A Compelling Core Message

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When you deliver a presentation pitch on your company, how many bullets and words are on your average page?  The answer should be less than 25 words per slide, and no bullets!  Imagine if you were in the audience, what would you want to hear?  Something compelling, something relevant, perhaps even a story?

What you don’t want to hear are 100 percent facts! While intellectual material is good, facts don’t sell.  They never have.  There needs to be an emotional appeal to the audience. To do that you need to break down who the audience is and what they are feeling.  An audience-centric approach will allow you to start the building process of a compelling core message.

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Story Telling Presentations

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Take a close look at the sample above. It’s a medical presentation from The President of a major medical healthcare group. Probably not what you’d expect in that vertical for presentation material?

If you looked at the slides you will notice very few words on each slide example. This presentation was a smashing success for the presenter.  He told stories, spoke his passion and used the slides to  prompt him on the subject matter and engage the audience quickly with impact.  It must have worked, because someone in the audience was so impressed, they became our customer!

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Visual PowerPoint Slideshow

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Every once in a while at the end of a compelling message PowerPoint presentation, you might have a need for a high volume of visuals to be shown. In the case of the example above The State University of New York (SUNY), Oneonta campus, has finished their introduction presentation to prospective students and  parents, and want to give them a professional flavor of their university and regional culture.  With enough variety and professionally developed placeholders, PowerPoint can be set to run, animate, transition on a timed basis to coincide with a Q&A session that typically follows a presentation. The result is a patient audience through a Q& A session as they are intrigued by visuals that spark questions and engagement!

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A Bit of Humble Advice

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Need help avoiding a “cow patty” presentation? The one that’s loaded with bullets, charts and overblown value propositions? Imagine having someone to write the newly refreshed story and build dynamite graphics, while you focusing your attention elsewhere. Do we have your interest? If so check out the following link…

Capability Slide Library Presentations

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Assuming you have a core compelling message presentation, it might be time to offer some flexibility to your business development staff and supply them with a capability slide library.  Like the example above, these libraries usually consist of 20 to 35 PowerPoint slides that are in ‘reserve’ and at the disposal of the business developer.

In most cases the business developer has an idea about the prospect that they are pitching to in their face to face or webinar meeting.  Knowing what vertical they are in helps anticipate what interest or concerns the audience might have about your services or products.  With this information in hand, the business developer can now supplement the core message story presentation with a few slides that might be designed to answer some questions after your compelling story presentation has been delivered.

Capability slide libraries sit in reserve like a treasure chest of goodies. Sometimes there is good company information, but it just does fit into the flow of your compelling story. They never disrupt the compelling story presentation but rather provide a nice icing on the cake.

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Core Messaging

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Does core messaging affect a presentation , and other selling collaterals?  Most companies today have an idea of what their selling proposition is, however determining what messaging is placed on a business development presentation versus on a web site, trade magazine advertisement or sales teaser can be daunting. You don’t want to assume it’s all exactly the same.

Having an external source with 3rd party objectivity, and a process to help develop core messaging might seem like a fair amount of work upfront, but your collaterals (all of them) will be set for quite a while. Even more importantly there will be enough consistency to help your organization build your brand, but most importantly you get everyone at your company on board, assuming they were included in the development process and therefore carrying the same consistent well-structured message out to the business world.

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Presenting to Multiple Audiences

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Sometimes you have to present to a diverse group, just like this organization was required to do in the sample shown above. There may be industry executives, industry media and analyst in the same audience. How do you connect with all the constituents groups with just one presentation? The answer is a story. We all love stories…right?  There’s more truth to that statement than you might realize. We’re not talking about bed time stories, but rather compelling messaging that has removed itself from the use of ho-hum bullets.

It’s been proven in neuroscience that the best way to connect with different types is by telling a compelling story.  Different personalities and brain types extract what they need from stories as long as you have presented information that creates the needed curiosity to engage the frontal cortex.  Simple solution based questioning (or statements) integrated into your story can connect with any audience member, regardless of their specific agenda.

Drop the bullets and work up a compelling story to engage your next multiple audience group.

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Make Your Presentation 4G LTE Bandwidth

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How do we build presentations that embrace the audience? Did you know that less content per slide allows the mental bandwidth of the audience to quickly determine the slide messaging? If the audience can grasp the general messaging of the slide in under four seconds, similar to an advertisement, then there’s a fair chance that they will be able to actually listen to what the presenter has to say. This should be a good thing.

The flip side is what we have all seen too often, so much information on the slide that the audience can’t absorb it in a reasonable amount of time. They have to strain to figure out the visuals and the copy , thus losing focus and the valuable connection with the presenter. Those slides move at 2G speed, which most of us cannot even remember.

Take a good look at the slides above and you won’t see a lot of words on the actual slides.  Just enough to get the presenter going with their dialog. Easy to read and embrace from the audience perspective.  To get your presentation moving at 4G LTE speed minimize the content on the slide.

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Presentation by E-mail

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In today’s business world it is becoming common for a prospective party to request a presentation be sent via PowerPoint for review.  If there is any way to send an alternative, shorter document we would suggest not sending a full presentation and holding out for a live face to face or webinar presentation at a later date.

However sometimes an e-mail presentation is unavoidable.  In this case the copy on the slides must provide enough information so that the reader has a clear and full grasp of the pitch.  What it cannot be is a group of random facts or an extended list of solutions and benefits.  You need to craft a story from start to finish so the audience will be compelled to read it from beginning to end. The visuals need to be simple and not distracting so the readers eyes are not constantly pulled away from the story that you have created.

Keep the story presentation to 15 slides or less and let the prospect know up front that your pitch can be easily ready in under 10 minutes. If they can’t read it all in that time frame. Rewrite your story to be more concise.

 

Giving Your Business Developers Great Presentation Tools

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Business developers in tough economic times need to be able to put their best foot forward for every opportunity. A presentation sales deck can make or break the service or product differentiation that you hope makes it into the prospects mind. Building the right deck requires an understanding of the sales force, presentation styles, the audience demographics, and what the desired call to action is at the completion of the sales pitch. Once those three elements are identified one can begin crafting a more compelling and targeted message.

If you have a professionally prepared presentation to offer your business developers, you have offered them a sales tool that they can get excited about. We all know enthusiasm sells and a professionally prepared presentation is the perfect way to get your business developers excited and ready to sell.

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