How do you present to those at the highest level? Whether the audience includes your boss or a powerful prospect, you need to consider their motives. With such a big pitch at stake, it is important to really ensure that your chances are maximised. Above all, you need to be sure that your audience feel respected.

Below are some tips to help you prepare for an executive presentation.

Research

1. Find out how much your audience know about your chosen topic. If possible, talk to someone with contacts, or ask directly beforehand. If no information is available, assume they know nothing and give a very basic overview of your presentation before launching into greater detail.
2. Make the presentation relevant. What are the company’s current business goals? What will the audience be interested in? Link your presentation to their place in the market; a recent change in legislation – anything you can find that will be relevant to your audience. Senior executives will appreciate your effort and understanding, as well as feeling naturally inclined to listen to data relevant to them.

Content

1. Chief executives are often more interested in problem-solving and the overall health of the company. It’s safer to assume that they want the broad picture, so don’t spend ages discussing minute details such as design aspects unless specifically asked to, or unless you’re presenting to a specified audience or department.
2. Senior executives like high data intensity, but with clarity. Executive presentations should be supported with graphs, giving a broad overview of facts and figures. Ensure that you have all numbers to hand, as it is likely that questions will be asked.
3. Anticipate questions and prepare for them. Include relevant slides of data and graphs, where applicable. The information that isn’t included in your presentation can be revealed here. Choose what will be most relevant for a basic overview, and hold the details back unless requested.
4. Don’t include any information that isn’t completely sound. High-level executives are well experienced in picking holes in an argument. If there is something you’re not sure on, leave it out. It’s not worth risking your credibility.

Time Management

1. Senior management executives are busy people. The small amount of time they may dedicate to you is likely to be worth a great deal. Keep your presentation short; they’ll be grateful. Whatever you do, do not overrun your time slot. There is no surer way to annoy any audience, especially those who have important meetings that should have started ten minutes ago. Respect your audience’s time, and they will be more likely to remember you favourably.
2. Having a limited time slot means that it is especially important not to waffle. Not only is waffling unprofessional and annoying, but if you waste time on words that aren’t crucial to your point, you quite simply won’t get everything across that you need to. Be concise and to the point – if the audience want more detail on something, they’ll ask for it.
3. Make sure that you allow adequate time for Q&A at the end. This is the point at which you can learn what exactly your audience wants to know. Senior executives are likely to specify precisely what is important to them, so this could potentially be the most crucial part of your presentation.

The Presenter

1. Project a professional image. An important audience will want to be sure that you are worthy of their time and attention. Casual dress, malfunctioning equipment and a hesitant manner will not help to instil their trust. Walk in fully prepared, dressed smartly, and implicitly reassure them that you are credible.
2. Anticipate interruptions. Whatever you do, stay calm and remain polite. It is not worth risking a pitch for the sake of pride. Set out an overview, suggesting that they might find it more useful to ask questions at the end, once they have a better idea of the whole picture. If you are interrupted, deal with it there and then – you’re there to talk about what they want to talk about, after all.
3. In the same vein; be prepared to improvise. Executives are likely to ask tough questions, and ask to see something completely different to the slides you’ve prepared. It might develop that they’d rather talk about numbers, when your presentation has been focused on company morale. Be flexible – don’t expect executive presentations to be rigid.

Consider Attention Span

Different audiences have different attention spans, depending on a range of factors from passion of speaker and relevance of content to time of day and temperature of room.

All of our presentations at m62 are designed with two versions in mind – one that runs from the beginning to the end of the presentation in 20 minutes, and one that runs from the beginning of the presentation to the end of the Value Proposition in 5 minutes. The two versions are designed to be appropriate for both the CEO who may only have 5 minutes to spare, and for those who have the time to listen to the full presentation.

In the case of being given a longer time slot, it is important to adjust your presentation to audience attention spans. Experienced speakers may be able to tell when an audience’s attention is waning, but the average attention span for middle managers in a sales presentation is twenty minutes. If you’re going to be exceeding this length of time, schedule in a soft break to ensure that your audience stay on track. Watch this short presentation on the influence of attention span on presentation structure for more details.

Start Effectively

Starting a presentation effectively can be a challenge. On the one hand, many audience members will not be fully concentrating when a presentation starts. On the other hand, taking too long to get to the point will encourage the audience to disengage. There are two strategies to counteract this. Chip and Dan Heath think that part of the problem is that presenters have been taught to “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, then tell ‘em, then tell ‘em what you told ‘em”. They recommend starting with a bang- something which can work well, as long as it is a big enough bang to avoid going unnoticed by audience members checking their phones. The danger with this method is that your audience may switch off quicker as you have manipulated attention span, thus meaning that they could miss the end of your presentation.

The other option, and the one we practise at m62, is to recognise that your audience will not be paying full attention at this time, and to use it instead to build credibility. This way, your audience will have made the Initial Purchasing Decision on content designed specifically to influence them positively, and should be in the ‘application hunter’ positive mindset for the rest of the presentation. In the case of the audience including the CEO, you may want to start with the Value Proposition and then present the first five minutes of your presentation. Under these circumstances, your audience are likely to require something different.

Audience Breaks

Kosslyn, in Clear and to the Point, suggests that presentations should be structured to allow for natural breaks. He argues that the audience should be given an overview of the presentation structure during the introduction, and shown where they are within this structure as the presentation progresses; and that topics should be introduced in relation to the audience’s prior knowledge and concerns. Presentations should end with a clear visual summary.

It is important to use attention span to structure the presentation and allow for breaks, so that your audience’s minds do not begin to wander. Asking a question or presenting the audience with a puzzle are good examples of soft breaks. Hard breaks may become necessary as the time spent presenting lengthens; allowing your audience to rise from their seats to get a coffee or take a toilet break will greatly increase attention levels when you return to presenting.

Understand the client’s problem

People can’t make a decision to buy until they think they understand what it is that they’re buying. Your presentation should detail what the audience will be buying, why they should buy it, and how they know you can deliver it.

Structure your presentation by setting out clearly your understanding of your client’s business problem, and then explain how your offering solves the problem that your prospect suffers from. At m62, we have found that positioning your value proposition – your key benefits – between 3-5 minutes is optimum, as that is when audience attention levels are at their highest. The rest of the presentation after this should be focused on justifying – reassuring your audience that what you promise can be delivered.

Position of Value Proposition

When structuring a presentation, be careful not to give the punchline too early. As blogger Jan Schultink points out – “in the first few seconds, people are ‘trying to figure you out’ and are not paying attention to the content”. Use the start of a presentation to build credibility and engage the audience. If you present your value proposition at the very start of a sales presentation, the audience might miss the most important part of your entire talk.

Presenting your value proposition when audience attention levels are at their highest ensures that your audience are more engaged with your most important message, and will be more likely to recall it accurately. The rest of the presentation can then be used to prove these points.

Organise for your Audience, not your Company

When delivering a capabilities presentation, most companies want to give an overview of all the products they offer. But, instead of presenting material in this way, try to see things from the client’s point of view – and organise material in terms of the problems you can solve for them, not your own company’s organisational chart. Start by picking the five benefits that will be most valuable to your prospect, and structure your entire presentation around these. This gives you a logical format to proceed with, and reassures your audience that you are dedicated to delivering what they want.

Closing Line

Close your sales presentation by suggesting the next step in the sales cycle, and asking for action. Don’t worry too much about finding that perfect line – as sales expert Joey Asher writes in How to Win a Pitch, “the fact is that “closing” is overrated. Despite what some sales books say, there are no magic words to convince a person to buy from you.” If you’ve proved that you can meet their needs better than their other options, and they see value, then they will buy from you regardless of how you “close”. If you haven’t, they won’t.

On the other hand, you ask the question in order to force the prospect into thinking about an answer. Even if the answer isn’t agreement, the prospect is considering the close. At m62, we actively encourage presenters to ask the question, if the prospect is in a position to answer. Presenters should be careful however not to press the issue if the prospect is unable to make a decision, for example if he has other pitches to see.

Support the Recommendation

Gene Zelazny, author of Say it with Presentations, follows the approach of his McKinsey colleague Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle. A presentation (or document) should start with the recommendation, then give an overview of the conclusions supporting that recommendation, and then, in turn, look at each conclusion and the evidence that leads to it. This is the approach advocated by m62 for sales presentations. The recommendation in a sales presentation is to buy, or to move towards the next step of the sales cycle. The conclusions supporting this recommendation are value proposition statements (e.g. ‘reducing costs’, ‘competitive advantage’). Then each statement must be proved, in turn.

