You can increase your credibility and convince more people by being exact. Consider various pairs of statements below: A: I went and met 5 potential clients today but could not sell to anyone. B: I went and met some potential clients today but could not sell to anyone. Which one is more credible? C: The sales growth in the last month was 20.42% D: The sales growth in the last month was around 20% E: The total advertising spend on TV is $1,044,329. F: The total advertising spend on TV is 1 million dollars. By being a bit more exact you can sound so much more convincing. The listener starts to feel that you know what you are talking and not cooking up or guessing. When we guess we talk in round numbers (100, 1000, 2500). We never guess when we say 108.66. One more example. G: You forget! We had changed the rates of our product on April 11, 2010. H: You forgot! We had changed the rates of our product long back. In our daily lives we make lot of statements which are generic, approximate...

This is my 250th post. It has come in 621 days (1 year 8.5 months). I started the blog on January 14, 2009 when I had quit my job and was preparing for life as a freelancer. I had chosen to become a Communications Consultant. I wanted to train people to make awesome presentations and also make presentations for them (outsourcing). The purpose of starting this blog was to share my point of view with the world. The only place where I could write how I felt presentations should be made. The blog helped me establish authority and build expertise (the more I wrote the more I learnt). It was my CV on the web. Having no background on Presentations (being an MBA does not mean you can claim to be a presentations expert), I used to approach prospective clients and ask them to check out the blog (as a proof of my expertise). This worked and I got business. 3 months later I took up a job as a marketing manager. I realised down under that I loved marketing more than I loved presentations. I was als...

This post is applicable to readers who have got anything to do with Indian rupees. Indian Rupee has got a new symbol. What earlier was denoted just as Rupees or Rs. or INR is now denoted by a new symbol. This change happened two months back. People have already started using it. You can see it in advertisements and posters all around you. It is time you got the symbol too and started using it in your presentations (and excel sheets and word docs). Click here to download the font Installation steps You need to download the font file and paste it in the Fonts folder of windows. This is how we do it. Download the font by clicking on the link above -> The font name is Rupee Foradian -> Cut the font file (Ctrl+X) from the folder where you have downloaded the font -> Go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Fonts -> Paste (Ctrl+V) the font file in the fonts folder -> Done! Now open MS PowerPoint -> Choose the font 'Rupee Foradian' -> Click ins...

Switch is the second book by Chip & Dan Heath , authors of my all time favourite book Made to Stick . Whereas Made to Stick ( read my review here ) was about making your messages stick into the minds of the audience, Switch is about change. How to change things when change is hard? reads the cover of the book. My recommendation: Compulsory Buy (Don't miss this book) Objective of the book Switch, like Made to Stick, is full of real life examples and based on years of research. The main objective of the book is to help us carry out a change. This change can be in our own life (wanting to get up early and go to gym) or changing the behaviour of others (boss, subordinates, colleagues, family or your company). Methodology The authors Chip & Dan Heath propose a simple framework to help us make the change we desire. Before proposing this methodology they dispel the myth that people avoid change . It is often believed that we all resist change yet the authors give examples which...

This is a guest post by Abhishek Gupta and a very important one. The most read post on my blog till date has been on making sponsorship proposals . While I have been exposed to sponsorship proposals as a sponsor I had been waiting for an event organiser to share his experience with us. Abhishek has successfully organised IIM Ahmedabad's largest cultural event and raised millions. (IIM Ahmedabad is the best & biggest MBA institute in India). Although raising sponsorship money seems like any other sales process, there is a huge difference in no existing product or service being there to sell in this case. The similarlities - Buyer is sponsor, Seller is the event organizer and Product/ service is the event. Following are a few tips on how we go about it. Know your offering First & foremost, believe in your product/ service! You should be thorough in all aspects about your product/ service. What is the idea? What resources, including people & finances, required? What timeli...

Here is an interesting (and very new) TED Talk by David McCandless which I discovered while randomly surfing the TED website. If you happen to be taking a break (say in office) or browsing the net just after dinner and have 20 minutes to spare, visit ted.com and click on any TED talk which you find interesting. Chances are, you won't be disappointed. So here we go. David talks about data visualisation in his talk. His talk is essentially very simple. I have summarised my 3 important take-aways here: 1. Data in isolation is not very meaningful. It does not reveal the total picture. You need to present data in some context. Suppose you are presenting this data; India's military budget is $ XYZ billion. This makes less sense in isolation. But once you look at it in relation to some other data point (say military budget of US) then you get a better picture. Comparison makes data more meaningful. 2. When you visualise data you see patterns and trends which were hidden till then....

Images are available in all kinds of sizes on the internet; 640x480 pixels, 800x600, 1024x768, etc. When you download images from Google or from websites like flickr , freedigitalphotos.net you have a wide choice. In Google you can filter your search ( 4 Tips to make the most of Google Image Search ) by image size (large, medium, etc). While buying images from any stock images site you have the choice of various sizes. If you download an image from freedigitalphotos.net you are given three choices: medium (640 x 425) large (1024 x 681) high resolution (2858 x 1900) How do you then choose which size to download? My experience tells me that users just Google for an image and choose the one they like. Rarely do people worry about the size. The outcome: A small resolution image when brought onto PowerPoint becomes hazy especially when you stretch it to full screen. What is the ideal picture size for PowerPoint? Any image size above 640 x 480 pixels is good enough for PowerPo...

Today I will ask you to take a test. A simple test which will take no more than 1 minute. There are no scores but there is a lot of fun. Without much ado just see the presentation below. It is better to view full screen. The 1 Minute Billboard Test View more presentations from Vivek Singh . RSS & email subscribers might be required to come to the blog to take the test. Do so because it is worth it. After you take the test, share your answers, comments and experiences with me by leaving a comment.

This post has been written for people living in countries like India. Our mother tongue is not English but we communicate in English all the time. Which language do you use to make presentations? English, of course. This is so obvious to us that the question might seem ridiculous. English is all pervasive in our lives. Most Indians speak their mother tongue at home but when it comes to business communication, we always speak English. Imagine presenting in your mother tongue. Just imagine... go back to the presentation you gave last week. Would you be comfortable presenting it in your mother tongue? I work as a marketing manager. Few months back my company launched its products in Orissa (one of the states of India whose language is Oriya). Most people in my organisation belong to a different state (Andhra Pradesh) and hence I was given the responsibility to present to the audience in Hindi (my mother tongue) because no one knew Oriya and Hindi was understood by almost everyone in the ...