In many cases, a face-to-face informal (video) meeting is more effective than a formal presentation of slides where you drag your prospective investor or customers through page after page of information.
But just going in for a chat with no clear plan what you are going to say does not work either. You cannot wing a sales or investor pitch. Here you are start missing your slides. A poor use of slides is using them merely as a reminder what topic you are going to address next right at the moment when you are talking. “Ah, yes, of course, the market size, well here we have some interesting stats that show the phenomenal growth of online video and social media…”.
A good use of a presentation is to let the slides make you think about your story (days or even weeks) before the presentation. How to sequence your points, how to explain the technology, how to address the white elephant in the room (and other tricky questions).
Once you are done designing your slides, you are also prepared for the meeting (with, or without the actual slides). The presentation was an excuse to organise your thoughts.
(Product plug: in the SlideMagic desktop app you can make presentations very quickly with lots of templates available and less design details to worry about, it might fit right in for this purpose).
Photo by Faris Mohammed on Unsplash