"What program do I recommend for creating notebook listing/buying presentations? Is PowerPoint the best? What do the CyberStars® use?" These are the kinds of questions I am often asked when it comes to listing presentation software.

When it comes to building multimedia presentations for displaying on your notebook, you have four basic choices:

• Build your own, using a program such as PowerPoint or Astound
• Purchase a real estate specific multimedia program such as TOP Presenter or PREP Productions
• Purchase PhotoShare
• Hire a designer to build your presentation for you

Let's discuss building your own first. PowerPoint is fairly easy to learn, and it does fine presentations, including motion and sound. Astound, although more complicated and therefore a higher learning curve, allows you to put in even more whistles and bells. Can you do a marketing presentation or buyer presentation on either one? Sure. But there are drawbacks to doing so.

First, consider that your job is listing and selling real estate, not building presentations. Second, consider the learning curve: it's steep even with PowerPoint, and that's time taken away from your listing, selling and marketing efforts.

I'll share one more drawback to building our own presentations using PowerPoint or Astound: I've seen some absolutely horrible presentations done by sales associates (and instructors/speakers)! Many folks tend to get carried away with the power of these presentations, and, if they were absent when the Good Design Sense Fairy was giving out good design sense, they tend to make every design mistake one can make when they design their presentations. They place way too many words on a page, too many bullet items on a page, words fly in one way on one slide and another way on another slide, they use the sound of screeching brakes to introduce each point (seriously!), they use too many fonts, they have crowded backgrounds….

I could go on. Suffice it to say that I've seen many badly designed PowerPoint and Astound presentations and few effective ones by sales associates.

Which brings us to our second choice: off-the-shelf real estate multimedia presentations. You have two real choices here: Top Presenter and PREP Productions. Both contain ready-to-go multimedia marketing presentations, and both are good. You are limited in the amount you can customize each presentation, but this drawback is more than offset by the fact that the design work is professionally done. In other words, they make a good impression on buyers and sellers when shown on your notebook. Several of my CyberStars(tm) use these programs and make money with them.

The third option, PhotoShare, is probably the top moneymaking software used by my CyberStars(tm) today. Amazingly simple and effective (see the following article), it produces multimedia slide shows of a listing, your area, information on your services, etc., complete with voice narration, background music and slide transition. Once you create a slide show, one click e-mails it or saves it to disk, and the person receiving your presentation via e-mail or disk does not need to own PhotoShare to run the presentation. You can save an incredible number of photos with voice-over and music to disk when compared to programs such as PowerPoint and Astound.

And, by the way, I saw PhotoShare's latest upgrade at the NAR trade show in Anaheim this past week: wonderful! Even easier to use, has a great tutorial to get you started, and it has neat new features such as automatic panning of a panoramic photo when you use one in your slide show.

The final option, having a professional designer create a presentation for you, is also used by many of the CyberStars(tm). There are a number of designers who will design a custom marketing presentation, buyer presentation, anything you want. I've seen some very good ones that cost the sales associate from $250 - $300. When you buy one, you get the original program to distribute via e-mail or on disk, of course.

When I recommend you buy software or technology hardware, I do so for one reason: I know that the recommended item makes you money. I recommended PhotoShare above and it resulted in this tip from one of my newsletter subscribers, Randy Repicky of Century 21 Associates in Grosse Pointe, MI (rrepicky@msn.com.)

Randy writes, "PhotoShare is another extremely versatile tool that lets you create instant slide shows that you can easily distribute to potential clients via disk or e-mail I've already made money with it."

"I showed a $990,000 house the day I got PhotoShare. While at the house, I took some photos that I downloaded into a PhotoShare slide show for my buyers (it was my first time out with them). It took me about 20 minutes to put this together, even though it was my first time using PhotoShare). Do you think they were impressed when they popped that disk into their computer and saw themselves standing in front of their dream house? It worked great... and the best news is that on my way home from visiting with you at the NAR convention, I worked the deal out on this home and a now have a new sale of just under $1 million!

"Two days after getting PhotoShare, I did an open house and had a slide show (with its music) playing on my laptop on the kitchen counter. As the result of my "open house presentation" I picked up 2 more buyers and another listing."

All four options for listing presentations have their place. As far as making money, though, I'd put PowerPoint last. Based on feedback I've gotten, the others, especially PhotoShare, rank far ahead of it in doing what you want a presentation to do: get you the sale or listing,