Interactive Presentations

In their book Selling Visually with PowerPoint, Robert Lane and Andre Vleck make the case for non-linear, interactive sales presentations. ‘The standard way of using PowerPoint – a strictly linear movement from slide to slide from the beginning of a presentation to its bitter end – forces people to be lecturers rather than conversationalists.’ Better, they argue, to allow the audience to share in setting the agenda, using hyperlinks to move seamlessly between slides as required by the audience. This is a good way of ensuring that the audience feel involved and are only exposed to information that is relevant to them, but it can mean that certain important points are left out. A balance should be found between audience interaction and presenter control.

Problem Solving

Consider using mystery, and the common desire to solve problems, to engage your audience. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming that the audience will want to know what you have got to say – attention must be earned. Use twists, questions, and puzzles to leave the audience wanting to hear more. Even a simple multiple-choice question can engage the audience, if the answer is surprising.

Hyperlinks

In their book Selling Visually with PowerPoint, Robert Lane and Andre Vleck make the case for non-linear, interactive sales presentations. ‘The standard way of using PowerPoint – a strictly linear movement from slide to slide from the beginning of a presentation to its bitter end – forces people to be lecturers rather than conversationalists.’ Better, they argue, to allow the audience to share in setting the agenda, using hyperlinks to move seamlessly between slides as required by the audience.

Dialogue

Allow your audience to engage in dialogue. By having the audience ask questions and think about the implications of what you present, a presenter increases audience engagement and helps brings objections to the surface. Advertising guru Jon Steel (of ‘Got Milk? fame) tells of a time when this idea was implemented in a rather extreme way – ‘a client was simply asked to pick which question he was most interested in hearing [Steel’s team] answer… The presentation became a conversation.’ Just remember the need to present a memorable value proposition too – which might be difficult without presenting at least some material in a coherent and pre-planned way.

Attention Span

With this in mind, don’t spend too much time talking with your audience. When audience attention span is taken into consideration, you only have 20-25 minutes to make your point. If a large part of this is spent debating over one small issue, you’ve missed your chance. There are subtle ways to help your audience feel that they’re involved: ask rhetorical questions and allow a three second pause, or refer to audience members by name. Just be careful not to overdo it!

Questions

Inform your audience that they would get a clearer picture of what you do if they let you carry your presentation through to the end, but if a question is asked, don’t ignore it. Instead, make sure you really listen to any question raised. Identify it: is it an objection? Could it be a further selling opportunity? Take your time understanding the query and thinking about your answer. Interactivity is about really engaging with your audience, and building a relationship.

Emotions

In Brain Rules, developmental molecular biologist John Medina explains the rules of attention, allowing us to apply this understanding to sales presentations. His top tips? Use emotions and meaning to get attention – don’t present detail until the audience care. Don’t present text while reading it aloud – the brain can’t multi-task well. And, finally, don’t overload the brain – present less information, and devote time to connecting the dots.

Company Needs

If you really want your audience to take notice, don’t talk about what your company offers – talk about their company and their needs. People are naturally more inclined to listen to things about themselves, and you will be demonstrating how you can help them directly – something that is difficult to ignore.

Credentials

Be careful when creating a credentials presentation. Different audiences have different needs, and different interests. As Jerry Weisman, author of Presenting to Win points out, ‘the same story that excites and inspires your own employees may bore your customers and actually alienate and anger your suppliers, or vice versa’.

Listen

As Joey Asher notes in How to Win a Pitch, a successful sales presentation should involve listening, as well as talking. Use active listening techniques to connect with your prospect. Listening isn’t the same as waiting to talk – so be patient, make good eye contact, use body language to demonstrate attention, clarify points where needed, and take notes as necessary.

Projectors

Don’t feel that you always need to use a projector. In a small room, with a small audience, projecting slides can feel overly-formal and impersonal. Sometimes presenting from a laptop screen is the most appropriate option.

Audience Trust

Ensure that you have your audience’s trust. Olivia Mitchell, well known blogger on presentation theory and practice, draws on the work of psychologist Robert Cialdini to explain the importance of social proof in sales presentations. People are strongly persuaded by what people who are similar to them do. So, to persuade an audience using social proof,  ‘find an endorsement from a credible expert that your audience knows and trusts, use testimonials from people similar to your audience, develop case studies of people/organisations that are similar to your audience, [or] use statistics to show how many people are using your product’.

Conversational Presenting

Olivia Mitchell also extols the benefits of what she calls ‘conversational presenting’. Present in a natural conversational style. One way to achieve this is to ‘talk to one person at a time… imagine that you’re having a one-to-one conversation with that person… [and] look for their reaction to what you’re saying before you carry on.’ Presenting in a conversational style actually helps an audience to take-in content better.

Presentation Style

Don’t stray too far from your normal casual conversational style when presenting. But at the same time, don’t make the mistake of thinking that only “natural” presenters can pull this off. As Carmine Gallo notes in The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, hard work is the key – ‘Steve Jobs is an extraordinary presenter because he works at it’. In other words, practice presenting in a relaxed style. Being “natural” is a skill that can be learnt.

Audience Imagination

Conservative campaign expert Frank Luntz knows a thing or two about persuasion (Vader or Skywalker – you decide…). In his book Words that Work, Luntz examines the role of language in persuasion. Sales people should not be afraid to ask their audience to imagine things – ‘the word imagine is perhaps the single most powerful communication tool because it allows individuals to picture whatever personal vision is in their hearts and minds’.

Personalised Communication

Ask rhetorical questions. As Frank Luntz also writes in Words that Work, ‘When you assert … the reaction of the listener depends to some degree on his or her opinion of the speaker. But making the same statement in the form of a rhetorical question makes the reaction personal – and personalised communication is the best communication.’

Audience Suspicion

It’s amazing what those writing presentations can glean from other disciplines, particularly those in related areas such as design, marketing, sales, and psychology. One website with a lot to teach about presentations is copyblogger. In one article ‘12 Tips for “Psychological Selling”‘, Dean Rieck explains why claims in any sales material must be backed up with evidence – ‘People are naturally suspicious. It’s true that there’s a sucker born every minute, but most people are moderately skeptical of any offer. They seek to avoid risk. You can never predict the level of suspicion any particular person has, so it’s usually best to back up all claims with evidence, such as testimonials, survey results, authoritative endorsements, test results, and scientific data.’ Don’t just tell the audience what you’re capable of – prove it.

Answering Difficult Questions

Many a sales presentation comes unstuck when questions are fielded badly. David Kean recommends listing ‘the worst question the client could ask you’, then ‘the second nastiest question clients could ask’, and so on. The group should ‘work out what the answer is and who should answer’. It is far better to assume that the client will ask difficult questions and to prepare strong answers, than to be caught off-guard. We’ve written extensively about successful presentation Q&A on this site.

Weaknesses

Don’t try to ignore possible weaknesses – address them instead. As well-known presentation blogger Jan Schultink points out ‘highlighting weaknesses does not mean shooting yourself in the foot… If you don’t address them, the questions will remain’. Don’t identify obscure weaknesses that your audience would never think of for themselves, but do ‘think what questions any intelligent human being would have when listening to your story’.

Case Studies

Turn case studies into success stories. As Joey Asher writes: ‘Success stories can give your prospect something that is very hard for them to get, a taste of the intangible thing that they’re buying – a satisfactory result.’  So, go beyond lists of client names or logo slides, and bring your successes to life by telling stories; they can be really memorable, particularly if an element of suspense can be introduced.

Ask for the Order

Don’t forget to ask for the order. As presentation coach and author Jerry Weissman explains – ‘if you’re a sales professional, how can your customer reach the point of making a purchase unless you ask for the sale? … Ask for the order! Call your audience to action!’

Avoiding Decoration

Don’t confuse decoration with communication. As brothers Chip and Dan Heath say in Made to Stick, ‘We need to end once and for all the cult of clip art, as well as the splinter church of stock photography. “Show, don’t tell” doesn’t mean that you take your slide about “thinking globally” and add a clip-art world map.’ Use graphics that genuinely help the audience to understand, and don’t be afraid to bring props into the room to supplement your slides.

Slides Should Reinforce Your Words

Well known marketer Seth Godin knows as much as most about persuasion, and doing things that aren’t necessarily the norm. ’Bullets’, he says, ‘are for the NRA’. Presenters should create cue cards but ‘put them in your hand’ and not on screen. Then, as the slides don’t need to serve as cue cards they should ‘reinforce your words, not repeat them’.

Attractiveness vs. Effectiveness

Mike Pulsifer, author of the blog Thoughts on Presenting and Design, argues that presenters should really rethink their design. There is a big difference between attractive slides, and effective slides. What is the point of slides that look good, if they don’t convey your message? Take time to rework your presentation, and “change your whole office culture.” We couldn’t agree more.

