sales pitch Archives

How to Maximize Quick Presentations

Posted on March 3, 2020May 3, 2023 by Rick E

You don’t always have enough time to sell your ideas. Ideally, you’d want 15-20 minutes to go through the finer details of what makes your business special. However, given your client’s (or perspective client’s) busy schedule, you don’t always get that. When you come across those cases, you should know how to maximize the time you have to make a winning sales presentation.

At the end of the day, it will always come down to making every slide—and second—count. At SlideGenius, it’s our business as presentation experts to create pitch decks that help our clients sell their business in the boardroom.

Prospects will have their eyes and ears open to presentations that are unique. These are our tips on how to carefully create a presentation that can successfully sell your business:

Open Strong

When time is short, the audience’s attention is your most valuable resource. You need to take control of it wisely. This makes your opening slide the most crucial, as this will set the tone of your presentation. Failure to grasp your audience’s interest from the get-go could be a telltale sign of a failed pitch attempt.

Having a strong hook is an effective strategy to catching your audience’s attention. This can be done in several ways:

Make a Provocative Statement

These are meant to challenge your audience’s ideas. It entices them to listen in to what you have to say. After all, it’s only natural to want to hear someone back up their statements after hearing bold claims that catch them off guard.

Additionally, highlight shocking numbers to drive the impact of your statement.

Ask “What If?”

Engage the imagination of your audience by proposing a unique and beneficial scenario. This simple trick subconsciously pushes audience members to put themselves into the scenario you propose. It’s a great foundation to the narrative you’re trying to build throughout your presentation.

Engage Visually

Complement your opening statement with an image that’s relevant and impactful. It will draw in your audience’s eyes and improve their comprehension of your message. This one-two punch of content creates a clear message that your audience can easily latch on to.

Stick to Your Core Message

You can afford to meander through every minute detail about your company. A good sales pitch delivers a clear message, not a long one.

Knowing that you don’t have much time on your hands means you don’t have many slides to work with either. Treat each slide like a crucial chapter to your story, presenting new and thought-provoking information with every click. But remember that they all should contribute to your core message. The last thing you want is for them to feel like their precious time was wasted by slides that ultimately served very little purpose.

Tailor Your Content

Being prepared will save you time. Before you step into to the boardroom, beware of who exactly you are presenting to. Is it the CEO? Or a specific department within a company? Put yourself into the shoes of your audience and consider the content you want to see from a presentation.

Audiences will feel a deeper connection with your pitch when it feels like the content was made for their needs specifically. Having a unique presentation for each one will reduce the feeling of repetition for yourself as a presenter.

SlideGenius Is Your Presentation Expert

Need help for your next big meeting? Contact us and we can create a winning presentation! From PowerPoint presentations to animated marketing videos, we are capable of crafting a variety of pitch materials designed to boost communication and drive better business.

We’ve worked on over 1 million slides for +3,000 global clients. Every presentation has the potential to be a unique and effective sales tool.

Our team of presentation designers, writers and animators collaborate diligently to ensure every element of a presentation is treated excellently. We’ve worked with clients from every industry, creating presentations that sell regardless of topic or scale. The refined skills of our team consistently provide world-class design standards that boost the image of our partners. Let us help you inject new life into your presentations and raise your business towards new heights.

We have helped spark million-dollar growth for businesses around the world. The growth of our clients is our biggest measure of success. Together, let’s achieve greatness through the unlimited capabilities within PowerPoint! Reach out now to get a quote free of charge.

The Hows of Concise Presentations

Posted on May 8, 2019May 3, 2023 by Rick E

Technology gives easy access to information and a more convenient way of living.

These benefits, however, have disadvantages, including impatience, shorter attention spans.

As the average attention span gets shorter, you should capture and hold their focus. One way is to ensure that those blocks of text are condensed and concise.

Let’s look at the following principles according to the Writing Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Writing Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

Make It Action-Packed

Make your PowerPoint slide design more engaging by transforming your sentences from having a passive voice to a more active voice. This minimizes the confusion and frustrations.

