Does your sales presentation sound believable?

It is said that 90% of your communication is non verbal. That means, while you are busy speaking one verbal sentence to your customers, your body language and tone are speaking nine other sentences simultaneously. 

The nine sentences spoken through gestures and tones naturally overshadow the one meek verbal sentence you put together after careful rehearsals. If you don’t believe in what you are saying, it will show through – whether you like it or not.

So, how can you sound convincing and look convincing? 

The answer is simple. Take time to convince yourself about what you are selling. There is no other ‘trick’ to fake conviction.

If you are selling credit cards, pull out your wallet and see if you use the credit card you sell. If you sell insurance, ask yourself if you have bought insurance to protect your own life. You can’t run a restaurant, and then eat your lunch in the restaurant across the street.

Apart from the above, there are some more ways to increase your conviction in what you sell:

•           Read every literature available on your product or service. Knowing more is the first step to  loving more.

•          Talk to all the happy customers and find out why they are happy with your product

•          Talk to the highest producing sales people in your team, and find out how they do it

These steps should get you pumped up sufficiently to meet your next customer and win him over. 

Finally, there is a simple test to know if your conviction levels are sufficiently high. The test is – “Do you feel genuinely sorry for the customers who have not bought your product, because they are missing something truly valuable?” 

If your answer is “Yes”, you are ready to make your next call. 

Happy selling!

Why do most pitch books suck?

You already have a ‘canned sales presentation’ dished out by your marketing team. They told you that you will be shot in the head, if you changed any of the ‘carefully crafted’ the material. To their credit, they put in a lot of hard work to create the ‘official pitch book’ on a Multimedia CD, to serve as a leave behind material. It looked like the ‘tool’ would be an instant hit. But in reality it doesn’t pan out that way.

The presentation turns out to be an ‘instant yawn producer’. No matter how hard you try, your audiences don’t seem to connect with the content. After the first few seconds of the presentation, they begin to lean back slowly and sink into their chairs. Next, they let out that dreaded yawn. In fact, some of the audience is so polite in their attempt to stifle the yawn, that you can see tears forming in their eyes. 

You then try to hide some slides in an attempt to recover the situation. You rearrange the order of the slides. But, nothing seems to work. You come out disappointed after your ‘short pitch delivery’, which flew over your audiences’ head. 

Why do these mishaps happen with ‘Pitch books’ or ‘Sales aids’ used by most organizations? Here is the answer:

Most pitch books are designed like brochures. They educate (read - bore) the unsuspecting prospects about the ‘greatness’ of the company. To ensure that the knowledge is exposed to as many people as possible, companies use their sales people as walking gadgets that convert text to speech. 

No wonder, pitch books suck.

What is the solution? 

Make your marketing team read the following few sentences: 

“Design ‘Pitch books’ that initiate a conversation with the prospects. Let every word center around the concerns and expectations of your customers. Let your sales people build the discussion further, using the pitch book as a starting point”

Yes. Initiate the change. Stop accepting literature that tries to dump information on prospects. Remember, selling is about building a relationship, it’s not about distributing information. 

Happy selling!

Measure customer rapport in centimeters

Have you observed that the physical distance between people, when they meet personally, tells a lot about the extent of their relationship? 

That is the reason why, when someone unfamiliar stands too close to you and starts a conversation, you automatically take a few steps back. Just like poles repel in magnets, people repel when their space is invaded. There is even a study on this subject. It is called ‘Proxemics’.  

This is important for a sales presenter to know. You wouldn’t like to start off by making your customer uncomfortable, would you?

What is the ideal space?

As per the study conducted by Edward T. Hall, the space around a person can be classified as:

·         Less than 1.5 Ft is intimate Space

      1. 1.5 ft is Personal Space 

      2. 4 Ft is Social Space

      3.12 Ft is Public space

What does this mean to you as a sales presenter?

When you meet a customer for the first time, don’t be too eager to get too close. He might feel you are invading his personal space. You might scare him off.  

Here is the secret to build a good rapport quickly. 

Give sufficient space to your customer and be eager to learn about him and his concerns. Interestingly, the more the customer talks about himself, the closer he gets to you. You will see the distance closing naturally as the customer leans forward to talk to you. In fact, you can even measure your rapport with the customer - in centimeters. 

