We felt that it wouldn't be right to finish this book without spending some time on the hardest task you're likely to face as a Prezi master. That task is getting Prezi through the door of your business, adopted and loved by all your colleagues.
The very fact that you've purchased this book shows how much you appreciate Prezi. However, this isn't going to be the case for everyone in your business. With the constant grind of day-to-day tasks, it's difficult for workers to commit to learning new things. Prezi is not just a new piece of software but a whole new way of thinking and presenting.
To help you get Prezi through the door of your business, we'll look at the following:
- PowerPoint's grip on business
- Opportunities to zoom
- Using PowerPoint to introduce Prezi
- Educating your business
Although we sing the praises of Prezi's non-linear format and want everyone to use it to create beautiful presentations, there's a lot to be said for a piece of software that's stuck around as long as PowerPoint has.
PowerPoint gave everyone in business the chance to be heard. Anybody could create a slideshow and make their message one hundred times louder than just saying the words. It added a visual element to important business messages, it was fairly easy to use, and it has now become a standard piece of kit that you'd expect to see in any organization. Giving credit where credit is due, those trusty old linear slides have helped most of us in business to create some decent enough presentations in our time.
But this is a different time and the people joining today's workforce are very different thinkers from those of the good old days!
PowerPoint was created in a different decade when people wore different types of suits to work, bread and milk were cheaper, there was no Facebook or Twitter, companies didn't have to think outside the box much to survive, and a presentation had to have beginning and end points. Ah, the good old days!
Nowadays, companies will/should do all they can to look different from their competition, innovation is desperately sought after and creativity is encouraged wherever possible. There's a constant wave of new organizations springing up shouting about how they think bigger and better than the next guys and how innovative they are. How many of those companies' sales people have you let through the door and then have had to sit through a hundred tired old PowerPoint slides that have been passed down from one sales guy to the next. Innovative? Come on, really!
This sales scenario is a perfect example of how tight a grip PowerPoint has on business presentations. We happily admit that it is a great tool and it's changed the face of business presentations forever. But surely, it has to be time for a change, right? Unfortunately, there are many people in business who truly believe that PowerPoint is the only medium they have to present their ideas with or who simply use whatever software is already used at their place of business. Until you show them otherwise, the world's workforce will spend thousands of man-hours each week sitting through slide after slide after slide. Prezi can add some much appreciated relief to this monotony.