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Animation can liven up any sales & marketing presentation. The right use of an on-screen action can truly underscore key points, provoke emotion and thought, and add zest to otherwise bland content. But, as with all good things, moderation is the key. The next time you consider animating your sales and marketing presentation, keep these tips in mind:

1. Remember that less is more. If people walk away from your presentation remembering only your breathtaking (or annoying) animation, you've missed the point of using animation in a presentation. Animation, along with color, varied fonts within the same presentation, and images should be used to enhance your key points. Too many animations or on-screen actions that are incongruent with the message (a zippy, fun animation when announcing a price increase to clients is probably inappropriate, for example) distract from your point and may cost you a sale or your credibility as an expert.

2. Design with the presenter in mind. If you are designing decks for another person to present, be sure your animations make sense to the presenter. Without a lot of rehearsal, a presentation deck loaded with clever animations that require careful timing and a specified series of mouse clicks will probably fail. The average sales person cannot/does not want to spend precious sales time practicing your elaborate timing/animation scheme. Make it easy, make it make sense. Otherwise, you frustrate the sales force and make them look foolish in front of prospects.

3. Create presentations that will work on any system. In many situations, prospects would like a leave behind of the deck they just saw. Make sure you design with that in mind. Microsoft has released the 2007 version of PowerPoint with many cool, new features that do not work on earlier versions of PowerPoint. Keynote, Apple's answer to PowerPoint, can share PowerPoint format. Here again, animations may not "translate" between PowerPoint and Keynote correctly. If you have a slick presentation that you are unsure will work in other versions, make a back-up, "universal" version that you can leave behind. Additionally, be sure you have a print version for distribution. If you have stacked images that zoom in, fade, and flash they may be cluttered or look weird on a printed page. Create versions of the content that make sense for print.

If you keep these tips in mind, you have the basis designing effectively animated presentations.

Learn more about this author, Stacy Jackson.
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