Making a sales pitch to a client? Or an investor pitch? Or pitching an idea to your CEO?  Here is a proven way to make it impactful and memorable so that you get the result you want. Package all your messages into a STORY Selling any product or service has a few common elements. Why not wrap all these elements into one single story? Problem faced by your client Existing solution Your solution Benefits Price If you are selling an idea to your CEO, you could be addressing a problem or challenging the status quo. You will talk about your idea and its need, benefits and impact. It would be great if you pick up one story (or anecdote) which helps you explain everything. Why stories work? We love stories. We have been hearing stories since we were children. We read fiction and watch movies. Stories are entertaining and they are memorable. Your prospect or your CEO will forget your logical arguments and numbers but they will remember your stories. How to presen...

Google for India Conference (GFI 2017) took place last week in New Delhi, India. There were various keynote speeches delivered at the event. The overall quality of presentations was excellent. Here are 17 slides I have handpicked for your inspiration. Read the takeaways below, after you have browsed through the slides. Rajan Anandan, Vice President - Google  Anuradha Aggarwal, CMO - Marico Other Speakers TAKEAWAYS FOR YOU MAKE BOLD SLIDES Write important numbers in big and bold. It will create impact and catch attention. If you are at a big venue with hundreds of people in the audience your slides will be visible to someone in the last row too. Look at this slide. PICK ONE MAIN COLOUR Every speaker had one colour theme. Rajan Anandan's slides had red, Anuradha's slides had pink and Ford India's slides were blue. The other colour was dark grey. The choice of main colour was in tune with their br...

If you are designing a PowerPoint slide it is important to know how to align text well. Let us start with an example. Here is an ad which appeared in a local newspaper recently. The text to the right of the model is your main text. This main text is known as body copy in advertising. The text (both at the bottom and the top) is aligned to the LEFT. But why is the text aligned to the left? Why not right, center or justify? Here is the same ad. What have I done? I have aligned the body copy to the RIGHT. The ad now looks slightly different. Wait till you see the next version. In this version, the body copy has been aligned CENTER. It does look quite odd, doesn't it? Here is a quick refresher which shows you the four types of text alignment. By default, when you type body copy in PowerPoint your text gets aligned to the LEFT. Let us now JUSTIFY the body copy and see how the ad looks. This does not look very different from the LEFT alignment because of less text ...