That Presentation Sensation' Promotion

Indezine.com has teamed up with Martin Conradi and Richard Hall to bring you exclusive quotes from their book - 'That Presentation Sensation'. You can also click the image here to buy the book online from Amazon.com.

The book itself is illustrated with stories and interviews with a raft of well-known business and academic figures - Marjorie Scardino of Pearson, Leon Kreitzman, the author and guru, Dianne Thompson of Camelot, Michael Ullmann of Insead, David Abbott, the famed advertising copywriter, and many more.

Here's a genuine customer feedback excerpted from Amazon UK:

Many people in business have to give presentations at one time or another and the thought scares them rigid. To all those people - relax! You have found your answer. This book is informative, amusing, interesting, and instructive.

Buy it - you won't regret it

In the current climate, presentations matter more than ever. Your ability to get your point across defines your career. And for a business, it is the cheapest and most convincing way of telling your story.

So why are most presentations dull, boring, often downright bad?

This book is a guide to presenting. Why we do it. Why we are so often do it badly. How we can do it better.

It is not a PowerPoint users manual. It asks why we do it in the first place. It questions the universal PowerPoint culture of headlines and bullet points.

"Bad presentations cost much more than good ones."

"Bad presentation is tantamount to fraud."

"It's one of the single most important jobs we do as managers."

"The real contribution presentations make is forcing you to clarify in your own mind what it is you are trying to say."

"What is your one big point ?… remember that there is no such things as several big points [in a presentation] - they simply become several little ones."

"Visual support can be very powerful, but no one should abdicate their argument to the slides."

"Having a poor presenter on his team is now a major problem for any CEO."

"Good visual aids are invisible; they become part of the experience."

"The more words you put on a slide, the less impact they have."

"While they're reading your slide they're not listening to you."

"Only designers go out saying 'Great visuals'."

"The slide that says everything says nothing."

"Good design is not necessarily slower or more expensive than any other sort of design."

"It can take ten times as long to create a short presentation as it does a longer one."

"The most memorable presentations are always the ones that go wrong."

"At the end, try not to be too busy to thank [your technical people and operators]. Not enough people do."

"The ability of software to do extraordinary things is undermined by the inability of most executives to make it part of their day-to-day experience."

"As the quality [of webcasting] improves, you will look worse. Not better, worse."

Martin is managing director of Showcase Presentations in London.

Educated at Oundle School and Lancaster University, he spent 10 years in advertising and marketing companies and doing more than his fair share of presentations. He became fascinated by the potential for small computers as business tools and set up Rainbow Software in 1980 - probably the first company in the world entirely dedicated to computer-based business presentations.

He formed Showcase Presentations Ltd in 1986 to specialise in computer-based presentation services. Showcase has worked on some of the largest bids and deals in UK corporate history and for over 25% of the FTSE 100, as well as throughout Europe, the US and the Far East. His particular interest lies in the science of presentations at which his company excels, and increasingly the art of presenting - on which having seen a few thousand he's something of an authority.

Richard Hall

Richard travels constantly between his country cottage near Chichester, his London flat and his many business interests. After graduating from Balliol College, Oxford he started his career as a brand manager at Reckitt & Colman, moving on to become International Sales & Marketing Director of Mettoy - the company noted for the world-famous Corgi brand.

Switching to advertising, he became a Director of French Gold Abbott before taking over as CEO at FCO, one of London's most creative advertising agencies, and later Deputy Chairman of Euro RSCG.

He currently chairs a number of companies, including Showcase Presentations and Shaftesbury Homes & Arethusa, a major childcare charity looking after over 7,000 children a year.

His hobbies include golf, cricket, reading, and lunching in the sun.