Number of Slides

Don’t worry about how many slides your sales presentation runs to. As Jan Schultink, author of the well-regarded Sticky Slides blog notes, when people worry about the number of slides they have “they are choosing the wrong metric; number of slides, kilos of printout, presentation file size, it does not matter. Time is the only relevant factor.”

Other Visual Aids

Remember that slides aren’t the only possible visual aids. We think PowerPoint is great when used well, but they aren’t the only visual aid available. Make use of flip charts, boards and posters, paper handouts, your product, video, or other media if it helps to get your message across.

Using Your Surroundings

Own the room. This isn’t going to be possible when presenting for a rushed ten minutes in a prospect’s office, but there are plenty of situations where it is possible to get in to dress a room in advance. For Jon Steel, author of Perfect Pitch, ‘the room in which a pitch is delivered should be a physical manifestation of both the agency and its idea’, and the room ‘has to feel different’. This might mean dressing a room with examples of work, images produced in the research process, or even visual aides to make up the presentation. Dressing a room to relate to the core message of a presentation helps bring the message to life. But remember that the room must support the presentation, not distract from it. Keep things ‘on-topic’.

Hand-Outs

Do more with hand-outs. For many pitching solutions to creative briefs, it is important to remember that the prospect is buying both an idea and somebody to implement that idea. For this reason, leave-behinds should not simply consist of slide print-outs. They shouldn’t simply repeat the material of the presentation, but go further to summarise this idea in a way that helps to ‘demonstrate the relationship between the people who work in the agency and that idea’ (Jon Steel, Perfect Pitch). For Steel’s agencies, this means asking staff to bring in photos, write personal stories, and then binding these collections in glossy print. Pitching to design and build a school? Ask staff to tell stories about the best places they have studied in. Want to leave your slides behind? Record narration, or host slides online.

In the second part of our sales presentation series, we bring you advice on the process of creating a presentation. Contributions have been drawn from our own consultants and other experts in sales, marketing and presentations from around the web.

Don’t Act at the Last Minute

In Pitching to Win, David Kean bemoans the amateurism of the new business pitch – ‘we agree who is going to say what, and make last-minute amendments to the presentation on our journey to the client’s offices … Doing everything at the last minute is our disease. It is the work of the amateur’.  The answer? Plan the process, prepare and practice thoroughly, and treat pitch presentations as critical, and not just something to fit in around the day jobs.

Background Knowledge

Prepare by doing your homework – before you get face-to-face to deliver your sales presentation. In How to Win a Pitch, Joey Asher suggests the following line – ‘”to make sure that your presentation shows you just how we can help, we’d like to spend a little time chatting with a few people at your firm before we come. Is that okay?”‘ If you can’t get genuine inside information, make an educated guess, using common sense, and the insights of your friends and colleagues.

Seeking Advice

Don’t be afraid to seek help when pitching for new business. As Lee Bowman writes in the now out-of-print High Impact Presentations – ‘the moment that a company knows it is going to be pitching for a piece of business, it should start planning the presentation, and taking whatever professional advice it feels is necessary… If the right advice is given at the beginning of the process, a great deal of pressure can be taken off the key players, and a lot of time can be saved.’

Start on Paper

One of the biggest mistakes people make when preparing presentations is in “going digital” too early. In other words, many people simply type slide headings and bullet points directly into PowerPoint without ever stepping back to ask important questions about the audience or about their own objectives. Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen recommends “going analogue” to write a presentation; don’t make the mistake of opening PowerPoint and writing a presentation directly onto slides. Instead, use paper and pen, whiteboards, or Post-Its to “brainstorm, explore ideas, make lists, and generally sketch out… ideas”. In this analogue stage, two of the most important questions to have in mind are “What is your core message?” and “Why does this matter?”

Communication Preferences

Although the idea that different individuals have different learning styles might be over-baked, some people do prefer to read, others to listen; and some love detail, while others focus on the big picture. For some sales presentations, it is possible to find out in advance what the communication preferences of the most important audience members are. In this case, suggests Andrew Abela this should be done, and the presentation tweaked accordingly.

Practise

Practise. Lots. Oliver Adria includes in his blog ReThink Presentations a quote from the film Shine, which encourages a student practising piano to learn the notes, so that he can forget all about them.If you practise enough that you know your presentation back to front and inside out, you don’t have to be constantly worrying about what will come next, and you can focus on making sure you present your material well.

Keep Improving

Don’t expect perfection immediately. Tony Ramos demonstrates this in his post, Give Me Something to Hate: Delivering a first draft of a presentation is rarely a good idea. Don’t just use what you have: constantly reconsider to see if you can improve.

Follow-Up

After a pitch presentation has been delivered, David Kean then sees two more phases of work. Follow-up involves answering questions in more detail, getting feedback from supporters and acting on it, generating and sharing additional ideas, and generally just not giving up. Feedback should be sought whether one wins or loses – but after a loss, wait a few weeks, when feedback might be more open, and ‘the first cracks in their new relationship may have begun to show’.

The good news is that m62 is here to help. We know sales presentations – after all, we’ve created 1000s of them. Here, we bring you great tips from our own consultants, as well as other sales, marketing, and presentation experts. We’ve reproduced all of these tips for you in a series of articles split into five different aspects: content; planning and process; format and structure; design; delivery and technique.

The first part of our series contains tips on messaging and content.

Concrete Details

Make sure that your presentation brings your points to life, rather than simply presenting abstract concepts. If making a sales presentation, make sure that you offer proof. As Chip and Dan Heath note in their pamphlet ‘Making Presentations that Stick‘ – “The number one mistake we’ve observed in presentations – and there is no close second – is that the message is too abstract. The presenter offers concepts and conclusions but not evidence. He talks at a high level about the big picture, but gives no concrete details that might make the big picture understandable and plausible.”

Focus on Solutions

In a credentials presentation, says author Joey Asher, don’t talk directly about credentials, or too much about your own company. “Instead, your credentials will be apparent as you talk about your solution, and how you’ve implemented similar solutions for other clients. You focus your presentation solely on what the client really cares about – a solution to her business problem.”

Value Proposition for Structure

Less is more. At m62 we advise our clients to structure their sales presentations into five parts or fewer. Use benefit statements to form a value proposition, and use the value proposition for structure. Giving five strong answers to the question ‘Why Us?’ is far more powerful, and memorable, than listing 100s of benefits that nobody can prioritise or remember.

Bring Solution to Life

In Fire Them Up, best-selling author Carmine Gallo suggests focusing on the solution that your service delivers, and recommends bringing to life how this solution will help – “Tell your listeners why you’re excited about your product, share a vivid vision of the future that your product makes possible, and be specific about how your product will help them succeed in business”. He reminds us of the well-known adage that ‘nobody wants a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole’ – that is, in B2B sales, people want solutions, not just products.

Memorable Moments

Duarte Design in California (the folks behind Slide:ology) teach presenters to use ‘S.T.A.R Moments™. S.T.A.R. stands for “Something They’ll Always Remember” and S.T.A.R. Moments refer to the memorable moments in a presentation that stick in the minds of your audience long after the presentation is over.’ We’ve mentioned it before on this website, because we love the clip, but a great example of this is Bill Gates releasing a jar of mosquitoes into a crowded auditorium while talking about Malaria. People remember that kind of stunt, and if it’s connected to your message, they remember your message too.

Benefits not Features

Remember that successful sales presentations can’t simply list product features, but must make the connection to benefits that actually help the audience. As Jerry Weissman writes in Presenting to Win ‘A feature is a fact or quality about you or your company, the products you sell, or the idea you’re advocating. By contrast, a Benefit is how that fact or quality will help your audience. When you seek to persuade, it’s never enough to present the Features of what you’re selling; every Feature must always be translated into a Benefit.’

Stories and Emotion

‘People buy on emotion, and justify with fact’ says Bert Decker, CEO of Decker Communications. Stories are ‘emotionally connecting’, ‘move people’, ‘give third party credibility, and are memorable. Sales people should make use of stories in presentations, because stories help presenters to connect, and ‘connection trumps everything’.

Allude to Competitor Weaknesses

Many companies feel uncomfortable in directly attacking competitors in their sales presentations. The alternative is to use a technique called ghosting. In ghosting, the aim is to allude to the weaknesses of competitors without specifically mentioning them. Explain why a certain feature is important, allude to the risk of not having that feature (without openly mentioning a competitor), and then present your own strengths in that area.