When you are sufficiently close to your customer, suggest your solution. There is every likelihood that he will buy from you. 

Go ahead and try this in your next sales presentation. Happy selling!

What do your slides say about you?

Here are some pictures of people. Please take a sheet of paper and answer the 2 questions for each person below:

      1. Do you expect the person to honor his commitment.

      2. Will you trust the person with your money?

Finished writing your answers? Good.

Now, what made you to come up with those views? You haven’t seen their faces. You haven’t met them personally. Then, on what did you base your opinion?

Yes. You made a guess based on their attire. 

As a sales presenter, it is important to realize that your attire speaks a lot about you, even before you utter a word. Your customer forms his opinion about your dependability, professionalism and trustworthiness in the first few seconds of your meeting him.

If you create an unfavorable impression in your first 6 seconds with him, you need to work extra hard for the remainder of your presentation. So, what is the action point?

Spend that extra money and buy yourself a really smart outfit. It is one of the finest investments you can make as a presenter. Let your attire pre-sell for you. Let your presence build the trust. 

When you look dependable, you will sound dependable. 

Another important point;

It is not enough if YOU look professional and your slides look like they are made by an amateur in a hurry. Your slides are the outfit for your thoughts. Make them look professional.

Spend that little extra to buy a set of professional templates for your slides. It is possible for you to transform your usual bullet point slides into professional slides in a matter of 15 minutes when you use the right templates. 

 

I recommend that you visit www.buyapresentation.com and take a look at their presentation template sets. The templates are made by business professionals with exceptional design sense. They have the world’s widest range of animated concept templates for sales and marketing presenters. 

Go and explore the options. Happy selling!

How many slides are ideal in a sales presentation?

When I conduct a Presentation workshop for sales and marketing professionals, the one question I always get is – How many slides should you use in a presentation? 

The opinion ranges from 3 slides to 25 slides. 

The reality is that there is no study that suggests that short presentations are more successful than long presentations or vice versa. But, there are a couple of suggestions about slides to help you make clear and convincing presentations.

Suggestion 1: Don’t spread a single idea over multiple slides

I have seen presentations that drive the audience crazy by dividing a single sentence over multiple slides. What is more, in these types of presentations – the presenter keeps moving the slides at break neck speed, while reading the sentence to the audience. Unless you wish to insult your audience’s ability to read English, don’t use this method in your sales presentations. 

It always helps to put all the relevant elements of an idea onto one slide, so that the audience can see the connection. If you divide your message into multiple slides, the audience needs to strain their memory to recollect the details of the previous slides. 

Suggestion 2: Don’t put more than one idea on a slide

A slide is like a paragraph in a novel or newspaper. You should always start a new paragraph for a new thought. In the same way start a new slide to convey a new thought in a presentation. 

This ensures that audience gets the time to absorb your ideas completely, and build their understanding in gradual steps. It also allows you to use meaningful diagrams to convey your ideas visually.

So, crunching your entire sales presentation into 2 slides – is NOT a great idea.

Conclusion

When you follow these two suggestions, you will automatically come up with the right number of slides for your professional presentations. 

Remember what matters is whether you are able to influence your customers to make a purchase decision, by giving them sufficient information. It doesn’t matter how many slides you use.

Happy selling!

Is it possible to use Presentation Templates?

Is it possible to use Presentation Templates?

Every presentation is unique. The ideas are unique. Is it possible to use readymade presentation templates to make your slides? 

First, take a moment to get back to your childhood days. Do you remember how they used to make wooden furniture those days?

A team of carpenters would cut, drill and polish individual pieces of wood, to make a table or chair. It would take days of hard work. It was impossible to imagine making furniture any other way.

Nowadays, when you order a table over the internet, the table arrives in a cardboard box. You unpack and fit the various pieces in the boxes, to create a table in minutes. Modular furniture has changed our living rooms, our kitchen and our lives. 

In the same way, it is possible to create high quality presentations by assembling relevant templates in a meaningful way. It only requires you to see your presentation as a set of ‘modules’. That is all.

