Engineering
The slides were doing the talking.
Proposals packed with everything and pointed at nothing. After the workshop the team built lighter decks, in less time, and won new business.
The Company
Who they are.
The firm was finding that clients often had an incorrect notion about its offerings and solutions based on its proposals; in addition, some clients were complaining that the oral presentations were dull, boring, and didn’t clarify the proposals.
The company had been using PowerPoints for years as a way to convey information to clients about their services both as proposals and in oral presentations. As proposals, these presentations had distinct sections and were organized to take readers from the problem to the proposed solution.
The oral presentations used the same PowerPoints and weren’t altered much, if at all, for the people in the room.
The Challenge
What was going wrong.
The company needed to create PowerPoints that could be used as proposals that focused on client needs, while creating additional PowerPoints that would augment their presentations and engage the people listening. The goal of both was to drive the client to act.
Their PowerPoints included too much information and presenters would often read from the slides rather than speak about them. In addition, their proposals suffered from lack of clarity; irrelevant information; and were not written for the nontechnical readers they were meant for.
What We Did
The workshop they got.
We developed a series of workshops that focused on concepts of readability and usability and best practices in terms of using PowerPoint. One aspect of the workshop focused on teaching participants how PowerPoint should be used based on reader expectations and how they could get more information across by using PowerPoint as it was intended. We also taught them strategies to use PowerPoint to augment, not be the focus of, their oral presentations.
The workshops included opportunities for participants to create two versions of each PowerPoint: one to be read as a written proposal, and one to support a speaker. From these workshops, the team developed internal guidance for creating these two types of PowerPoints.
In Their Words
I loved this course; it helped me create better PowerPoints and enhanced my effectiveness for presenting in front of clients. Highly recommend! Sharon Billingsley, Project Manager
The Result
What changed afterward.
The company reported that most of the team was spending less time creating PowerPoints for oral presentations because they understood that PowerPoint should be used to augment, not take the place of, the presenters.
While they continued to use PowerPoints for their proposals, they reduced the amount of information and used the design and research-based strategies they’d learned in our workshops.
The company also hired Hurley Write to help its speakers learn better strategies to present information.
Key Benefits
- The team was better able to develop PowerPoints that could be used for presentations and proposals.
- Clients had fewer questions and complaints.
- The team became more efficient at developing effective PowerPoints, resulting in saved time.
Bring a workshop to your team.
Every workshop is built on your own documents, the way these were. Or start with the PROS Readability Risk Assessment® and see what your documentation is costing you first.