PowerPoint in India

chillibreeze writer — Vidhu Bhala

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PowerPoint presentations have become central to the business world. The quality and delivery of a presentation make a difference to audiences and influences their choice of products or services.

India, a country full of talented and successful entrepreneurs, however, seems to struggle with marketing and selling their products through presentations. Why so? Let’s look at this problem specifically from the view of presentations to an audience. Some typical responses that you could expect from an audience after a bad presentation session (usually with non-Indian audiences) are:

- That really put me to sleep!
- There was nothing new about it.
- Just leave a print with me.

Is it really an ‘India’ problem?
Indians tend to focus on the price aspect of marketing alone. Indian consumers are also heavily influenced by celebrity endorsements. Indian companies are therefore always focused on referrals and/or collaterals in presentations. As a result, the various other aspects of presentation, the concepts, the relevance to the problem and the brand of the seller take a back seat.

Typical Indian presentations rush to the financials and referrals to prove the sellers merit. If you are still reading this, you obviously relate to the above problems.

The Indian selling thought process manifests itself in the presentations in a variety of formats. Some of the most obvious ones are:

- Poor aesthetic appeal
- Presentations loaded with text and details
- Presenter does not connect with the audience
- Inappropriate research to ensure alignment with the audience
- Lack of preparedness of the presenter for questions from the audience
- Presentations that are above or below the slotted time

So, you may ask, what do our western counterparts do with their presentations, that make it so different from Indian ones? The key is to focus on the presentation as an aid and not as the message itself and to be well prepared.

The ice breaker – a short joke or image that allows the audience to open up and allows the presenter to connect with the audience.
Efficient use of PowerPoint Illustrations – the verbose details may be handed out as printouts and the presenter highlights important points from the text, so the individuals in the audience is free to choose what is important to them
Appropriate pauses and modulation – allowing the presenter to keep pace with the comfort and interest of the audience
Time adherence – the main presentations have few slides, the presenter is well aware of the subject. It is also seen prudent to keep a deck of the detailed slides handy to pull them up if the audience is interested in a particular area.
Referrals – are usually presented in a visually appealing manner, with feedback from audience sought to pull up the ones that they are interested in
Feedback and next steps – audience feedback is sought towards the conclusion of the presentation allowing the presenter to understand the needs, urgency and constraints of the audience
Conclusions – financials and/or final service or product offerings are touched upon in a separate conversation after the conclusion of the meeting, with due consideration to the audience’s feedback.

As you can see, the focus is on using the presentation to exchange ideas effectively between the presenter and audience. The time available for a presentation is utilized to its fullest potential, and the effects of the presentation leave a short term impression on the audience.

However, what works for western counterparts, may not work as well for Japanese or German customers because culture plays a very important role in the delivery of a presentation.

Observe the selling and buying cultures of your audience and fine-tune your presentations to make an appropriate presentation… and don’t forget to run that spell-check.

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in March, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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Vidhu writes for chillibreeze.

PowerPoint in India

chillibreeze writer — Vidhu Bhala

PowerPoint Production Services

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