Take a look at the slide decks you prepared in the last few presentations. You will notice that you used a set of standard ‘modules’ to make your presentation. You used an opening slide, an agenda, a process flow, a timeline, a transition slide etc. The content may have been different, but the modules remained more or less the same. 

When you realize this simple fact, you can reduce your time for preparing your presentations and produce professional slides in a matter of minutes..

How to use templates in your presentations?

It is very simple. Start with your usual bullet point slides. See the way the points are related to each other. Is the relationship a process flow, a time line, a list? Then, choose an appropriate template from the template set. ‘Cut – Paste’ text from your bullet points to the simple diagrams in the templates. 

Since the templates are professionally animated already, you can present your ideas in stages to avoid information overload. The whole process of transforming your bullet point slides into professional slides using templates - doesn’t take more than 15 minutes. But, the results are stunning. Look at the videos at http://www.buyapresentation.com/apps/videos/ to see how easy the process is and the kind of change you can make.

Needless to say, you need to use premium templates from a trusted source. I recommend you to use www.buyapresentation.com. They have a wide range of unique animated PowerPoint® templates for sales and marketing presentations. You can explain your concepts and ideas easily using their diagram templates (which is the best in the category). You can learn about how to express your ideas visually by downloading their free ‘180 degree shift’ e-book. 

Take a minute to visit the site, and you will never make slides the same old boring way again. Happy selling!

Are you asking your audience to throw you out?

Do you know that there is a label stuck on your forehead that only your audience can read? Your audience behave just the way you instructed them to behave. Let me explain that to you a bit more in detail. 

What is written on the label is ‘what you think about yourself’ at a given point of time. 

If you feel ‘confident’ inside – the label reads, ‘I have got something valuable to share. So, sit up and listen’.

If you feel ‘shaky’ inside – the label reads, ‘I am not sure if it is worth the while for you to listen to me’.

Naturally, the audience behaves as you instruct them. 

What is the solution?

Fake it till you make it.

Practice the first 90 seconds of your presentation thoroughly. I know of so many seasoned presenters who memorize their first few lines, so that they could focus their attention on engaging their audience with eye contact. Interestingly, it is these extensive rehearsals that make them look spontaneous on stage. 

Once you convey confidence in your first few minutes, audience will give you all the attention you need from thereon. When you find your audience enthusiastic, you will feel enthusiastic too, and the spiral continues.

So, when you take control of what is written on the label on your forehead, you will take control of your audience. Happy selling!

Reduce The Number Of Slides With Concept Diagrams

Reduce The Number Of Slides With Concept Diagrams

Is it possible to reduce the number of slides by representing the ideas visually? The answer is a resounding ‘Yes’. Here is the proof.

While I was browsing through the net yesterday, I came across a presentation on ‘The right way to conduct meetings’. Here are a couple of slides from that ‘typical’ presentation:

      

Let us make this over with our ‘concept diagram principles’ step by step.

Step1 : Reduce the ‘blah’:

If you read through the content carefully, you will see that there are 4 main points covered:

1.  Rationalize the agenda based on criticality of the issues
2.  Rationalize the number of participants based on their ability to take action post  the meeting
3.  Give participants sufficient time to prepare for the meeting
4.  Conclude by assigning clear responsibilities to members 

·      

Step 2: Divide the points into objects and relationships

Objects are in blue and the relationships in red…

1. Rationalize the agenda based on criticality of the issues
2. Rationalize the number of participants based on their ability to take action post the meeting
3. Give participants sufficient time to prepare for the meeting
4. Conclude by assigning clear responsibilities to members. 

Step 3: Represent the relationship visually

Here is the result of doing this…

Thus, with a concept diagram we not only reduced the number of slides, but also made sure that the slide is clearer and visually appealing. 

Do visit www.buyapresentation.com to find a free e-book on making concept diagrams step-by-step.

HOW TO REFRESH YOUR SALES PRESENTATION

Time to press the pause button

Recollect the day you joined your sales team. 

You not only were eager to prove yourselves, but also were quite curious to find out as many selling points about your product or service as possible, to bag deals. You memorized all that was taught by your sales training team. You applied some of those ideas and got some success. 