Clear Objectives

Many presentations are prepared and delivered with no clear objectives in mind. Yet, if a presentation isn’t trying to achieve anything in particular, it risks achieving nothing. Andrew Abela, author of Advanced Presentations by Design, suggests creating a table, and listing what the audience think now, and what the presenter wants them to think after the presentation; and what the audience do now, and what the presenter wants them to do after the presentation. This framework ensures that presentations are given for a purpose.

Handouts for Detail

Sales people need to convince emotionally and rationally, and some of the rational sale can be achieved using detailed handouts, as Seth Godin argues – ‘the presentation is to make an emotional sale. The document is the proof that helps the intellectuals in your audience accept the idea that you’ve sold them on emotionally.’

Case Studies for Social Proof

As Chris Atherton, writer of the blog Finite Attention, affirms, sales people really need to use case studies. Show your audience how other clients have benefited from your product or service. This immediately poses the question, “What would this do for me?” This approach is interesting, affirming, and involves your audience.

Understand Prospects

And finally, an audience needs to feel important. As recommend by Sue Hershowitz, whose blog SpeakerSue provides resources for sales skills, you should ‘Love your prospects.’ Take the time to get to know them. Do the research. Most importantly, let them know that you appreciate them. Show them that you understand; that their problems matter to you; and that you offer a solution that is tailored to helping them in the best way possible.

See a problem?

Flexibility in front of an audience and conformity within a company are two age-old adversaries that seemingly cannot co-exist. Here, we discuss the reasons for, and limitations of, flexibility and control in company presentations, and offer some advice on what works.

Management Control: The battle for consistency

Managerial staff in every department have different reasons for enforcing complete consistency in their company presentation:

• CEO: “I want control over what my staff deliver.”
• Marketing director: “I want to make sure my staff are exhibiting consistency of brand and message.”
• Compliance officer: “Certain slides need to be included as a legal requirement. If they are deleted, the company is at risk.”
• Sales manager: “I know more about sales than many of my staff – so I want them to use the slides I suggest.”

Having one single company presentation is about making sure that everything is done according to company guidelines – and to the best possible standard. Building a company presentation from the top down ensures that quality and consistency are positively managed.

Brand consistency is important: strong brands create emotional bonds with customers, adding significant value for companies. A standard company presentation can ensure that all presenters use the same slides and deliver the same message.

The Challenges

A generic company presentation, unless it is specifically designed to do so, may not adapt well to all situations. Every audience is different, and an audience that is not interested in what the presenter has to say will not be fully engaged with the presentation.

An audience may not do what you expect it to, and it can be useful to use tools that allow changes to be made instantly in reaction to an audience’s response.

Presenter’s Discretion: Different audience, different presentation

Although presenters in the field may well accept and understand the reasons for consistency and control of their company presentation, they most likely have questions and doubts about an approach that limits their discretion:

• “I’m the one presenting – shouldn’t I be able to pick what goes in to the presentation?”
• “I never know exactly what an audience wants to hear until I’m there. What happens if they decide they only want to see three slides?”
• “There’s lots of boring information in this presentation – surely the audience would prefer me to deliver only what is interesting?”

Every audience and every situation is different. Often, it is impossible to know what an audience will want until the presentation has already begun. Sales presentations need to be kept fluid, with presenters adjusting and adapting to each situation that arises. By trusting presenters to pick their own material, the chances of presenting material that is relevant to each audience might well increase.

The Challenges

• It is not always useful for every presenter to produce and adapt his or her own presentations. A company does need consistency, and this will not occur if every presenter acts individually.
• Not all presenters will be great at preparing elegant, well-structured PowerPoint decks. Leaving those in the field to mix-and-match slides can have awful consequences.
• Management has no control over what is being conveyed. This means that incorrect information could be given out, while the points that should be made (such as legal requirements) aren’t delivered.
• Presenters may end up presenting only the material they are most comfortable with – but not necessarily the material they ought to present.

Is there a Solution?

There is no perfect solution, but there are steps that can be taken that should greatly improve the situation. A balance should be found between company control and presenter freedom. The appropriate balance depends greatly on the company culture, the level of training that presenters have had, the market in which a company operates, and the strength and approach of the company’s brand. Here are some tips that we suggest:

Ensure your sales team want to use your slides. If slides consist of mainly text, it is too easy (and tempting!) for presenters to adapt existing slides or insert new ones. If you have slides that are good enough that no one in your team would be able to replicate them to the same standard, you reduce the likelihood of such an attempt.

Produce branded PowerPoint templates. It is easy to convince presenters to use the same template to ensure brand consistency. If anything, it is more convenient for them.

Involve your sales team in the decisions. Ensuring everyone delivers the same message can be difficult, but having staff contribute to writing presentations that they will have to deliver is a positive step. Involvement and engagement leads to buy-in.

Share best practice. Get salespeople to send in their best slides, enhance and edit as necessary, and then allow everyone to benefit by including these slides in your company presentation. Make everyone’s best ideas visible – and share them around!

Use interactive presentations that presenters will be able to adapt as they go, according to what the audience wants to hear. Use hyperlinks, live graphs and audience response tools to make each presentation unique – while built from a core deck of PowerPoint slides.

Train your sales team. Ensure that sales people know the best way to present each slide in your company presentation – and, more importantly, why this is the best way. People are much more likely to follow rules if they understand the reasoning behind them.

Consider using software to deliver the right slides to presenters. Slide library software can also force compliance where this is essential – so that legal disclaimers must be used, for example.

Company presentations involve a certain tension between consistency and control, and flexibility. By involving presenters in the process of identifying and choosing the strongest messages, designing attractive and effective slides, allowing a certain amount of interactivity, and providing training to presenters, companies can resolve this tension in the most successful way.

If a Master Vendor setup is employed, this Vendor can end up doing most of the work. This can result in subcontractors putting in less effort and producing work of a lower standard, as the job is not as important to them.

Setting up a Vendor Neutral arrangement ensure that there is no bias among the vendors, who all have a perceived fair chance to obtain work. This ensures a high quality of work from each vendor, and overall success.

Download this slide for use in your own presentations.

Cut down on the company overview

Most sales presentations talk in great detail about the company’s history, locations, values, mission, and even diversity policy. Most of the time, for most of this content, nobody cares. Say enough to build credibility and establish empathy, but no more.

Decide which benefits are most powerful, and relegate the others

Have trouble deciding which of the dozen or more benefits you offer is the most important? The common approach is to just list all of them and hope that some of them resonate with your audience. The problem, of course, is that by saying too much you overload your audience and most of your message is forgotten. Which parts are forgotten? That depends – each audience member may remember your value proposition as something different. Great for causing confusion, awful for sales.

Move the ‘Summary of Benefits’ slide from the end to near the start

There is little more stupid when it comes to sales presentations than only talking in terms of benefits at the end of a presentation when the audience are already bored. Maximum attention levels are often after about three or four minutes – so start talking about benefits then.

This short video tutorial delves into the theory behind creating a slide that summarises the key benefits of your product or service, and how it can be used to create a structure to your slides that will help you to deliver a compelling presentation.

Sixty slides of text is too much detail

If your sales presentation usually lasts more than an hour, your prospects might wish they never met you. Often, information can be cut without being missed. When presenting a particularly complex product, or if you are expected to present for a long time, consider using multiple presentations and presenters, or hyperlinks to present in a non-linear way. This keeps the audience focused, and allows your prospects to set some of the agenda.

Let the audience know where you are in the presentation

Ever been reading a book and flicked to the back to see how many pages you have left? How would you feel if once you started reading you had no way of finding out how long was left? Without an agenda slide, and reference to the agenda during the presentation, that’s what being an audience member is like.

Reconsider the slides full of technical specifications

Technical details are often important when selling. But don’t fall into the trap of including every technical detail. Eliminate the details that are no different from competitors (unless you need to persaude the audience that you have finally managed to catch up). Instead, produce a product specification sheet, and hand this out. Then, try to bring the remaining specifications to life in your presentation. If you have an important technical advantage, what does this mean in practice? Compare directly to competitors (named or ghosted), and illustrate the benefits in real-life settings. Make something that’s hard to destroy? Take a video showing it working after being run-over by a truck. Think Steve Jobs, the MacBookAir, and an office envelope.

Listing all your products is not the same as selling solutions

Don’t just present a few slides on each product you offer. If you want to sell solutions, understand the problem that you can solve, and then present one integrated view of the solution you offer. Finding slides from five different product presentations and putting them into one jumble of a presentation isn’t the same as presenting a solution.

Eliminate bullet points

We say it all the time, because it’s true. Bullet points don’t work. The audience read the text, and ignore the presenter – they can’t listen and read at the same time. It’s the reason why we stop and look up when somebody disturbs us reading a good book. Six bullet points per slide on your current sales presentation? Find the visuals that help you explain the same points. Otherwise your audience will just read your slides but ignore you presenting.

