This is a guest post by Maggie Summers, a content writer and blogger at Ethos3 – a leader in presentation design. Also read her recent post on presentation storytelling.

Most of us have experienced it acutely at the doctor’s office. A hurried, borderline frenetic, doctor bursts through the door and starts blathering on about your test results. He speaks quickly with lots of dense medical jargon; you stop tracking with him about 30 seconds after he starts. When he mercifully finishes, you have no idea what your test results say. Your doctor is suffering from the Curse of Knowledge, and you were just an unwitting victim.

The villainous Curse of Knowledge occurs when a person becomes knowledgeable about something and from then on is unable to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge. (more…)

The role of sales has fundamentally changed because customers find much of the information they need to make purchase decisions on the web. To adapt, forward-thinking sales teams are employing a cadre of sales tools to engage with, and win the trust of, prospective customers.

In this webinar, Jacco van der Kooij and Dan Adams discuss this new selling paradigm and share their perspectives on key sales tools and techniques you should consider employing to help you sell more effectively.

The following is the Q&A transcript from the webinar:
(more…)

This is a guest blog post by Jacco VanderKooij, an entrepreneurial sales executive with a 10+ years proven sales track record. Jacco brings rigorous discipline and boundless energy to sales organizations. On Apr 25, Jacco will present the webinar The Future of Sales, Selling With Social Media. Join us!

Over the past 10 years I have delivered close to 1,000 sales presentations. In that time, my use of video during in-person sales meetings has had perhaps the biggest, most surprising impact on my ability to deliver an exceptional presentation.

At first, I was reluctant to try video during an in-person sales presentation. My fear was the video would distract my audience, (more…)

This is a guest post by Maggie Summers, a content writer and blogger at Ethos3 – a leader in presentation design and training, and a friend of SlideRocket. She takes pride in empowering presenters through her knowledge and passion for presentations and powerful storytelling.

Stories can be the quickest way to be transported someplace far away. Don’t feel like being at home this afternoon? If you’d like to venture through the streets of St. Petersburg, Russia, pick up Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, or if you want to experience Paris and London during the French Revolution, grab Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Stories establish immediate familiarity and trust between storyteller and listener, they explain and nuance our complicated lives, and they offer a genuine glimpse at who we are. Presentations are enriched (more…)

March 2012

Orbit is your source for presentation tips and resources. From amazing presentations, to insightful webinars, to inspiring presentation tips, Orbit is your resource for the latest content from SlideRocket.

Webinar: The Future of Sales

Customers learn far more about what they want to purchase by searching the web. This webinar will help you understand which sales tools can help you better reach, engage with, and win your prospects’ business.  April 25 @ 11 AM (Pacific)

Register Now. (more…)

In a conversation the other day we were talking about how to guide today’s youth for success in the “real world”.  It encompassed topics from the importance of learning different languages, including Spanish and Mandarin, to the role a college education plays.  While we had a range of opinions, there was one thing we all agreed upon — how important it is for our youth to excel at being able to tell a story. From job interviews, to saving the world, to storytelling in business, how well our youth are able to translate their experience and education into stories really matters. (more…)

Have you ever been in the middle of a presentation, looked out over the audience and realize that you’ve completely lost your audience?  It starts with the shifting in their seats and disintegrates to texting, doodling or even nodding off.  You hurry up, skip points, talk faster and faster. Watch this presentation from @EFinkelstein for great tips and examples on how to make a presentation, even if you are artistically challenged.

Perhaps your presentation materials are interesting or maybe they’re not – but any way you look at it, unless you know how to make a presentation interesting, it will be boring. (more…)

Presentations are a business staple. In fact, they are second only to email as the most commonly used business tool, and an effective business presentation separates the extraordinary from the average. So what’s the difference between a standard presentation and a great one? (more…)

It’s no surprise that successful presenters continually invest time to improve their presentation skills. Without a doubt Steve Jobs has put in some time in front of the mirror, shaving cream on his lip, practicing some aspect of his keynote speech. And I’m sure early in his career he picked off a few tips and tricks from other great presenters.

Even if you aren’t on the professional circuit, you’ll still want a plan to improve your communication skills. You can of course make a significant investment in a training course, which may be the best way for you to jump ahead. But you can also choose a more incremental approach to improve how (and what) you present to your audiences. (more…)

Looking for inspiration, guidance and tips on how to develop good presentation skills?  We’ve provided ample presentation resources to put you on course. But we heard from the presentation community that we should have included presentation books. So, here are the 7 we recommend you explore to get the critical help you sometimes need and perhaps find your long lost presentation skills coach.

What would a post about improving your presentation skills be without an actual presentation? View this creative presentation to learn more about the books we recommend. If you’re a SlideRocket customer we’re happy to share it into your account to use as inspiration or a template for you own presentations. Just follow the instructions on slide #9.

These books challenge the conventional approaches to creating a presentation. They span the creation and delivery of presentations, realizing the connection between thought, visualization and communication. Doing it right is a complex undertaking. But these books from the best presentation coaches excel at breaking down good presentation skills for us. (more…)