Later, with experience on the field, you developed thumb rules of your own and discovered some ‘selling points that work’ that were not taught in your training. Eventually those selling points became part of your standard sales presentation. 

Now, it is time to press the pause button and take a day to ‘Hunt for fresh selling points’.

Why should you do this?

As sales people, over time we get complacent with our working ways, and stop looking for new ideas. We may take the time to refresh our selling points based on the product changes, market changes or changes in customer preferences. The one day you spend to step back and objectively look at your selling points can make a world of difference to the commissions you earn.

Planning the ‘selling points’ day

1.  Talk to colleagues: Start by spending 15 minutes with each of your sales colleagues in an informal setting (like - over a cup of coffee), to ask about the specific selling points they use to close deals. You might be surprised to discover some nuggets that you never thought of. Realize that like you worked out your own set of ‘selling points that work’, your colleagues too have discovered their own set too. There is very little opportunity for them to share it with you, if not for this day.
2.  Talk to customers: Next, pick up the phone and call up your existing customers. Ask them about their experience of your product. Ask them about the specific features of your product that benefit them the most.
3.   Create Value Statement: Once you finish compiling all the learning for the day, start creating a ‘value statement’ for each of those points. Now, take a print out of the value statements, and put it in your folder.
   This is fresh arsenal that will work wonders to your conviction about the product.  This reflects in your confidence and words when you make the next sales presentation.
   
   Whenever you feel a little down, go through the list – and you will get a fresh sense of energy to meet your next customer. 
   
   
   Remember, to conduct this exercise at least once in 4 months to recharge yourself and your pitch. Happy selling!

Our presentation is a category winner in the World’s Best Presentation Contest on Slideshare.

The link for Confessions of a Horrified Audience - Winner 2010 Presentation Horror Story Contest on Slideshare..

http://www.slideshare.net/Metamorph/audience-bill-of-rights

How to pitch in 2 minutes - BuyAPresentation

How to pitch in 2 minutes - BuyAPresentation

It happens too often to ignore. You spend hours working on your elaborate presentation. You spit and polish your pitch with colorful charts, testimonials and a project plan. When you reach the meeting room, your client says, “Bob! I have to rush for an urgent meeting. Show me what you’ve got in 2 minutes.”

What do you say in those 2 minutes to create the impact of a 20 minute presentation?

There is no point searching for words at that point in time. You need to be ready with that pitch - upfront, if you want to make it big as a sales presenter.

Here is my suggestion to make your 2 minute pitch. 

Take a sheet of paper and answers these three questions:

1. TANGIBLE BENEFIT: What is the one most important tangible benefit offered by your product? The benefit should be clearly measurable.
2. SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE: How is your offering significantly different from any other such offering? The difference should be an obvious one.
3. CLEAR PROOF: What is the proof for your claim? The proof should be credible enough for the customer to accept without question.

Your answers to these questions are the 2 minute pitch. 

There is a lot of science behind those 3 questions. They directly influence the decision making process of your customers.

Here is the caveat. Though the questions are simple and direct, the answers to those questions may not be easy to find.

 Take the time necessary to come up with the best answers. Call up your existing customers, visit your ‘Product’ department or interview the highest producing sales people to get the clues. The time spent on this is worth its weight in gold.

In fact, creating this pitch should be your first priority as a sales presenter. The process will give you a lot of clarity about your product or service, which in turn will reflect as conviction in your voice when you make your next sales presentation.

Happy selling!

How to create a pitch table - BuyAPresentation

How to create a pitch table - BuyAPresentation

Influencing customers is tough

If you have been in sales for a while, you would realize that, it is one thing to know a lot of information about your product, and completely another thing to know how to use that information to influence your customers.

What is a pitch table?

A pitch table enables you to see your information as an answer to the 4 critical questions in the minds of your customers. The 4 questions that a pitch table addresses are:

1. What concerns of your customers are solved by your product?
2. What features of your product solve those concerns?
3. What is unique about the features of your product compared to the alternatives available?
4. What is the proof for your claims?

Since these are the questions that a customer considers intuitively before making a purchasing decision, having the information available in one readily accessible table is extremely useful.

An Example

I have tried to construct a ‘Pitch table’, for our product - ‘Premium Animated Powerpoint templates for Sales and Marketing professionals’ as an example.

