Storytelling in PowerPoint

Storytelling .. a very trendy word in the world of business. Yet it does have a real value, especially in the art of presenting. In order to get the attention of your audience and to also maintain this, it is important to come up with an interesting story. To simply numerate facts, is not enough for a good professional presentation. An amusing anecdote, a catchy history or an emotional story speaks more to your audience and is also more memorable. Your audience will perhaps even tell your story to colleagues or other people in their network. Therefore, we have unraveled in short steps the secret of storytelling:

1. Make it personal
When you present dry factual information, people “feel” nothing. It’s too abstract, they cannot understand the relevance of the topic of your sales, business, or pitch presentation for them. When it is made more personal, with concrete names, situations and conflicts, people can relate to the events of your story. This makes the entire presentation lively and interesting.

2. Make it executable
It’s exciting to come up with great success stories with brilliant results. Just keep it in mind that your audience perhaps may value that story as less realistic or feasible. Keep it small, concrete and feasible. Make your story so specific that they can also estimate the extent in which your story might work for them that way.

3. Make it concrete
It is horrible to be obliged to listen to a miserable long story, which still hasn’t got a clear purpose and you have no idea what the speaker wants. To avoid this, give a brief introduction of the topic of your presentation and the reason why you want to tell your story. When people have this knowledge, they will be less searching for the purpose of your ‘story’.

A concrete example of storytelling is used in our own sales presentation. Each of our sales presentations, consists of a personal introduction. This part involves the listener into the personal story and motives of the speaker:

With these tips, we hope we gave you enough input to come up with a good story for an inspiring presentation. If you need help, please feel free to contact us. We are the PowerPoint specialist with an eye for content. Together we will be able to find ‘your story’!