Think about when to open the laptop

Some sales people “show up and throw up”. That’s to say they get face-to-face with a prospect, open the laptop, and present everything that they have to say without stopping to find out anything about the specific needs or interests of the audience. Psychologically this may be easy to do – but it isn’t effective. Instead, think of your sales presentation as just one part of a broader conversation, and consider making the presentation interactive to ensure that you address the interests and concerns of each audience.

Need help in improving your sales presentation? Contact m62 – we would be happy to help.

Audience Attention Levels

It is commonly assumed that audiences pay maximum attention at the start of a presentation, and that attention levels decline steadily until after a certain point most audience members have simply switched off. This isn’t quite true however – which dictates optimal sales presentation structure. At first, audiences are typically focused on what they were doing before the presentation, and only partially engaged. The first few minutes of a presentation are spent considering whether the presenter is worth listening to, or whether the time would be better spent day-dreaming, checking email, or writing a novel. Most audience members have wasted too many days of their lives listening to mindless presentations to simply assume that a presenter deserves attention.

The fact that audience members don’t automatically pay maximum attention at the start of a presentation guides how sales presentation introductions should be approached. Go in assuming that the audience will be paying attention from the start and the audience might miss your key points. Leave your best content until last and the audience might have nodded off to sleep before you get to it.

What to do at the Start of a Presentation

How to start a presentation will depend greatly on what you are trying to achieve with your presentation, and of course on what kind of presentation you are delivering. Even within a single type of presentation – sales presentations – there are a number of different approaches to the start of a presentation.

Build Credibility

Audience members decide early on whether a presenter is worth listening to. Most enlightened presenters understand that boring the audience with dozens of slides about the presenter’s company is inappropriate. Yet, a couple of slides that demonstrate that a company has the right experience can put the audience into a constructive frame of mind – seeking to find ways to use what the presenter is offering, rather than seeking to find holes in your arguments.

Encourage Interaction

If audience attention levels don’t start at their maximum, that isn’t to say that it is impossible to quickly raise them. One way to start a presentation is with a question or challenge for the audience. By presenting a well-judged puzzle and asking the audience to solve it, attention levels can quickly be raised. Anything too hard or too easy and the audience may disengage though, so be careful.

Demonstrate Empathy

Prospects are usually looking for somebody who understands the challenges they face, and who can offer a solution to these problems. So, draw the audience in by presenting an outline of the issues they face to show that you have understood. Then, spend the rest of the presentation – after this introduction – showing how you can solve the problems you understand the audience to have. The key issue here is to make sure that you actually talk to the audience’s challenges; if the audience don’t recognise themselves in your portrayal, then you won’t succeed in displaying empathy.

Force Attention

High impact animation sequences can start presentations with a bang. Add music, video, interesting pictures, and a good script, and the audience are drawn to a presentation like moths to a flame. But, remember; while grabbing the audience’s attention may be easy, keeping it is hard. Shiny animations will draw an audience in, but without relevant content in the rest of the presentation, they are wasted.

Abolish Pre-Conceived Ideas and Reframe Evaluation Criteria

When audience members think they understand an issue, or know what a presenter is going to say, they don’t always bother to listen. Even when they do pay attention, it’s all-too-easy to fall into the trap of hearing what one expects. Abolishing pre-conceived ideas at the start of a presentation isn’t easy – and is often best done in conjunction with techniques that force attention. Try being upfront, and acknowledge that you know what the audience are thinking. Then, give clear examples of facts that clearly contradict the popular misconception. To reframe evaluation criteria, outline what you think the audience are looking for, and then explain why they are looking for the wrong thing, and what they ought to be looking for instead. You don’t have to change audience members’ minds at the start of a presentation – only open them.

Clear Hurdles

Some companies are looking for suppliers and partners who see the world in the same way that they do. Others will only work with companies with certain accreditations. If the presenter doesn’t reassure them, they may spend the rest of the presentation trying to guess if the presenter’s company is the right cultural fit, or has the right certificates. Presenting to Starbucks? You’d best talk about environmental policies up front, rather than leaving your audience waiting until you tick the right box.

Delivering the Start of a Presentation

A lot of presenters are nervous of presenting. Nerves can be reduced when the presentation introduction is well-planned, though-out, and rehearsed. If a presentation starts well – most presenters tend to relax. So, work out what you want to achieve with the start of your presentation, and then practice presenting these first few slides, again and again.

Use this slide in your own sales presentation by downloading it and changing the template to your own. When competing for business against competitors of a different size, attempt to paint them as either too small or too large and anonymous to deliver the work effectively.

Download Personal Attention slides

With businesses now catering for clients around the world, many companies find themselves having to operate in multiple timezones. This can create communication difficulties, resulting in poor availability and delays.  With locations around the world,  a company can work with clients in different timezones, keeping service demand matched with service supply.

Adapt and use in your own sales presentations, to explain the benefits of your global presence.

Download Global Presence slides

Delivering a sales presentation and having a job interview may not seem that similar, but in actuality the comparisons are many. Does the feeling of being under harsh scrutiny sound familiar? The mild panic? Sweating palms? The need to persuade somebody to choose what you have to offer?

Here at m62, we are experts at preparing sales presentations and have helped our clients to win billions of dollars worth of deals. A job interview is all about selling yourself – making it the ultimate sales presentation. We’ve identified a systematic process that we use time-and-again to help our clients present effectively. The process works, and now we’re sharing it with you. The following tips are key lessons on how to both win over an audience, and on how to impress a potential employer. Use them to sell a product, or to sell yourself. If you know somebody looking for a job please pass them this article, and see if it helps.

Prepare

Consider the importance of your presentation: surely it justifies more than knocking-up a few PowerPoint slides on the plane there? Your audience will be able to tell if you are simply rehashing old material. The time involved in making sure your presentation is completely suited to the client is often gravely miscalculated. Spend longer than you think you’ll need (hours, not minutes) – and practice, practice, practice! If you don’t have time to prepare properly for every prospect, consider pitching for less, but putting more time into each pitch.

Similarly, it is painfully obvious when someone hasn’t taken the time to prepare for a job interview. The majority of candidates seriously underestimate the time required to prepare; you should be setting aside ten hours for every interview, not thirty minutes. Apply for fewer positions, but give each application the time and attention to craft an effective response.

Do the research

Check the website; make some calls (if appropriate). Look into your prospect’s background. What are they looking for? What could you convince them they are looking for? Is there anything, perhaps a recent business deal or public announcement, you could use in your presentation? It’s amazing, but even in this day and age, with so much information publicly available, sales people still walk into meetings with prospects without having done any proper research.

The same goes for a job interview. Learn as much as you can about the company you wish to work for, and the sort of things they do. Has the founder written a book? Read a copy. Do they publish white papers on their website? Analyse them. Do they give webinars? Attend one. Most importantly: read the job description! It actually tells you what they expect of you.

Think from the audience’s point of view

What are they looking for? Why should they want to do business with you? If you are pitching to a company who are looking to expand into Asia, talk about how you can help them with your Asian distribution partners. If you are selling to a company that is focused on the environment, describe how your company would help them continue to reduce their carbon footprint. This sounds obvious – but presenting 20 slides about your company’s history really isn’t seeing things from the audience’s point of view.

Make sure to really get beneath the surface of what your prospect is saying, and work out what is truly important to that company. Don’t take everything at face value – lots of companies say they are focused on the environment, but only some really are. Most importantly, don’t simply include lots of irrelevant facts that you think they might like to know: chances are, they won’t.

At most interviews, prospective employers have an idea of the kind of candidate they wish to hire. They describe this person in their advertisements and other materials. So, use the job description to find out what the employer is looking for, and then spend time working out exactly how you can prove that you meet the requirements. If the job you are applying for requires someone with good people skills, think of past experiences you could use to demonstrate this – and then make sure you’re amiable on the day…

Have a clear value proposition

Messages can get lost in translation during a presentation. So many presenters try to say too much, and thus end up saying nothing at all. Consider what you can offer to a prospective client and then group and prioritise. Consider listing the five greatest benefits you offer to the prospect as your value proposition. Any less and you run the risk of leaving out something important; any more and your audience will struggle to remember. Tailor your entire presentation around these five points and relate everything you say back to one of them. Don’t simply ramble: stay clear and focused.

Likewise in a job interview, have clear ideas as to what you could bring to the company if you were hired. Identify the key things your prospective employers are looking for and focus your interview on demonstrating how you offer these things. Don’t claim to be brilliant at absolutely everything; you won’t be able to devote nearly enough time to each point, and your interviewer is unlikely to believe you anyway.

