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Tips for Using Incentives to Sweeten Your Sales Presentation

Posted on by Rick E

Incentives are one way to sweeten the deal when you give your pitch.

Clients are always looking for the best benefits whenever they invest in potential business partners. According to marketing professors George and Michael Belch, offering them something extra gives them a reason to buy into your proposal.

Offering incentives is a special type of marketing tactic used in sales promotions. Often used to add value to the product or service that you want to sell, these help speed up your clients’ purchase decision.

At the same time, make sure to differentiate between features and benefits. Features are facts about the product being promoted while benefits are the results that consumers get in return.

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Here are four sales presentation ideas on how to include incentives in your proposals and to maximize your offers:

Keep It Specific

Discounts and rewards for purchases made within a set of time are some examples that allow companies to target different kinds of people.

In the same way, presenters need information about their clients’ expectations before they can offer the right kind of sales incentive.

For example, will your client be purchasing your products by bulk? Offer them a discount to save up on their expenses.

Is your client looking for a long-term partnership for supplying electronic parts? Offer them a discounted rate or free maintenance.

Knowing what your client needs is the first step to finding the right mix of sales incentives.

Brand Loyalty

Sales promotions are used to give occasional incentives that keep customers loyal.

Clients can sometimes invest in other presenter’s ideas if they see that the offers are equal.

To outsell your competition, offer your clients something others cannot.

This tactic is effective especially for clients that you’ve worked with before.

If there are special loyalty incentives that you can offer in your sales presentation, use them.

Encourage Them to Try Something New

Trial incentives are a good way to encourage investments from clients.

This works well especially if you have a new offer to present.

Even something as simple as a money-back guarantee goes a long way to establishing your credibility to your clients.

Whether you’re pitching a new product to loyal clients, or a startup company with a new product, offering them an incentive to try out your new offers are a good way to generate an interest.

Measure the Results

One benefit of using incentives is that they’re easily measured.

Try keeping a database to measure how effective your offers are for you to stay accountable to your clients.

This should contain a list of clients that accepted your incentives.

As you build this up, use this info as proof to other clients that your offerings are better than the competition’s.

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As effective as incentives are, they’re only used to sweeten the deal. Clearly state the benefits that your basic offer has to give.

No amount of extra offers makes an unsatisfactory pitch worthy of investment.

To get more out of what your presentation has to offer, get in touch with a professional presentation partner for free! All it takes is 15 minutes to get a better PowerPoint presentation.

All it takes is 15 minutes to get a better PowerPoint presentation.

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References

“Ad Agency Tricks: Outsell Competitors in Sales Presentations.” SlideGenius, Inc. 2015. Accessed June 11, 2015.
“A Presentation Expert’s Guide to Knowing the Audience.” SlideGenius, Inc. 2015. Accessed June 11, 2015.
Belch, G. & Belch, M. Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective. (6th ed). Singapore: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2003.
“Marketing Features Vs. Benefits.” Entrepreneur. Accessed July 9, 2018.

Power Up Your PowerPoint: Elevate Your Presentations with Video Clips

Posted on by Rick E

We’ve discussed playing your slides on loop, but here’s another PowerPoint tutorial for you. Did you know that you can easily embed videos to your slide deck? Consider adding a short clip to your slides.

It’s an effective way to engage your audience, especially if you’re working with a younger crowd. Although the majority of the population leaning towards visual learning would be engaged enough with images, videos make your slides even more visual, adding another dimension to the usual presentation design.

Compared to an image – like a picture or a diagram – a video clip is a culmination of sensory engagement on a slide. As long as your video of choice is relevant to your pitch, then it may definitely help leverage your points.

Here’s a quick rundown of how you can add motion to your deck, and what you need to take note of as you embed this media file on your slides:

Consider video formats

There are several video formats, and it’s important you consider which one can work best for your PowerPoint presentation design. Some formats allow for larger, higher quality videos. Other formats compress videos into a smaller size. A smaller file size means that they’re easier to share.

These are the video file formats that PowerPoint supports:

  • Windows Media Video File (.wmv)
  • Windows Media File (.asf)
  • Audio Video Interleave (.avi)
  • Movie File (.mpg)
  • MP4 Video File (.mp4, .m4v, .mov)
  • Adobe Flash Media (.swf)

You can read more about the specifics of each of these file types here. Knowing what clip type would work best on the slide will save you the trouble of clips that can’t be embedded, or worse, won’t load once you start your slide show.

How to add videos to your slides

The newer versions of Microsoft PowerPoint (2010 onwards) allow you to add videos in just a few steps. In this tutorial, we’ll be using PowerPoint 2010.

You have two options.

Option 1: You can go to the Insert tab and choose the Video icon in the Media group.

embedding video ppt 02

Option 2: From the Placeholder in your slide, click on the Video icon that says ‘Insert Media Clip‘.

embedding video ppt 01

 

Both options will prompt a dialogue box allowing you to choose video files from your computer.

You can add videos you’ve made yourself, or clips you’ve downloaded online. If there are videos from YouTube or other video streaming sites that you’d like to use, you can download them using free tools available online like ClipConverter and KeepVid. A quick Google search will help you find one that works best for you.

Conclusion

Videos can definitely add a unique life to your slide. While images may engage the viewers’ gaze, the unique function of a multimedia slide can help pique their interests further.

Try out this new feature of PowerPoint to gain positive attraction. If you’re unsure of how to incorporate videos into an appropriately interesting deck, set up a consultation with a presentation guru today! All it takes is 15 minutes.

 

Reference

Gordon, Whitson. “What’s the Difference Between All These Video Formats, and Which One Should I Use?” Lifehacker. Accessed June 19, 2014.