To give you a quick background about the product:

Our customers are sales and marketing professionals. They have excellent products and ideas that make a difference to their customers’ lives. But, they don’t have the time, or the design expertise to create professional looking POWERPOINT™ slides to convey those ideas powerfully, and make a lasting impression in their customers’ minds. With our premium, animated POWERPOINT™ templates, we help them win business. Now, they can spend their time to think and add value to their customers, instead of spending time on designing their slides, to get a professional look.

This is how the table looks:

What the various benefits of a ‘Pitch table’?

This table gives you all the information you need to convince your customers at a single glance, so it serves as your ready reference to address any type of customer objections. 

You can even arrange the points in the table to appeal to specific segments of your customers. That way, the information can be helpful to start a conversation with your customers.

You can use the information to write an email to your customers, like – ‘The 5 reasons why our service is different and better than any other alternative.

So, start making your pitch table. It is the starting point for all your sales presentations. Happy selling!

5 tips on handshake for sales professionals

5 tips on handshake for sales professionals - BuyAPresentation

The first impact we make

We interact with people at different levels. Starting from an email – where the connection between individuals is no more than a few electronic pixels, to a warm hug – where the connection is friendly and personal.

You would notice that the closer we get to an individual; the better is the level of engagement (of course, getting too close before knowing the person sufficiently well, invades the personal space of the other individual).

If we represent the distance between people, based on our different methods of engagement, this is how the continuum looks:

As you can see, a handshake is the closest you get in a business relationship. In trying to remember the tips on handshake etiquette, it is important not to forget this basic purpose. 

A good handshake sets the expectation for a presentation. So, how to shake hands to achieve the best level of engagement with your customers? Here are the 5 tips:

1. 1. Look into the eyes and smile before you shake hands:

Nothing builds a better engagement than a genuine smile and sincere eye contact. A handshake merely adds to the connection.

2. 2. Say your name and a greeting while you shake hands:

A good handshake lasts not more than 4 seconds. The time is just enough to say your name and convey your happiness in meeting your prospect. It is not the time to recite your bio data or your company’s history.

3. 3. Volunteer your hands by getting up and walking towards your prospect:

When your effort to engage with the prospect is genuine, the prospect always responds warmly. Do not wait for the prospect to extend hands. If in a rare case, the prospect doesn’t extend hands – lower your hands while keeping the smile and eye contact. The warmth is still conveyed.

4. 4. Use only one hand if it is your first meeting:

Adding your free hand to the shake conveys intimacy. If you use both your hands, you may look artificial and over eager.

5. 5. Let your handshake be a handshake:

Whether you are a woman or a man, the handshake should be firm, with your full hand (not just your fingers) and pumped 3 or 4 times. Be warm and be genuine. Everything else is just details.

I hope these tips help you make a better connection with your prospects, the next time you make your sales presentation. Happy selling!

Problem wth clever slides - Buy A Presentation

3 common mistakes that presenters make when creating clever slides

Problem wth clever slides buy a presentation

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Childhood habits that can kill presentations

Take a moment to travel back to your schooldays. What were some of the thumb rules you followed to score more marks in your school examinations?
Let me make a guess…

Rule 1: Write more
The more pages you filled the more marks you got in your exams. It made the evaluator feel that you knew a lot. So, you learn the habit of fluffing up your content in presentations as well.

Rule 2: Make it look beautiful
Decorating your answers with highlighters and sketch pens got you more marks. So, you learnt the habit of decorating your presentations.

Rule 3: Sound knowledgeable
Using jargon and acronyms made you look intelligent. By littering your answers with some technical words, you could impress your evaluators into give you more marks. So, you learnt the habit of using technical mumbo-jumbo as your weapon against objections.

Unfortunately, those very habits that got you more marks in your school might be killing your sales presentations.

The rules that your customers follow to evaluate your presentations are very different. Here are some of their rules:

Rule 1: More is bore
Your audience is allergic to long winding presentations. The moment you put up that bullet point slide with 6 points and 4 sub-points your audience take a walk mentally. You need to say it in a crisp and clear manner to score more with your audience.