Provide relevant proof

Think of your benefit statements and consider how you can provide evidence that each of these can be delivered. If one of your company’s main points in a pitch is that you can deliver a project quickly, produce a case study in which you did just that in the past. The key is to only use information or evidence that is relevant. Don’t distract the audience with an off-topic story that doesn’t aid your argument, however funny you think it is.

The same is just as true in a job interview. If one of the key skills you are advertising to a prospective employer is a good writing ability, bring an example of some of your work with you. Filling your CV with information about how you waited tables for five years is unlikely to improve your chances of getting a job in journalism, but demonstrating A-grades in English and time editing the student paper just might!

Be memorable

First impressions count – yet decisions are rarely made there and then. After a presentation it is likely that the audience will delay a discussion, often reporting back to a higher power before coming to an ultimate decision. Be memorable – but for the right reasons. For a good example, watch Bill Gates’ presentation on malaria at TED – even though we wouldn’t recommend letting mosquitoes into the boardroom unless you can afford good lawyers.

Job interviews are often conducted one after another and you could be right in the middle of a long list of potential candidates – how are you going to ensure that you are remembered? Use relevant stories to demonstrate your good points – these are much more likely to be remembered than just a list of your qualities. In practice, this means thinking of, and writing down, a few stories to illustrate each point in your value proposition. Having these stories to hand well in advance will encourage a conversational style, and a memorable job interview performance.

Don’t get defensive over questions

See questions as an opportunity, not an attack. Think about what is being asked of you, and then link everything back to your value proposition. This is a chance to further impress your audience with relevant information, so make the most of it. Interviewers almost always manage to come up with a question you’d never have thought of, so don’t be thrown off if you don’t immediately have an answer. Think about how to use the question as a hook upon which to sell, and then answer. Questions should be answered quickly. Don’t ramble.

When preparing for a job interview, create a list of potential questions you could be asked, and decide for each one how it relates back to your value proposition. Job interviews are mostly in the form of question and answer, so unless you focus on turning answers into a chance to sell yourself, you may fall into the trap of simply rambling.

If an interviewer asks how you work under pressure, don’t panic that they’re trying to catch you out – instead, provide an example in which you performed brilliantly at the eleventh hour (using one of your pre-prepared stories that prove your value proposition), thus proving that you’re dependable and quick-thinking. Whatever is asked of you, see it is an opportunity to state a strength, not cover up a weakness.

So, what are some of the common mistakes that presenters and bid managers make? What should you not do?

Agenda

Ignore the prospect’s agenda and instructions. They won’t care if you talk about the things they ask about or not. If they are grappling with some difficult issues right now, they would probably rather you didn’t remind them.

Instead: make sure that you talk about the things you have been asked to address, and if the prospect is facing challenges, offer a solution to these challenges.

USPs

Only talk about the things that the prospect has asked about, so that your pitch presentation becomes indistinguishable from your competitors’. Don’t consider your competitive value proposition, and don’t think about whether you could map your competitive value proposition to the topics you have been asked to cover. Under no circumstances attempt to shape the prospect’s thinking in a new way to match your USPs.

Instead: don’t be afraid to try and shape the agenda. If your story flows in a certain way, tell it that way and spell out for the prospect how you are covering the items you have been asked to address. If you think the prospect would benefit from seeing the issues in a different way, attempt to change their thinking.

Focus

List all the reasons why the prospect might possibly want to choose you. The more the better. Make sure that you have so many arguments that each member of the pitch evaluation team will remember something completely different. That way, when the decision-makers sit down to discuss your pitch, they won’t be able to agree on what you offer.

Instead: structure your presentation with a clear and memorable value proposition. Five items is memorable, any more might not be.

RFP and Pitch Presentation

Use the pitch presentation to talk through the detail of your written submission. The tender response is most likely full of technical detail. Most high-level decision makers are keen to have you explain all of the technical detail of your bid in fine detail, and don’t need to hear any arguments actually selling the merits of your bid.

Instead: keep your pitch presentation at a high level, and concentrate on selling, not explaining.

Question and Answers

Don’t worry too much about Q&A. You’ll be able to handle the questions as they arise – after all, you know your business, and no question would be too hard to answer. Anticipating questions, preparing answers, and building slides to support the answers will only ruin your spontaneity, and take away from the excitement of the pitch.

Instead: prepare for Q&A by listing possible questions, and thinking about how your answers can relate back to your value proposition. Prepare slides to support answers.

Solution vs Ability to Deliver

Spend all your time presenting your solution, and don’t say anything about your ability to deliver that solution, or in giving a sense of what you would be like to work with. After all, if the audience like your ideas they will have to choose you to deliver them. They couldn’t just ask a competitor to adapt their solution.

Instead: talk about your team and your company, not just about your creative solution.

Rehearsal

Try to make your sales pitch slides perfect. Spend the night before making dozens of changes to the presentation, making sure that all of your presenters are exhausted during the pitch. Let everything else eat into rehearsal time, so that none of your pitch team has ever presented any of the slides before they do it for real.

Instead: lock down your slides the afternoon before you present. From that moment on, get great at delivering the slides.

Presenter Involvement

Let your bid team get on with things, and only bring in your presenters – who are busy senior executives – the night before. They can make sure they are happy with the direction of the pitch presentation at the last minute.

Instead: if a presenter is going to play a significant role in your pitch, they need to be available, and involved in enough time to have input to the direction the pitch is taking.

Bullet Points

Use bullet points. Every prospect loves to have somebody save them effort by coming in to read aloud. Spruce-up any text-heavy slides with clip art, a really busy PowerPoint template, or an incredibly complex diagram that is labelled in six-point font.

Instead: replace bullet points with graphics, images, charts, and animations. Don’t read aloud to grown adults.

Attractive Bullet Points

Bring in a design agency to make your slides look good. You realise your pitch presentation probably shouldn’t just involve your pitch team reading slides aloud, or talking around the bullet points that your audience have already read and understood. So, why not make the slides look better with a bit of design? Your audience may still be able to read your bullet points for themselves, but if the design is pretty enough they won’t notice how boring the presentation is.

Instead: replace bullet points with graphics, images, charts, and animations. Don’t just make bullet points look pretty.

Now, instead, imagine taking a rather more expensive and fully-featured piece of hardware – the iPhone 3G (or iPhone 3GS for this review), and creating an application that turns the entire thing into a high-end presentation clicker. That’s what one company, Senstic, has done. What difference does having a mini-computer and touch-sensitive screen make? Here, we review i-Clickr when used with a PC.

i-Clickr is available from Apple’s App Store for £5.99. (If you know what it costs in US dollars, please leave a comment below.) Download and installation of the actual iPhone application is simple, but there is also an additional bit of software from Senstic that needs to be installed on any PC one intends to use i-Clickr with. Apple’s Bonjour software, which discovers devices on a local network, is also required. Not entirely surprisingly, there’s a tiny bit of work to do in allowing this PC software to get through one’s PC firewall.

Once everything is installed and the correct permissions are granted, the easiest way to get i-Clickr working is to connect PC and iPhone to the same network. (Documentation suggests that this must be a wireless network, but the PC can be connected using wires.) Then, start i-Clickr on the PC, and then on the iPhone. Select the computer to control with the iPhone (assuming everything is working), and then on that PC select a PowerPoint file to open. (Yes, this does involve going from PC to iPhone to PC and then finally to iPhone once the presentation is running, and yes, it is mildly annoying.) After a short pause, the presentation opens in showmode on the PC, and the iPhone turns into a fully-featured presentation remote.

Once the presentation is opened in showmode, it can’t be used in any other way. Closing either the presentation or iClickr will crash or close the other parts of this software ‘jigsaw’ – although as this is predictable and entirely avoidable, it wasn’t a deal-breaker for me.

i-Clickr allows slides to be advanced or reversed using either buttons or a simple finger-swipe across the screen. There are four simple screen views for use when presenting – view the final build of the current slide, view the final build of the next slide, view the speaker notes of the current slide, or view the speaker notes of the next slide. Each of these views has different uses; I particularly like the ability to see the next slide, and to be able to glance at speaker notes. Toggling between slide and note view is achieved with one click. Changing settings between viewing the current slide and the next slide is a couple of clicks away. Clearly, a typical presentation clicker can’t match this functionality.

A number of features are available from the menu screen. A single click from the menu will blank the presentation – whether this is done in black or in white (think “B” or “W” on a keyboard) can be selected in advance from options. Another option brings up a list of slides, and a single click will jump directly to a chosen slide. A trick that we feel is important for making PowerPoint presentations interactive, and one that can’t be obtained with many clickers.

