Seven tips and one quibble from Joey Asher’s book “How to Win a Pitch”

If you give sales presentations I recommend you read “How to Win a Pitch“. I admire Joey Asher’s blog Talking Points, so I did expect to be impressed. And I was.

The book has the same discipline as a well-planned presentation. Joey Asher distills five key fundamentals that will help you stand out in a competitive situation. Here’s three reasons to read this book:

1. Joey Asher is an experienced pitch coach. He knows what works and he’s put his winning formula into a book. If you can’t hire Joey to help you, reading his book is the next best thing.

[Read more]

Review of the 3 books of the Presentation Revolution

There are three books which have ushered in and defined the PowerPoint Revolution. If you can only buy one, which one should you buy? Here’s my analysis of the three books and my recommendation.

Cliff Atkinson was the pioneer with Beyond Bullet Points. The Beyond Bullets approach is an entire system for creating a presentation with the support of non-bullet PowerPoint slides. It’s published by Microsoft and is a hybrid between a software how-to book and a presentation book. I find the system too limiting and constraining. Note: I have the 2005 edition of BBP – there is a 2007 edition which may be improved.

Garr Reynolds came next with Presentation Zen, based on his blog of the same name. His book is imbued with the philosophy of simplicity. If Cliff’s book is methodical, Garr’s is philosopical. The book attempts to cover most aspects of giving a presentation from planning the content, to designing the slides to the delivery itself. However, the strength of the book is the section on slide design. Garr made us non-designers aware of the importance of design in PowerPoint presentations. The discussion on the planning and delivery of a presentation is at a high conceptual level. There are useful insights for presenters with some experience but the lack of practical guidance could be frustrating for a beginner.

[Read more]