Rule 2: Bling is cheap
Your audience won’t fall for that cool animation or a ‘Zen’ picture. Your slide should make your message memorable by explaining your ideas in a visual way. Concept diagrams are a very useful tool.

Rule 3: Jargon is rude
It is not about what you know; it is about what they learn. Jargon puts a distance between you and your audience. Always talk at their level to win them over.

So, play by the new rules and unlearn your old habits. You will score more in your sales presentations. Happy selling!

10 minutes to sales sucess

They say, “Experience is the best teacher”. 

Well, it most certainly is not! If only experience were to teach people, there would have been no repeat offenders of any kind.  The reality is – it is not the experience itself, but the time you take to reflect on the experience that teaches you valuable lessons.

This is one area where most sales and marketing professionals miss the boat. Most of them operate like talking bill boards, programmed to follow a certain routine like:

Present to prospect 1 – Fail – Present to prospect 2 – Fail – Present to prospect 3 and so on.

If they took just 10 minutes to analyze their calls, they would move up the learning curve much faster.

Let me show you a simple way to analyze your calls.

Step 1: Recall successful calls

Pick up a case where you have succeeded in getting business.

This might sound counter intuitive. Most people advise you to see ‘what went wrong’ in the cases where you failed. The danger is – you might find too many answers to that question. After all, there are a million ways to fail in a sales presentation. But, there are only a few predictable ways in which you can achieve consistent success. So, it makes sense to learn what worked and repeat it.

Step 2: Analyze the call in detail

The second step is to answer these questions, keeping the successful sale in mind:

Analyze product benefit: How has your product made the life better for the customer?

Was he able to minimize his errors? Was he able to save on his costs? Was he able to feel more confident about himself? The answers will tell you the key benefits to focus on – in your next presentation.

Analyze objections: What were the objections raised by him, before he said ‘Yes’ to your offer?

Did he compare your product with his existing option? Was he even aware of the impact of his problems? How did you overcome his objections? The answers will equip you for your next presentation.

Analyze the source: How did you find him in the first place?

Was he referred to you by your existing customer? Did you fix the appointment by cold calling? What was the database used to find the prospect? What was the script used to fix the appointment? This will help you find more prospects with higher chances of conversion.

This simple analysis takes no more than 10 minutes. But it will help you repeat your success consistently. Happy selling!

Dont trigger the SCAN IT button in your audience’s head

How do you read a newspaper?

Do you go through every word written out there? No.

As soon as you pick up the paper, you quickly scan through the headlines. If any of it attracts your attention, you read the first paragraph. If it still sustains your attention, you skim through the rest of the content.

You follow exactly the same method whether it is about reading the books in your library, articles on the net or to going through any detailed information.

Why is this information of how people read important to you as a sales presenter?

When you present a slide that looks like this…

 

Audience sees a lot of information presented at once. So, they automatically start scanning your slide. This is how their attention spans across the slide:

As you can see, the detailed graphs at the end, which were probably important are completely ignored.

How do you avoid this declining attention span, as a presenter?

Follow this simple rule – 1 slide: 1 thought i.e. ‘One slide should carry just one thought’. This reduces the material you put on your slides. Your audience therefore takes the time to understand and assimilate the information. Your message gets read and retained longer. 

Will you follow this simple tip? Happy selling!

Converting verbose slides into simple diagrams - BuyAPresentation

Converting verbose slides into simple diagrams - BuyAPresentation

  A few months back I met up with one of my friends who sells mission critical software to financial institutions.  His pet peeve is that in his industry sales cycles are very long and the competition is tough. It is difficult to get the decision makers to sit through a presentation.

As my company is into presentations, he discussed his problems with me.

 He said, “These sales presentations are killing me. I just don’t have the time to sit and make ‘good looking’ slides.”

He is quite an expert in his field and knows his banking and software inside out. But his problem is in translating that knowledge to slides that convince his audience.

This is what I told him. 

 

First off, most presenters don’t realize that, creating apresentation involves two very different types of activities that demand two different skill sets: 
1.      Ideating the content for your presentation

•  Ideating effectively requires a strategic bent ofmind, a thorough understanding of the situation at hand, practical ideas tosuggest alternatives, and a clear vision to drive execution.

