Projectors - do they ever help the presentation?
July 17, 2005Return to blog homepage
A 'big fish' is your potential client. You know you're up against some formidable competitors, so you have to give it your best shot. You fire up your presentation software, add the bells and whistles, and get your slides ready for the main event.
Before the meeting you search for the ubiquitous VGA cable, quickly attaching it to your laptop. Everything is ready to go! Or is it?
At a recent sales presentation, we thorougly prepared our talk based on what the client requested of us. We were confident we could address their needs and answer their questions. A visual presentation was supposed to be the icing on the cake. But when we directed attention to the screen, what we saw was far different than what we planned for.
LCD projectors, in my experience, rarely benefit a visual presentation. If you had the resources of Steve Jobs, the hardware would never be a concern. But even in large companies, projector hardware is rarely adequate for displaying portfolio samples. Sure, the words are readable, but the average projector only manages washed-out remnants of the slides that were prepared.
There are obvious solutions to this problem. I could simply buy a nice LCD projector to remove that variable from a future presentation. We could rely solely on printed visuals. Or we could get a laptop with a really big screen. All of that can get expensive, however. And a fancy projector in a poorly lit environment can still fall flat.
Bottom line - no presentation should hinge on the visuals.
One viable solution we came up with was to control the equipment as much as possible. Large flat-panel displays are coming down in price. A 30" panel, while spendy, would be more than adequate in a typical conference room. You could even bring a Mac mini to drive the display. If nothing else, it's a conversation piece!
What are some of your suggestions?