Trim the Fat

Delete unnecessary words. And start with phrases.

Instead of “we are able to” change it to “we can.” Remove length and keep its meaning.

Positivity Is Key

According to Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, another tip to make your language more precise is by changing a negative sentence into an affirmative one. Inserting positivity in your sentence makes it assertive and shows the speaker knows what they are talking about.

Quoting The Elements of Style, “…the reader is dissatisfied with being told what is not; he wishes to be told what is.”

Keep It Simple

Another way for people to keep their attention to what you’re saying and showing is by using simple vocabulary to convey your point.

The best practice is to make sure that you keep things as simple as possible for your target audience. Don’t confuse them. For example, you can substitute “use” for “utilize” or “help” for “facilitate.” Be direct and avoid fluff.

Be Clear

Avoid using vague ideas in your paragraphs. It’s better to go straight to the point since you’re trying to give your point before the audience’s attention wanders.

“Sugar is an important factor to consider when losing weight.”

“To lose weight, cut back on sugar.”

The first sentence meanders while the second one is compact and straight to the point.

Once you have your content pat down, you may now format your slides for a cleaner look.

Make Your Presentation the Best

You may even get in touch with businesses that build custom PowerPoint slides. At SlideGenius, we’ve been helping people create captivating presentations since 2012. We’ve helped our clients raise more than $500 million dollars over the years.

For thousands of clients, we have proven to be the masters of storytelling and vivid imagery. If you’re eager to make sure your PowerPoint presentation is the best, reach out to us and find out how we can help you make sure you are showing the world your value.

Should You Distribute Handouts on Your Next Presentation?

Posted on September 5, 2018May 3, 2023 by Rick E

After each sales pitch, speakers can only hope their audience had taken something from their presentation—to have engaged the audience enough for the speaker to be remembered.

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Distributing handouts is a great way to remind your audience of your topic’s key points. This is especially helpful if you have more information that you would like to relay, but can’t include in the presentation because of time constraint or layout/design reasons

These are especially useful for presentations with tons of details because it is impossible for your audience to take in that much information.

What does it contain?

While your PowerPoint is customized to contain the key points of your presentation, your handout provides an extensive explanation of the details bulleted in your deck and your contact information.

Usually just a page or two—enough to thumb through, the handout’s content shouldn’t only cover the topics discussed in your presentation. You can also include related information, such as case studies and other print collateral, that supports and further explains your pitch.

Should you distribute them?

Presentations shouldn’t exhaust the audience, instead, this is where you deliver your core message in an engaging way.

Adding the element of handouts strengthens your call-to-action, as these provide the resources they need to get in touch when they need to discuss purchasing decisions.

The advantages of handouts, however, come with downsides, including the possibility of creating a disconnect between you and the audience—serving as a distraction because the audience will be reading rather than listening.

In the end, it is up to you to whether to use print collateral during your presentation or not. After all, handouts only reinforce what you’ve already mentioned in your presentation. If you’re confident in your PowerPoint and you think it’s effective on its own, then there’s no need for them.

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People can only take in so much before they experience information overload and by the time they do, they will be unable to retain half of what you’ve said.

Handing out print collateral for the first time? No need to worry. Apart from being PowerPoint experts, we also provide print services that attend to these specific needs.

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References:

“Understanding Information Overload.” infoengineering. n.d. www.infogineering.net/understanding-information-overload.htm

Lampton, Bill. “Using Handouts to Reinforce Your Training Presentations.” Business Know-How. March 26, 2015. www.businessknowhow.com/growth/handouts.htm

The Good & the Bad: Presenting to a Generation X Audience

Posted on August 22, 2018May 3, 2023 by Rick E

The Pew Research Center released a study saying that millennials are dominating the U.S. labor force. That’s more than one in three people or 56 million millennials working or looking for work.

However, it’s those who were born between 1965 and 1981 (Generation X) that are changing the nature of work. Gen Xers are dominating the playing field, having founded more than half of all new businesses.