Perhaps making even greater use of the iPhone’s capabilities is the ability to annotate slides directly from the iPhone. Annotation mode is available by holding the iPhone horizontally, at which point four symbols (a tick, arrow, question mark, and star) appear at the right of the screen, as does a text icon. Touching a symbol sets the drawing mode, and then touching the image of the slide annotates the slide show. (So, for example, touch the question mark and then the slide on your iPhone to draw a question mark onto the slide show on your PC.) Annotations are not saved. Clicking the text icon and then the screen brings up the iPhone’s keyboard. A few minutes later and it’s possible to write a word, although probably not the one you intended (your mileage may vary). An ‘X’ icon selects delete, and annotations can be erased. For some reason, this icon appeared slightly off the bottom of the screen on my phone. Still accessible, but a minor bug.

Because rotating the iPhone launches annotation mode, it isn’t possible to read speaker notes in landscape view. It is possible to disable annotation mode, but with this selected, rotating the phone simply shows speaker notes at an angle. It would have been nice to be able to use the iPhone almost as a continually-updating index card, held subtly in the palm. In reality, holding the phone vertically and continually glancing down at the screen risks encouraging a presenter to avoid proper eye contact. Font size can be altered though, and if the iPhone is used as occasional reminder and not as script, the functionality can be truly helpful.

Some reviews on the App Store claimed that lag between iPhone and PC made iClickr unusable. I didn’t experience any lag at all – responsiveness was almost perfect. That doesn’t mean I would encourage presenters to throw away their clickers and attempt to buy iPhones on expenses just yet, though.

With practice, iClickr makes a great clicker. But connection between iPhone and PC isn’t entirely reliable. At home or in the office, getting iPhone and PC onto the same network isn’t that hard. But go to a client’s office where a shared Wi-Fi network isn’t available and things become harder.

In theory, it’s possible to set an ad-hoc wireless connection between laptop and iPhone. Senstic provide step-by-step instructions. After following the instructions, and a minute or so waiting for the connection to be established, I had everything set up the right way. But then, after launching i-Clickr on my iPhone, I wasn’t prompted to open a presentation on my PC. The infrastructure seemed to work, but I couldn’t launch a presentation. I also tried to connect using my PC’s built-in Bluetooth, and perhaps not surprisingly, I couldn’t get things working.

I’m sure that ad-hoc connections with i-Clickr can work. But I wouldn’t want to be following a six-part set of instructions, with some long pauses in the middle, once I was with prospects at their offices. i-Clickr is a great App, but it’s probably not time to retire the Kensington just yet.

A great tool for presenters with iPhones who often present from their own office. But keep a back-up, in case set-up doesn’t go smoothly.

How can PowerPoint presentations be made interactive? We list some ideas for you to try.

Questions

Ask questions. It sounds obvious, but a lot of presenters will have a fixed set of information they want to present, and deliver this information almost regardless of circumstance. Yet, not all audiences are interested in the same material, and often too little time is spent on the things the audience care about.

When presenting to a small group, make sure to gain an insight into what the audience want to hear about. The easiest way to do this is through good old-fashioned dialogue, initiated by the presenter asking questions. Then, from within a larger deck of slides, simply hide those you don’t need to present, or skip to those you do. Anticipate by preparing slides that answer the most frequently asked questions.

Hyperlinks

Use hyperlinks. Typically, a presentation will be delivered from the first slide to the last slide in a linear fashion. An interactive presentation allows flexibility – slides can be presented in any order, without having to exit show mode, find the next slide, and then hit F5. The best way to create flexibility in presentation structure is to create index slides – for different products, services, features, or benefits. Hyperlink from each item to a sequence of slides, and end the section with a hyperlinked repeat of the index slide.

If hyperlinks are too complex for your PowerPoint skills, this effect can be hacked by remembering that when in show mode, entering a slide number then hitting enter goes direct to that slide. Put your first sequence of slides at slide 10, your second at slide 20, and so on. Not elegant – but easy.

Annotation

Sketch and annotate. Don’t just present your slides – write and draw all over them. For pre-planned additions, it might make sense to just use animation to introduce new elements to a slide. But, for real spontaneity, and to respond to unexpected audience questions and comments, draw on your slides. This can be done easily in PowerPoint using a mouse (in show mode with PowerPoint 2003, right-click on the slide, select pointer options, then select a pen type), or use a tool such as Papershow if you want to use a real (Bluetooth) pen and paper (covered in tiny dots).

Audience Response Tools

Use an audience response tool such as TurningPoint (when face-to-face), or use the voting functionality built into most online meeting software. Audience response systems provide a great opportunity to guage opinion at conferences, or to check understanding in training presentations. Combine audience response with hyperlinks so that different material is presented on the responses the audience gives (for example, extra training material if the audience don’t answer questions correctly).

Challenges

Set a challenge. Trade Extensions sell software that finds the best solution to (sometimes complex) business problems. One difficulty the company faced when writing a new presentation with m62 was in showing prospects that often they thought problems were easy to solve when in fact they weren’t. Trade Extensions worked with m62 to design a simple puzzle with which to start their presentation. Sometimes, they even offer cash prizes in return for a correct solution – which draws the audience in to engage with the subject matter.

Live graphs

Collect and display audience data. Ask the audience a question, and use a graph to display the responses. Prepare a PowerPoint graph built around dummy data, and then enter real data into the spreadsheet used to build the graph when face-to-face with the audience. This technique can be used to show how an audience compares to average, and can generate useful insight, as well as serve as a starting point for further discussion.

Back channels

For Silicon Valley, or for those with audiences who just can’t concentrate on one thing at a time… Consider opening a “back channel” for your audience members to communicate with each other and comment on your presentation in real time. Use a hash tag (#) with Twitter, and project tweets with that tag in real time on a screen alongside your slides. This technique will mean giving up any control over what your audience pays attention to (phone, slides, presenter, Twitter feed), and so should be used with extreme caution. We really wouldn’t recommend it if you want your messages to be remembered. In addition, if your presentation goes wrong, remember that all the negative comments will be projected behind you, which may not be everyone’s idea of fun.

This article has listed seven ways to make a presentation interactive. Do you have any other ideas? Please share in the comments below.

In the current economic climate, the spotlight has been shone with some intensity on the sales process. Across the board, increased competition has forced businesses to re-double their sales efforts, both in terms of the lead generation process and the actual number of new business leads being generated. Either way, delivering a return on investment throughout the sales process has never been more critical.

In terms of sales presentations, it is essential to avoid the trap of generating and attending a significantly greater number of presentations only for the conversion ratio to tail off. In this scenario, the new business drive actually results in being a drain on precious time and financial resources and therefore defeats the purpose of the exercise.

As a result of the increased competition for what leads are available, businesses are having to work that bit harder not only to get their foot in the door, but to stand out from the competition. Getting the value proposition right is of course key – but either way, it is not always possible to get to a face-to-face presentation at the drop of the hat. Consequently, many businesses, in order to stay that step ahead of the competition, have been investing in virtual selling.

One of the key considerations when contemplating virtual selling is to ask what is so different about face-to-face selling that makes it so much more effective than telesales. The answer, which should not be hugely surprising (given the premium importance attached to generating face-to-face meetings) is that an audience will on average only recall 10% of what it hears, compared to around 30 to 40% of what they see. A face-to-face experience engages so much more of an audience’s senses, so that the ability to recall information is dramatically enhanced. Certainly an audience will recall more of what it sees or hears if it writes down the information – but the percentage increase has an impact in both cases; and visual presentations have a far greater starting platform than the audio telesales.

In the case of virtual selling, a mid-point between audio and visual, an online presentation needs to work that much harder to maintain the audience’s attention and as such needs to be far more visual. Bullet points in virtual selling are a sure-fire method to turn an audience off at the outset.

One of the key aspects in maintaining audience attention is movement to draw the audience’s attention along. This is true in face-to-face presentations and is similarly true in virtual selling. There are specific techniques available to provide this level of dynamism, and animations such as motion paths can work well in a virtual selling environment. With an average audience attention span ranging between 5 and 10 minutes, it is imperative to grasp interest at the outset and work hard to retain it thereafter. With this brief period of time to reach an audience, a standard 20-30 minute face-to-face presentation will simply not work. It is also important to ensure that the presentation content is fresh and new to the audience. Even if the other objectives of value proposition, composition, illustration and interest have been reached, if the content has been seen before – perhaps via the business’ website, the audience will, most likely, lose interest.

