Edward Tufte, a professor emeritus at Yale University known for his work on data visualization and information design, argues against the use of PowerPoint in presentations. In a 5-hour seminar, Tufte used powerful imagery but no bullet points or charts, instead distributing high-quality printed notes. He urges presenters to ask clients about their business rather than focus on presentations about products. Effective presentations involve distributing materials in advance, interacting with the audience about the content, and demonstrating a mastery of the subject through explanation and evidence rather than relying on slides.

1. A Guide to Engaging Sales Presentations - Do not use PowerPoint
On Wednesday last week, I had the pleasure of sitting in a one day
course entitled "Presenting Data and Information" presented by Prof.
Edward Tufte.
For those who don't know Edward Tufte, he has written seven books,
including Beautiful Evidence, Visual Explanations, Envisioning
Information, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Data
Analysis for Politics and Policy. He writes, designs, and self-publishes
his books on analytical design, which have received more than 40
awards for content and design. He is Professor Emeritus at Yale
University, where he taught courses in statistical evidence, information
design, and interface design.
Most readers of this blog will either come from sales or marketing
professions and this blog/message is written in this context. It is
muted from Tufte's polemic on the use of PowerPoint for presenting
scientific evidence and technical information, citing the use of
PowerPoint as the reporting medium and a contributing factor in the
2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident.
In his 5 hour seminar, Tufte used powerful imagery, but no bullets, nor
chart junk, nor boxes with drop shadows; he distributed high quality
notes in the form of his four best-selling books. These were included in
the price of admission and were referenced frequently throughout the
day to rapidly convey vast amounts of information and to support key
points.

2. A Guide to Engaging Sales Presentations - Do not use PowerPoint
To make indelible points, he displayed work from an original 1570
English
publication of Euclid's "The Elements of Geometry", including the
elegant proof of Pythagoras theorom and the World's first "pop-up" - a
paper fold-out, which formed a pyramid to escape the 2-D flat-land of
the text pageand illustrate the point. He also quoted from and
displayed references from his 1613 publication of Galileo Galileo's
beautiful "History and Demonstrations Concerning Sunspots" – shown
in the photograph.
I think it's worth summarizing a few points Tufte made as they relate
to our profession of selling and marketing technology products and
services. The following are notes in no particular order on comments
he made in the lecture or wrote in his essay, "The Cognitive Style of
PowerPoint" or ideas I wanted to share.
On PowerPoint

3. A Guide to Engaging Sales Presentations - Do not use PowerPoint
"PowerPoint comes with a big attitude and is presenter oriented, not
content oriented, not audience oriented."
Instead of a standard PowerPoint presentation, Tufte urges us to ask
the client "Lets just talk about your business". Try this approach at
your next meeting - where you might be planning to show a
presentation to introduce your product/services. What do you think the
client is more interested in—a discussion about their business or a
presentation on your products?
On Making Presentations
Tufte states, "making a presentation has two elements,
1. Your story - content,
2. Credibility - i. what is the presenter's reputation (reasons to
believe), ii. do they include reference links to quoted material, iii.
are they competent, i.e. have they mastery of the details -
causality."
On distributing printed material in advance of the
meeting/presentation
1. The human eye/brain is capable of processing information 300%
faster than the spoken word. Therefore a document should be
distributed in advance of any meeting that contains, words, sentences
and paragraphs that can be read along with supporting factual
evidence, to maximize content reasoning time and minimize content
figuring-out time.
2. The technique for effective meetings if you are the presenter is
to circulate a hand-out with a superset of the information prior to the
meeting. When the meeting starts, review specific elements of the
material of interest, take Q&A and you should reduce meeting time by
30%.
3. He quoted Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer's advice to a team making
a presentation to him in a meeting. "Im tired of the long and winding
road of PowerPoint. Use Word instead of PowerPoint and use sentences

4. A Guide to Engaging Sales Presentations - Do not use PowerPoint
instead of bullets; and send me a briefing document in advance, with
your recommendations."
Tufte states that PowerPoint is inefficient compared to the written
word and both "contraptionary and opaque" in the presentation of data
and information.
On PowerPoint for Presentations
A pet peeve is the "build", a slow reveal, bullet by bullet presentation.
I think we all agree with Tufte that the presenters of these
are "patronising, condescending and authoritarian in presuming they
can dictate when the audience can read the presentation".
Tufte suggests that we should be delighted when the audience wants
to read our material in advance. After all the goal of the presentation
is to have the audience interact with us and our content, they should
not have to suffer through a poor metaphor in delivering it.
An Effective Presentation is about Interaction with the Content
and Audience.
Tufte is critical of what he call the cognitive style of PowerPoint in
that "formats, sequencing, and cognitive approach should be decided
by the character of the content and what is to be explained, not by the
limitations of the presentation technology."
He uses a metaphor for presentations - good teaching. The core ideas
of teaching are—"explanation, reasoning, finding things out,
questioning, content, evidence, credible authority not patronising
authoritarianism." - and these are contrary to the cognitive style of
PowerPoint."
I find it hard to improve on Tufte's good teaching metaphor for sales
and marketing presentations.
Having the client touch, drive, handle or interact directly though
hands-on demonstration (if possible) is the most powerful content
interaction.
Mastery of Content is Power

5. A Guide to Engaging Sales Presentations - Do not use PowerPoint
Tufte is critical of PowerPoint's cognitive style in encouraging presenter
laziness in the delivery of material, relying on bullets in slides to tell
their story, rather than owning the material and supporting it with
factual evidence (proof points).
When salespeople are forced to write out their thoughts in fully formed
sentences, they increase their cognitive mastery of the material. This
adds credibility and enables alternate presentation technique and
creates new opportunity for engagement.
Powerpoint Alternatives
On your next customer interaction - particularly for interactions early
in the sales cycle when you are discovering the prospect condition, try
using combinations of the following instead of a PowerPoint; informed
opinion, conversation, a briefing paper circulated in advance,
whiteboarding, use of flip-charts, a brain-pattern, questions and
answers, positioning papers, case studies, benchmarking, analyst
reports, written client success stories.