Webinars

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Smart Use of PowerPoint is Mandatory for Effective Sales

June 23, 2009 in Lead Generation, Webinars by Steve Vachss | No comments

Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most important tools used by every successful online marketer. It is the medium of choice for creating a clear, concise online presentation. Sales professionals soon learn that they need a strong visual presentation to tell a compelling story, and PowerPoint is the obvious answer.

More than 40-million people use PowerPoint. It’s the world’s most widely used presentation tool. So many people have used it that we can safely recruit new salespeople and expect them to be PowerPoint users. That means that any organization can quickly train new people to deliver presentations using the same basic tools.

slidepresstack1Virtually everyone needs PowerPoint to build a business online. PowerPoint slides may be used like brochures in PDF format, for live presentations in a Webinar or as the basic medium of an on-demand presentation.

The negative side of PowerPoint is that many people think of a slide presentation as tedious and uninteresting. That’s because so many presentations are poorly planned and use only the weakest capabilities of the program. PowerPoint designers at Microsoft designed this tool with so much flexibility that presentations have an unlimited range of styles. Unfortunately, most people take the easiest road, resulting in the weakest possible presentations. We therefore want to offer recommendations for PowerPoint use that will provide the most compelling results for sales and marketing professionals.

Our most important overall recommendation is for every PowerPoint presenter to discover how to use the program’s full capabilities. Don’t re-use an unimaginative presentation produced for someone else. Customize every presentation to leverage yourself and create a professional, entertaining audience experience. Most people—even long-time PowerPoint presenters—don’t understand the incredible things that can be done with this powerful tool. Spending a couple of hours thumbing through “PowerPoint for Dummies” can deliver ideas that totally change the results produced by any presentations.

What are the basics for making presentations more effective? We can begin by following a few simple rules. The first simple rule is “keep presentations as short as possible.” Every slide should contribute to drawing audiences to “the next step” in a well planned sales, training or information transfer process. If any slide in a presentation doesn’t contribute in this way, delete it.

Rule number two is “use as little text as possible. Instead use graphics, photos, videos, cartoons, etc. to make visual statements. Although writing a virtual script of text bullets is easy, audiences don’t listen effectively when forced to read bullets. If the text bullets differ from the presenter’s speech they create confusion. If the bullets are identical to the spoken words, audiences assume that the presenter is simply reading from a script. PowerPoint provides much more powerful tools than simple text bullets. Successful professionals use these tools to be become master presenters, and master marketers.

We still need a few more rules to maximize the power of PowerPoint, and we will cover several of them in later posts.

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The Myth of Lead Generation CRM Software

September 15, 2008 in Webinars by Steve Vachss | No comments

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.

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PresenterNet Showrooms “Beat the Clock”

September 13, 2008 in Webinars by Doug Wolfgram | No comments

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.

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Interactive Webinars are here to stay

August 7, 2008 in Webinars by Doug Wolfgram | No comments

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.

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