With virtual selling, the devil is in the detail and there are a number of basic yet key rules for ensuring that theory is effectively translated into practice:

• Potential prospects will respond well to the suggestion of web meetings if it is relatively easy for them to access than face-to-face meetings
• Prospects are not clients and consequently have much lower patience levels. Therefore, the URL needed for them to access the presentation needs to work immediately and be easy for them to remember. Any level of frustration during the experience may result in the prospect walking away before the presentation is even delivered.
• Order values from virtual meetings are typically lower than those agreed at face to face meetings. Moreover:
  • Conversion rates are lower
  • Activity rates are higher
  • Sales cycles are frequently shorter
  • Presenters must be prepared to follow up with a face-to-face appointment if necessary

Broadly, a few simple steps can be taken to ensure the maximum is gained from virtual selling. Whilst webcams may seem a good alternative in principle, they are often fraught with potentially crippling bandwidth issues. In simple terms, one small bottleneck at any point in the chain may be sufficient to undermine the entire experience.

So, whilst there are alternatives, it is little surprise that virtual selling offers a tempting solution for businesses when executed appropriately. In addition to offering significant cost savings, virtual selling can prove a far more successful sales mechanism than pure telesales and a far more cost-effective option than funding a field representative. Even as a marketing tool for the generation of appointments it is far more effective than calling (figures suggest three times as successful).

Overall, the bottom line is that wherever previously a telesales of telemarketing team would have been engaged, using a virtual presentation incorporating short visual presentations, complementing a face-to-face pitch, with no software to download will improve the impact of the pitch and subsequently, the profitability given the lower cost of sale. And that’s got to be good in any economic cycle.

When writing a sales presentation, sales presenters and those in marketing who support them need to choose their messages carefully and understand that the real value and return lies in being a great editor, rather than a prodigious publisher.

Many companies spend considerable time and effort on marketing activities and lead generation to actually get sales people face-to-face with prospective customers. Yet, this investment is often rendered useless by the failure of the sales presentation to deliver clear and succinct messages that convey value to the audience. Poor sales presentations are two-a-penny; the common denominating perception that they are boring, irrelevant, and forgettable.  However, the good news is if everyone else is writing and delivering awful sales presentations, you have the opportunity to shine and stand out, by writing a sales presentation that does exactly what it ought to; to write a sales presentation that is succinct, visaul, and that is recalled.

Focus on the Audience

Capitalising on these opportunities to get your foot in the door requires writing a presentation that is audience-focussed and not presenter focussed. Narcissus was only ever truly popular with himself.  Writing a sales presentation that is audience-focussed necessitates understanding your prospect. In some sales processes, this can mean using a first visit or phone call to fact-find, and only then presenting. For others, a meeting can be used to question first and present later.

Where prospects expect some sort of a presentation before they will open up and answer questions, then consider presenting opening slides to build credibility, stop to ask questions, and then present the rest of a sales presentation, emphasising those parts that will be of most interest.

Write Analogue, Not Digital

Start writing a sales presentation in ‘analogue’ form. Don’t open PowerPoint, don’t even open your laptop. Paper and pencil work fine; many people writing a sales presentation use Post-It notes to capture each key argument, and then move these around until sections of the presentation, and a good flow, are settled.

Lose the Script

m62 would not recommend using a script when delivering a sales presentation. Use of scripts can ruin spontaneity, and make presenters seem less ‘human’. Where certain sections of the presentation are given more focus (the introduction, the value proposition), it can make sense when writing the sales presentation to write a script for those slides. But writing the script is useful here not because it will be used (it shouldn’t), but because the process of writing  can help the presenter rehearse what they should say (even though they aren’t going to read aloud from a script).

Less is More

It is important to realise your audience is limited in the amount of information they can actually take in. However enlightening, witty or entertaining your presentation, the message remains that too much is too much – it’s just wasted information and wasted time.

A great many presentations will contain numerous slides of bullet points. However, bullet points do not actually equate to succinctness – and shorter bullet points are not easy to process. If your presentation has 30 slides with five bullet points on each, that is 150 pieces of information that you are asking your audience to remember. With all the will in the world, that is simply not going to happen. Far from being superhuman, the average working memory of a human is seven +/- two quanta. If your audience is particularly interested, they will hopefully write things down from your presentation, improving their memory recall further. Even so, your audience are not going to take in 150 pieces of information, let alone remember them.

Value Proposition for Structure

It is critical when writing a sales presentation to create a hierarchy of information, with your value proposition at the top. The value proposition should be used to structure your sales presentation, and should be repeated as a content slide – so that at least this core message can be remembered.

Leave Behinds aren’t Memorable

Whilst the temptation to leave a written version of the presentation behind has merit, the bad news is that few, if any of your audience will read it. A leave-behind cannot replace the need for a memorable presentation in the first place. A sales presenter has one real shot at being remembered – and that is when delivering the sales presentation. A better leave-behind that printed slides or a document is a recording of the presentation being delivered, viewable on demand from the web.

Eliminate Weak Points

Under the value proposition, further information can be used as proof – but even then, more information does not necessarily make for a stronger proof. The key to writing a strong sales presentation is to pay attention to raising the impact of the ‘weakest’ messages; if a presentation has obvious holes in it, the audience will start to wonder where else sales messages are not as powerful as they first appear.

Editor not Publisher

The best way to write a sales presentation is to think like an editor rather than a publisher; to play devil’s advocate with your own messaging and to be brutally honest, deleting as much information as possible. Your audience has a limited capacity to recall and identifying no more than five key reasons that your audience should buy from you rather than a competitor will provide a far greater return than bombarding your audience with dozens of sales messages. In the world of writing sales presentations, it is the editor, not the publisher, who is king.

Here, we share ten tips for those developing corporate presentations, and those who have to deliver them.

1. Set objectives. Why are you delivering a corporate presentation? What do the audience think now, and what do you want them to think? What are the audience doing now, and what do you want them to be doing? If you know the individuals – answer these questions for each key decision maker.
2. See things from the audience’s point of view. We’ve had clients who have insisted on showing a series of pictures of their new office building and staff gym. Ask, Does the audience care about this? What’s in it for them?
3. If you can email your corporate presentation to somebody who wasn’t there to see you deliver it, and they can understand it – then you, as a presenter, aren’t necessary. Unnecessary presenters struggle when delivering corporate presentations face-to-face (the audience can just read the slides instead). Instead, use visual cognitive dissonance to make slides captivating.
4. Make your corporate presentation’s key messages memorable. Most presentations make 100s of points, and this leads to most people forgetting most of your messages. What’s worse, when you have a few people in the audience, they all remember different points. Less is more. A logical structure is essential, and repetition is key.
5. Think about who will deliver your corporate presentation. Often those writing and designing corporate presentations aren’t the same as those who will have to deliver them. Presentation skills training will help the sales team to deliver the presentation, but the material needs to sound credible coming from their mouths. If the CEO helps to write the presentation, it can be worth checking that your sales team are comfortable delivering the material.
6. No bullet points. You spend time and money on your brand – why undermine it when face-to-face with prospects? Use visual PowerPoint slides – charts, diagrams, animation, and photos to appear dynamic and up-to-date, and to get your point across.
7. Use visual aids to help your audience understand your messages. Diagrams and images can help your audience grasp and remember your point. A ‘Presentation Zen’ approach has its place – but one beautiful photo probably won’t convey why one insurance pricing mechanism is superior to another, or explain how a global IT solution is to be delivered. Find the right visual to make your message easy to explain.
8. Tell stories, and use case studies. Ideally, supply a few so that those delivering your presentation can use one relevant to each audience. Stories are memorable, and bring your messages to life. Stories recounting previous customer successes help to present credentials in an interesting way, and reassure prospects that you can do what you say you can.
9. Don’t just list your products. Instead, structure your presentation around the problems that your company can solve, and the benefits that your company can deliver. Then, just talk about your products as you explain the different ways your company can deliver value. This might mean that one product gets mentioned in a few different places, but wouldn’t you rather your prospect got interested in all the products that help solve a problem they are facing?
10. Avoid one-size-fits-all if it doesn’t. Your company might not change much, but your prospects are all different. So, build some flexibility into your corporate presentation. There’s a balance to find between presenting a clear and consistent message to the market, with tailoring your corporate presentation to different audiences. Try to make every prospect feel that you can solve their problems, and can offer what they need. Consider an interactive presentation if you want to give your company’s presenters flexibility to quickly respond to client interests.

Of course, one of the best ways to ensure that your corporate presentation works well is to work with a high quality presentation agency to make sure everything is done correctly. But beware – not every presentation agency is as proficient as they ought to be – there’s a big difference between an effective corporate presentation and making a slide look a bit nicer.

Got any further tips for effective corporate presentations? Share in the comments, below.

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