Presenting Online

There has been plenty of buzz in the past several years about ‘agile’ organizations. Agility usually refers to an organization’s ability to quickly adapt to change as it happens in technology, markets or even in the internal dynamics of a company. Software has been categorized as agile if it is easy to change, upgrade and improve its functionality along with these organizational shifts.

Even in agile organizations running agile software, salespeople and other employees for whom communications is key need to be ‘nimble.’ A person who is nimble is able to make rapid adjustments while remaining ‘light on their feet.’ Agility is water in a stream moving quickly around obstacles such as boulders and fallen logs. Nimbleness is a leaf floating on the water’s surface in that stream.

Why be Nimble?

The answer is straightforward actually — because you are surrounded by an agile environment. The corporate overview slides that preview any sales presentation may change frequently in an agile orgnization. New funds are raised, new customers acquired or maybe a new product line is launched. If you are a field sales rep and are not always in a position to get the lastest PowerPoint presentation from the home office, tools such as Presenternet allow you to ensure that you have the latest information at your fingertips - automatically! When corporate marketing updates the company slides, they are uploaded to Presenternet and instantly deployed to the sales force. This is the power of corporate media asset management and a key component of the Presenternet system.

One of the first steps to ensuring that you are nimble enough to maximize your performance in the field is make a list of presentation materials that might likely change on a moment’s notice and ensure that they are managed by headquarters. Then you’ll never have to wonder if your materials are up to date.

CRM companies and related software providers offer a myriad of tools to identify, qualify, and track sales leads. Many of these offerings sound great to potential CRM users, but they all have one basic flaw that can leave them useless. They all depend on a system being able to identify qualification criteria, or simply offer database searches based on plug-in criteria like industry, size of company, revenues, etc.

Salespeople know that there are only three TRUE criteria for qualification:

1. prospects must be interested in speaking with them;
2. the product must meet the prospect’s needs;
3. and the sales contact must have the capability to make or drive a buying decision.

Unfortunately, these criteria can only be defined by prospects themselves, not by database searches or even by sales rep call reports.

The most successful sales of any product or service are those that occur when a potential buyer informs a sales organization that he or she is ready for serious discussions. The success of Webinars as lead generators has grown exponentially for that reason, but Webinars alone aren’t the full answer. The fact that a potential prospect attended a Webinar is indeed an indication of some level of interest, but the overwhelming majority of attendees are not prospects, having participated for a variety of reasons other than buying interest.

Webinars on PresenterNet however, add the most important element for qualifying a true sales lead. By providing InterActors on slides that enable attendees to respond onscreen to various questions during a Webinar, they capture information directly from the potential prospect. These are the kinds of questions that a salesperson would want to ask if given the opportunity to speak candidly:

“Would you like us to call you for an appointment?”

“Do you have a need for the kind of product we sell?”

“Are you the decision maker, or should we contact another person in your organization?”

“Do you currently have funding to commit to this area?”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how interested are you?”

“How do you see our product potentially fitting into your company’s plans?”

Answers to questions like these help sales people to find and close the very best opportunities. Interactive slides with these capabilities therefore become the missing links to making Webinars the top business drivers available to any sales organization worldwide.

Experienced sales executives know that they don’t lose as many deals to competitors as they lose to “the shot clock.” The shot clock metaphor in a sales environment simply means that the sales cycle stretches out too far, and sales momentum disappears before a deal can close. It therefore follows that executing each step of the sales cycle as soon as possible beats the sales-shot clock, and results in more closed business.

The most difficult steps of a sale are often in getting all necessary decision makers and recommenders to attend meetings to discuss products, present business proposals, and negotiate final agreements. When presentations have to be postponed repeatedly due to schedule changes of key people, the sales process is in danger, while the shot clock keeps running.

Web conferencing in general is an important tool in scheduling meetings as early as possible. It enables people to attend meetings remotely without being present for a face-to-face presentation. But what can be done about key people who miss the meeting entirely? How can sales people get a timely repeat performance scheduled, to ensure that the sales process does not bog down?

PresenterNet’s new Showroom version provides a perfect platform for scheduling an encore performance of any presentation. Absent participants can enter a Showroom with a simple Web address, log-in and attend a self-operated version of the presentation, listening to the same speaker, responding onscreen to answer questions or furnish requested information. They can even ask questions, and have responses captured for answers by email or phone.

The new Showrooms can also be set up in multiples, so that different rooms can be reserved for specific customer company executives. This enables sales people to create a customized follow-up presentation with a specific login, to ensure that the right person logs into the right presentation.

The result of using Showrooms in this way is that no meeting will ever have to be pushed back to keep the customer decision process flowing. In effect, people can participate from anywhere and at any time, to ensure that all key people are constantly updated. This in turn means that every sales action can be executed as soon as needed, and the final cycle time will be greatly reduced. That’s how Showrooms help beat the shot clock and close more deals.

When presenting online, it is much more difficult to hold a user’s attention than when presenting live. this problem is exacerbated when you throw a list of bullet points up and start addressing them one at a tine. Many presenters use clever tricks such as animation or revealing one bullet at a time, but believe you me, unless you have the most interested audience in the world, they will soon be off checking their email or performing other tasks while you speak.

But people still insist on using bullet points to deliver their message. Why is this? One reason is that it is easy. Many people organize thoughts in their heads like bullet points. Bullets represent a simple, logical flow of information. But you’re not trying to entertain or inform anyone in your head. I recemmend that all presenters get and memorize Cliff Atkinson’s fantastic book, ‘Beyond Bullet Points.’ The main idea presented in the book is that each slide in a presentation should be a single thought represented by a single image or diagram to support the thought. People will remember more if you deliver just one thought at a time, so why make it difficult for them?

I recommend that all PresenterNet users get a copy of Cliff’s book and join his online forums to discuss techniques. You’ll see your presentation performance improve drastically.

The recent deluge of available Webinars shows that the business world has finally decided that they are a viable element in any closed-loop marketing strategy. You can find Webinars on just about any topic and they range from free to several hundred dollars to attend.

As technology evolves and business people look for better results from their Webinars, they discover the true interactive capabilities of Presenternet. Collecting input and feedback from the audience at every step of the Webinar means that when the Webinar is complete, you have a sorted list of qualified sales leads ready for follow-up. By collecting input from your audience and storing it for later reports, you are cutting your sales process time by as much as half. As the industry progresses and more adn more companies turn to marketing Webinars as a mainstay of business, competition for audience mindshare will increase. Be sure to plan your Webinar properly and don’t spend any more time than you have to with follow-up. Take control of your data and deliver results from every dollar invested in Webinars.