we entered our prospect’s office that afternoon. My team and I were pitching for new business from a very important client. We had got this appointment after chasing the client for nearly three months. We were presenting to the CEO, his marketing chief and a team of young brand managers. We approached the receptionist and mentioned that we had an appointment with the CEO. They were expecting us and she immediately directed us to the conference room.

We had half-an-hour to set up our equipment. Just as we finished setting up and testing everything, the CEO and his team walked in. After the customary introductions were completed I stood up to start the presentation. Just then Mr. Murphy decided to join the presentation and the lights went off.

“Who is this Murphy?”

“Prasna, this is Murphy of the Murphy’s law fame.I think the law says ‘Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong sooner or later.’”

“Oh! What happened then?”

“We thought that it was a temporary failure but soon realised that the transformer next door had burst. It was a major problem and there was no chance of restoring power for the next three or four hours.”

“Let me guess what you must have done. You must have asked for rescheduling the meeting. Is that right?”

“Yes, that is what I did. However the CEO said that rescheduling was not possible because everyone would get busy with their budget planning work. It would be impossible to put this entire team together. So he insisted that we carry on with the meeting. I mentioned to him that our entire presentation was in the computer and it was not possible to present without the slides.”

“What did he say?”

“He said something that made us think. He said ‘Why do you need the powerpoint slides? I am sure you know the business and all your case studies by heart. Just talk to us about what you do, what you can offer us and why we should give our business to you.’ ”

I realised he had a point. I asked for fifteen minutes to get ready. He organised for coffee and used the time to quickly catch up on couple of issues with his team. Meanwhile my team and I huddled together to decide what we should do. One of my partners read out the three questions he had asked; she had made a note of that. Another produced a printout of the slides. We had 170 slides and several case studies. We also realised that the presentation did not answer his three questions.

“This is a blessing in disguise.” I said. We quickly decided some of the things we would do.

1. We will focus on the client’s issues and not about us.
2. We will share case-stories and not case-studies.
3. We will make a compelling offer. We will not ask for the business in a predictable manner.

“What is a case-story? How is it different from a case study?”

“A case-story is like a narrative, Prasna. We explain the whole case using the 5W + 1H, like how a journalist would approach a story. A typical case study may be more matter of fact.”

“What is 5W+1H?”

“It stands for who, what, where, when why and how. A good story answers these questions.”

We decided to focus on three big issues that the client had mentioned in his conversation when we met him first, nearly three months ago.

1. How do we improve sales call productivity
2. How do we retain our high-value customers
3. How do we build more business with existing customers

We decided that I would set up the context and one of my team members would narrate the case-story. I would summarise the key points for each case. We then decided to do two more things. We tried to guess the questions the client and his team might have. We wrote down those questions. We also decided to make a compelling offer to move the client to make a decision.

The case-stories format worked very well. I discovered that I had brilliant presenters in my team who could engage an audience in very interesting ways. The stories had drama, humour and even suspense! The client spontaneously broke into an applause after this section.

We then wrote all the questions on the white board and I asked “Do these questions reflect the questions you have in your mind? Do you want to add any? Delete any?” In a few minutes we shortlisted five questions. We answered all of them in the order of priority given by the client.

I then made the final offer “Here is an offer for you. Give us a brief today on an issue that is keeping you awake, and we will get back to you with a comprehensive presentation in the next seven days. You have no obligation to place any business after seeing the presentation. The only condition is: you have to give us a brief now!”

Three brand managers wanted to brief us and the CEO chose one for us to work with.

We realised how dependent we were on powerpoint slides. On our way back one of my colleagues said something very insightful.
“A powerpoint is not the presentation”.

“That is good observation RS. I have a problem with this story though.”

“Why?”

“This seems like an exception than the rule. You cannot wish away powerpoint slides. Everybody uses them, everywhere.”

“Prasna, it is not about wishing away powerpoint slides. It is about using them intelligently. Let me give you an example. I was asked to coach a board member of a large bank on presentation skills. She was going to the US and she wanted me to see her presentation and help her improve it. I suggested that she should make the presentation to me and we video-tape her presentation. When we reviewed the footage she was horrified to see that she had her back to the audience most of the time and she was virtually reading the slides. So I asked her to try an experiment. She had to sell me something that she was passionate about. It could be a product, service or even her pet cause. The only condition was that she cannot use powerpoint slides.”

“What did she do?”

“She persuaded me to buy stocks in her bank. When we later saw this pitch on video she was zapped. It was just five minutes but her passion, conviction and persuasion were unmistakable. She was just brilliant. She then said something I can never forget – ‘I know what went wrong. The slides must support my presentation. Instead I ended up supporting the slides.’”

“Good one.”

“The next thing that people forget is that the moment you decide to ‘present’ anything you are trying to move people from point A to point B. You don’t make presentations to keep people informed. If you do that, it is a waste of time. So every presentation is a pitch of some sort. The slides must therefore help you make a case. As David Ogilvy says ‘you can’t bore people into buying.’ Are slides the best way to make your point? Can you do it better in any other way? No body asks this question. That is why most powerpoint presentations are disasters. Do you know there is even a book called ‘Death by Powerpoint’.”

“Have you read it? Do you recommend it?”

” I have not read it. What caught my attention is that somebody thought of a title like that. Use ‘death by powerpoint’ for a search in google you get some very useful material.”

“You made a passionate case RS. So what is your take home message.”

“When someone says create a powerpoint presentation, stop and ask. Is there a better way? How can you be different and effective?”