New Business Development Portal

When it comes to PowerPoint presentations, there are hundreds of sources of information on the internet. I have recently run across this Top Ten Slide Tips by Garr Reynolds that presents some very good tips, some of them, I highly recommend. Of the top ten these few are ones you should incorporate into you tool kit:

1. Keep it Simple & 2. Limit bullet points & Text – See my post on 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint by Guy Kawasaki, which talks along a similar line. Strive for telling your story in as few as words as possible. It takes practice to get this down. I believe for most folks, it is easier to start with the detailed versions and then begin to reduce the words. A general rule of thumb, if you already have said it in the presentation, don’t repeat it unless it is your summary slide. An even there strive to reword it to convey the same meaning.
4. Use high-quality graphics – This may be easier said than done, especially if you have limited funds. Resist the urge to put a graphic that is blurry because it is the only one you have. You will lose your audience!
6. Use appropriate charts – Several great examples are given by Garr. I would also add pictures where possible, especially when you have a product offering that can be shown via picture easier then trying to describe it with words. One tip I use is to create the graph in excel then using a screen capture program like HyperSnap, I make a jpg image that I can insert into PowerPoint. What is nice is the jpg scales, so I can make it larger or smaller and the text will resize nicely. If you do a copy and paste from excel you will find that when you resize the text does not cooperate. In a future post I will demonstrate this tip!
8. Choose your fonts well – Going back to the 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint strive to use the 30 pt font size or larger. This forces you to reduce the number of words. It is a great rule and you can learn to apply this with practice.

Go here to see the entire Top Ten and look at the examples:
Garr Reynolds/Presentations.

Very interesting addition you can add to your excel models to emphasize a particular variable.

To quote the creator, S Anand, “Creating a slider-based model is quite useful. You can download a US Treasury yields example to see how this is done. As you move the slider, the yield curve moves over time, showing how it has fluctuated. The trick is to:

1. build the entire model based on a single cell. Cell H1 in this example acts as the index to the dates.
2. create a slider. Go to View – Toolbars – Control Toolbox and add a slider.
3. and link the slider to the cell. Right-click on the cell in design mode, select View Code, and type Range(“H1″).Value = ScrollBar1.Value in the Scrollbar change event.

Excel – Make your model visually obvious | s-anand.net.

Generate a venture financing term sheet online for free. The respected law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSG&R), in Silicon Valley, are the creators of this form. It is based on a similar form they use inside the law form and offers basic tutorials and annotations on financing terms as part of the firm.

Source: WSGR Term Sheet Generator.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal small business section, Venture Capital firms are struggling to raise new cash. With the down economy, return on investments not good, there is a feeling that the shakeout will continue impacting many firms.
The following graph, using data from VentureSource, shows the decline from 2007 to 2009. Firms are considering either lowering their fund fees for investors or raising smaller dollar amounts for the fund. Some funds are going over-seas while others have de-emphasized investments in certain segments.

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) – bea.gov Home Page.
This is a great site when you need timely, relevant and accurate economic data for the USA. It does take some time to data mine this site to find the data you are looking for but well worth it.
Mission statement: The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) promotes a better understanding of the U.S. economy by providing the most timely, relevant, and accurate economic accounts data in an objective and cost-effective manner.

Are you interested in learning about medical terminology, medical words and their meanings? Des Moines University offers a free online Medical Terminology course you can take. You will learn 300 words and the basics on how the words are constructed.

If you are planning to work with health care practitioners it is critically important for you to learn the vocabulary they speak on a day to day basis.

Source: Medical Terminology Course – Des Moines University.

MindManager is the ultimate tool for increasing productivity – for you or your entire team. Use it to visually connect ideas and information to help you save time, solve real business problems, improve business processes, and drive innovation. By visually organizing all your information, you’ll have the big picture clearly before you, while still tracking the smallest details. Here  one of the many mindmap examples you can leverage.

There is even a blog you can go to.