Audiences are looking for a "headline," a way to position the new product in their own minds. One of my favorite product descriptions from Jobs occurred in 2003, when he introduced Keynote presentation software for the Mac. He said "Keynote is a presentation app for when your presentation really counts. Oh, and Keynote was built for me!" The slide behind Jobs simply read, "Built for me." He then launched into the details of the software but you only needed the one takeway--a presentation application built for Jobs.

Well, let's be clear. Steve Jobs uses Apple's Keynote presentation software, a very elegant tool.

The vast majority of presentations, however, are created on Microsoft PowerPoint. My book is software-agnostic, which simply means it doesn't matter whether you're a Mac or a PC, whether you use Keynote or PowerPoint. The point is that both of these tools can compliment your story.

PowerPoint is not evil as some have suggested. Guy Kawasaki once told me that PowerPoint is a tool. Those who think it's evil don't know how to use it. Now that we know that information is more effectively delivered with pictures instead of words, PowerPoint becomes a very effective tool for delivering new or abstract information. For example, when Jobs introduced the iPod in 2001, he said it would allow you to carry 1,000 songs in your pocket--the "headline." And to show you just how small it was, he said "iPod is the size of a deck of cards."