 

Featured Image: Daniel STL via flickr.com

6 PowerPoint ‘Hacks’ for Confused First Timers

Posted on by Rick E

We talk a lot about helping you achieve the perfect PowerPoint presentations. Sometimes, these things are easier said than done. Microsoft PowerPoint can be tedious for many first timers.

You can use these PowerPoint hacks and shortcuts to help you through this new process. Hopefully, it’ll help lower your stress levels, too.

While making your presentation

1. Learn the Shortcuts

Holding down the CTRL key in combination with other keys will help you lessen the use of your mouse.

Copy something from a document you’ve written earlier by pressing CTRL + C and Paste it to your slide with CTRL + V. This might seem basic for long-time Microsoft users, but it’s so helpful that we can’t risk letting beginners miss out on it.

You can also hold down SHIFT if you want to avoid skewing images, or select multiple objects. Likewise, the FUNCTION keys at the very top of your keyboard can also prove to be a huge help. One of the most helpful keys in PowerPoint is F5, which is a quick way to start your slide show.

Read up on all of the useful PowerPoint shortcuts and over time, you’ll be able to memorize the ones that are most useful.

2. Use Grid and Guidelines

Misaligned images or text boxes can be distracting to some audience members. Avoid having to squint to make sure everything’s in perfect order by using PowerPoint’s Grid and Guidelines function.

Hit CTRL+G to display the Grid and Guidelines dialog box.

3. Edit Images to Manage the File Size

The images you use can bloat the file size of your PowerPoint presentation. It’ll be hard to share your presentation the size is too large. Fix this problem by selecting an image (or multiple images), then choosing the Compress Pictures option under the Format tab.

While in the Format tab, you can also edit the images by choosing Corrections, Color, and Artistic Effects. Just make sure that you have permission to alter the pictures you’re using.

During your presentation

4. Hide the Pointer

As we’ve tackled, audience members can be easily distracted by the smallest thing. Even a small, white pointer.

You can hide the pointer by pressing CTRL + H. Don’t worry, it’ll show up again if you press A.

5. Shift to a Black Screen

It’s important that you don’t let the slides do the talking for you. If you feel like you’re losing your audience to the screen, just press B or the period keys.

Go back to your presentation by pressing N to move on to the next slide, or P to come back to the previous one.

6. Skip to Any Slide

If anyone in the audience raises a point you discussed in a specific slide, you can skip to it by pressing the slide number then hitting enter.

For example, if Slide #5 holds the answer, just press 5, enter, and you’re there. This tip will be even more effective if you have handouts of your slides printed out with you.

Consider this guide a starting point to your PowerPoint efficiency. Remember that as with everything, being an effective PowerPoint user will take time. Just be patient!

 

Reference

“25 PowerPoint™ Tips.” Jolene Morris. Accessed June 08, 2014.

Adobe Programs for Enhancing Presentation Designs

Posted on by Rick E

As we all know, PowerPoint presentations are highly useful for sharing information. We use it to educate, train, motivate, or even to sell. Not all pitch deck presentations are created equal, though. To be effective, your slide decks should be well organized and carry strong visuals. And when it comes to creating visual elements, practically no other tools are as powerful as the Adobe programs.

Below are some of the Adobe applications that can enhance your next presentation design:

Adobe Photoshop

Microsoft PowerPoint is considered the industry standard for presentation tools. Adobe Photoshop, on the other hand, continues to set the bar for image editing. When you combine the features of these programs, you have a great chance of creating an effective presentation.

Custom backgrounds are among the great things that presenters can create with Photoshop. While you can always use PowerPoint’s preloaded templates, your presentation will only end up looking bland and generic. A Photoshop-created background, on the other hand, will allow your presentation to stand out and look professional.

To create your own background, simply choose an image that you want to use. Open it in Photoshop and edit it accordingly. After saving your personalized background image, insert it into the PPT by right-clicking on the slide and then selecting “Format Background.”  One reminder, though. Make sure that the image you use is appropriate to the theme of your presentation design. Otherwise, it will distract your audience.

Adobe Illustrator

Illustrator can produce just about any type of images, making it perfect for web graphics, marketing collateral, and, of course, PowerPoint presentations. A vector-based tool, Illustrator is quite different from Photoshop (which is raster-based). This means it works using lines and curves unlike Photoshop, which does its job on a pixel level.

Using vectors created in Illustrator has some advantages over Photoshop-edited images. For one, vector objects are scalable. You can change their size without worrying about quality loss.

When you create an image in Illustrator, make sure to save it for PowerPoint. To do this, click File and then select “Save For Microsoft Office.” Choose a location for the file, then enter a filename before clicking Save. This command allows you create a PNG file that can be used not only in PPT but also in other Microsoft Office applications.

If you need to customize the PNG settings to improve resolution, transparency, or background color, you can just choose Export instead of the Save for Microsoft option.

Saving Files

Graphics imported into PowerPoint usually fall into two main categories: The Bitmap or Paint-Type and the Object-Oriented or Draw-Type.

It’s recommended that you choose widely used Bitmap types such as .JPG, .BMP, or .TIF files. Unusual files like QuickTime compressed, PICT, and EPS don’t often translate very well. So when you save or export images, determine the file type carefully to ensure a great looking final image.

References

Akhter, Aquil. “60 Beautiful Logo Design Tutorials And Resources.” Smashing Magazine. April 30, 2009. Accessed April 28, 2014.
Bear, Jacci Howard. “What Is the EPS File Format?” About.com. Accessed April 28, 2014.

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