This is not a technical article. I’m not going to overwhelm you with details about fonts and functions. Instead, it’s about how to use the magic of a PowerPoint presentation during a persuasive sales presentation to your advantage. Simply avoid these 5 mistakes I’ve seen too often as an 18-year corporate veteran buyer of services:

Starting With You

As the book “How to Make Friends and Influence People” famously taught us, the most beautiful word in the English language or in any language is someone’s own name. So start the PowerPoint presentation with a story or points about the audience, not about who is doing the presenting.

Not Setting Up Their Pain

Whoever is in the audience needs to have their pain dramatized and fed back to them in the presentation. If the slides are not giving info and stats about their pain, the PowerPoint presentation is going to do nothing but bore your audience.

Not Using Stories to Bake in Your USP

Remember the slides at the start that I made you skip? The ones that were about how wonderful and unique your company is? Well, the way to PowerPoint your way into your prospects’ hearts is through the emotion of stories. These are stories of how you saved your clients in their hour of need. Of Master presenter skill level, is the added bonus of when you bake in your differentiators and unique positioning into those stories. After seeing your PowerPoint presentation, prospects will be begging to work with you if you do this.

Not Making It Conversational

Yes, PowerPoint is the bomb since the 80’s. Yes, it can weave a tale. But it still doesn’t compare to a two-way conversation during the presentation. Add natural pause slides with questions to the audience. Allow their input. You will gain a lot by engaging your prospects’ interest rather than talking non-stop at them during your presentation.

Not Considering Appropriate Format

Every PowerPoint wasn’t created equally. In-person, virtual and leave-behind formats are all different and serve different needs. Decide on what’s appropriate and then tailor your content accordingly. For example: don’t make the mistake of trying to use a book-length PowerPoint to do your persuasion. Instead, use it as a leave-behind and let the magic of stories and images tell your sales story instead.

PowerPoint presentation are the cornerstone of business communication. But they can cripple your sales if you continue to make these mistakes.

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