Now the Presentation Follows the Conversation

Better presentation strategy combined with technological advances is transforming presentations into enterprise assets – enterprise PowerPoint. Today, presentations are a mashup of all sorts of media and files – PowerPoints, but also images, videos, PDFs, Word, Excel, audio, etc. They are structured content, formatted as slides and ready to present. Presentations are now a branding element in the marketing mix, along with advertising, public relations, digital and collateral. Presentation content is designed, written, approved, executed and measured for the benefit of the entire organization, at the corporate level. Yet, the employees still maintain flexibility and control over their individual meetings and tasks. After all, who knows better what to present to a prospect than the salesperson who just had an in-depth conversation with that same prospect the week before the big meeting? Corporate marketing has control over the brand and message, and can track its use, while users in the field have flexibility. It’s a win-win for both corporate marketing and the team in the field.

Advances in interactive technology have allowed presentations to be more conversational. Search and interactive features allow presenters to zoom into a particular slide, based on the feedback and cues that their audience members are giving them. No sooner does someone from the audience ask a question than the presenter is able to present content directly addressing the question. Presenters can build a presentation as they go, customizing directly to the mindset of the meeting attendees. Linear slideshows are becoming a thing of the past.

With presentation management, today’s structured presentations follow the conversation.

But tomorrow, the conversation will dictate the presentation.