2.      Translating the content into effective slides

• Slides need to hold your audience’s attention and influence their purchasing decision.

• To translate effectively, you need visual thinking,design sense, knowledge of the presentation software and loads of time

As you can see, the two are very different skill sets, and itis not fair to expect a presenter excel in both.

But, unfortunately – the market doesn’t care about that reality. A lot of wonderful ideas get completely ignored by the audience, just because the presenter could not translate his ideas into an effective presentation. On the other hand, beautiful ‘Zen slides’ may entertain theaudience, but not deliver the results.
Let us try to address this problem.
If I look at the above two skills – ideating and translating, it seems your job is more to do with ideating than translating. You are paid to think about the strategies that work, anticipate the moves of your competition and devise plans to counter their attack.
The second part of the work, is about translating and requires specialized technical skills and time.Unless you have years of specialized experience, it is not possible to createprofessional and clear slides in a short time.
My friend agreed to this and said, “I realized the issue, so I hired a graphic designer to rework my slides. But, it didn’t really work out. The slides looked good, but the message was lost. “
For which I said:
There are 2 ways in which presenters try to address this translation issue:
1.     Hire graphic designers: There are 2 issues with this.

• They are expensive and time-consuming
• There is always a huge gap between what you have in mind, and what a graphic designer comes up with on his slides.  Though the slides look ‘beautiful’, they do not help you make your point effectively. This is because most graphic designers specialize in print media. The rules that apply to print are very different from the rules that apply to slides.

2.  Get free presentation templates: The issues here are different:

• These free templatesare in reality just some gaudy backgrounds. The designs are not veryprofessional.
• They add verylittle in terms of providing clarity to your message

My recommendation to him and to you is to visit our site www.buyapresentation.com and take a look at the concepts and diagrams templates. They offer value to you because:
1.      Created by professionals, for professionals:The templates are created by professionals with years of corporate experience and a flair for design. They understand what you need as sales and marketing professionals to make your presentations effective.
2.      Unique templates with diagrams and concepts to help add clarity: There is a whole range of templates to help you explain all the concepts in your presentations. Each template is professionally animated and is editable to save you time.
3.      Reasonably priced: They are very reasonably priced at a $1 or less per template.
When you make a one time investment on the Mega Pack and download the folder to your desktop, you can create insightful presentations quickly and for years to come.

Isn’t that a smart thing to do as a sales and marketing presenter - use someone else’s technical expertise with your ideas? Go try it. Happy selling!

How to create insightful diagrams for sales presentations

In my previous posts, I have shown you how ‘flea market’ slides and ‘zen’ slides can kill your presentations. In this post, I will answer the questions raised in those articles – that is – how to open up your audience’s mind using slides the right way.

The simple and most powerful way is to use diagrams. A presenter doesn’t require any specialized skill to draw insightful diagrams. In fact, you don’t even need to know how to draw a stick man to create good diagrams. 

Just pick up a piece of paper and a pencil. Learn a few fundamentals. You’ll be well on your way. In a series of posts from today, I wish to introduce you to this useful tool. 

Let us start by understanding what a concept diagram is. 

A concept diagram is nothing but a visual representation of objects and their relationships.

 

Let us understand this with an example. If asked to explain how an earthen pot is made, most presenters would use sentences like: 

 “Take some clay. Mix it with water till you get the desired consistency. Mould it into the shape of a pot”. 

Let us try to represent this idea as a diagram.

This is a simple representation of the images that pop up in my head, when I read the explanation above. As you could see, this simple diagram represents objects and their relationships in a natural way.

These rounded rectangles represent the objects in the idea: 

These circles in dotted line highlight the relationships:

Once we are clear with the relationship between objects, we can choose to represent the objects in the way we want, as long as we label them clearly. In the following case, I have not even used an image to represent the objects. It represents the idea just as well. 

So, the focus is not on the objects, but on the way relationships are represented. Of course, images or icons make the diagram look elegant. 

No matter how grand or complex your idea is, the underlying principle to represent it in diagrams, remains the same. But, the challenge is in identifying the objects correctly, and finding ways to representing the relationships accurately. 

More about this in later posts. Happy selling!