Power Points: 8 Tips for Creating Presentations That Sell

If the word “presentation” conjures thoughts of droning speeches and dreadful slideshows, you’re doing it wrong – and worse yet, wasting valuable opportunities to engage, convince and convert new customers. By following these eight tips, you can deliver more powerful, more memorable presentations that give your audience what they want in order to ultimately achieve the outcome you want.

1. Good tools do not good presentations make.

Today’s sophisticated presentation tools – from PowerPoint to Keynote to Google Docs – offer lots of bells and whistles. But don’t get so caught up in playing with all of the available options that you lose sight of your purpose. Whatever software or format you choose, slides are not a dumping ground for data or talking points. You don’t want your visual presentation competing with you for the attention of your audience. It’s there simply to amplify your key points, not duplicate them, so limit each slide to one single image or thought that reinforces what you’re saying. If you’re displaying a chart, graph or table, don’t leave it up to your audience to interpret the meaning of the numbers. Instead do the work of analyzing this data for them by making the title of your slide the main idea that you want them to take away (e.g., “Southeastern Region Exceeds Sales Goals” rather than “2012 Sales by Region”).

2. Don’t save the best for last.

In today’s digital age, attention spans are short. We’ve all been programmed to skim, scan, parse and move on. That’s why you can’t afford a long, drawn-out wind-up to ease into your presentation. Within the first three slides, you must convey to your audience what’s in it for them so they’re motivated to stay engaged with you. If you don’t come out swinging for the fences, they’ll quickly check out as their minds wander to something that’s more urgent in their own world, like their own list of impending to-dos and deadlines.

3. Know and serve your audience.

Let’s be clear: your presentation is not about you. It’s about your audience. You’re there to serve their needs, answer their questions and address their concerns. Because no two audiences are exactly alike, there truly is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all presentation. While the core of your presentation may remain relatively unchanged from one speaking engagement to the next, if you’re not shaping, tailoring and refining your message and delivery for the particular needs and interests of the audience in front of you, you’re doing a disservice to both them and you. That being said, the benefit of having a strong foundation in place and well-rehearsed is that you’ll be prepared to respond quickly to any opportunity that arises – no matter how tight the timeframe. For example, let’s say a conference planner calls you with a last-minute opening in their programming line-up. If you have your key points memorized and visual supports in place, an hour or so is all you’ll need to tweak your presentation, and you’ll be ready to take advantage of the chance to engage with a new audience without wrecking your nerves in the process.

4. Build trust first, last and always.

You can’t expect to convince anyone to do anything if they don’t believe in you. As a result, building trust with your audience is your first and most important objective. The task of establishing your credibility has much more to do with the intangibles of your presentation that what you say or what you put on screen.You must instill confidence with your visual presence, your body language and your demeanor. Be polished and professional from head to toe. Talk slowly and clearly, and don’t forget to breathe. Avoid mental placeholders like “um,” “uh” and “you know,” but don’t be afraid to pause when needed to transition between thoughts. No matter how nervous you might be on the inside, maintain good posture and steady eye contact with your audience from beginning to end. Always keep your composure even if things don’t go exactly as planned. Show that you respect attendees’ time and intelligence by providing real value and useful takeaway messages. Never, ever use jargon as a crutch to create the illusion of expertise. It’s much more important to be relatable to and easily understood by your audience.

5. Practice, practice, practice.

The art of public speaking is not one that comes naturally for most of us. That’s why preparedness is the key to being able to deliver your presentation with the polish and confidence you need to establish that all-important foundation of trust with your audience. Rehearse your presentation as much as possible, doing so in front of colleagues or other members of your team so they can offer feedback. Walk through every step from start to finish, just as you would on the day of, including setting up and using your digital presentation tools. Videotape your practice session. When you play it back, watch for any red flags that will undermine your credibility like verbal stumbling blocks, lack of eye contact, stiff body language, nervous fidgeting or lagging energy. Don’t forget to make contingency plans in case the situation throws you for a loop. For example, what if you arrive and there’s no way to project your presentation or your equipment malfunctions? Make sure you’re equally comfortable delivering your presentation with and without your visual aides.

6. Engage and energize.

Every presentation has the same core purpose: to motivate the audience to take a desired action. Just as with building trust, the secret of motivating an audience lies in the intangibles. Your PowerPoint presentation – no matter how beautiful and well-crafted it may be – is not going to inspire someone to take action. That’s your job. You must be energetic in your delivery. Passion is contagious, so make sure you let yours shine. If your audience senses that you are genuinely enthusiastic about your subject matter, they’ll be more invested in hearing what you have to say. This is another reason that practicing your presentation is so critical. You need to be able to feed off of and react to your audience. If your focus is wrapped up in the mechanics of your delivery, you won’t have the mental agility to be able to think on your feet. If your audience appears to be bored or confused, you must be able to shift gears to recapture their attention or deepen their understanding. Shake things up by giving them opportunities to interact with you and each other during your presentation. And don’t be afraid to take questions. If someone wants to know more, feed their curiosity!

7. Make it easy to take action.

You wouldn’t design an ad or a landing page or a direct mail campaign without a call to action. The same goes for your presentation. If the goal of your presentation is to motivate your audience to take action, make it clear what that action should be. Think carefully, though, about how you frame your request. The next step should be commensurate with the level of engagement and trust you’ve established with them. Will your audience be ready to sign on the dotted line and fork over their money to you at the end of your presentation? Probably not. So instead, focus your call to action on furthering your relationship with them. Encourage them to sign up for your e-newsletter or follow you on Twitter. Or invite them to schedule a complimentary one-on-one consultation session with you. As long as you can keep the conversation going, you’ll keep the door to future sales opportunities wide open.

8. Maximize your mileage.

No lie: creating a great presentation is a lot of work. The good news is that once you’ve honed and refined your presentation, there are lots of opportunities to get more mileage from it. First, it’s always a good idea to make your presentation available online. Sites like SlideShare, Prezi and SlideRocket allow you to create and host interactive presentations in the cloud and then embed them on your website or share via social media. You will need to create a version of your presentation specifically for this purpose, as your slides will need to be more content-rich in order to be able to stand on their own and convey your key points without the benefit of your verbal delivery. Second, if you’ve mastered your in-person presentation delivery, you can just as easily lead a webinar. All you need are a few additional technical elements such as a webcam and an account with a webinar hosting provider like GoToMeeting or WebEx, and you can expanded your reach from a room full of people to a limitless online auditorium. Here's one key difference to keep in mind, though. In a live presentation, you want to keep your audience focused on you and your words, so your slide content should be minimal. However, with webinars, your presence is limited to a disembodied voice coming through phone or computer speakers. To provide the best audience experience, you must design your slides and content in a way that is not only visually interesting but also helps attendees stay in sync with what you’re saying. Finally, keep your sales pitch in your pocket. Keep a core version of your presentation at the ready on your tablet and smartphone. That way, if an unexpected networking opportunity arises, you’ll be at the ready with good visual aides to complement your conversation. Your new acquaintance is more likely to remember the details having heard and seen your message, and you may improve your chances of gaining a new customer in the process.

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Spring Cleaning: 7 Steps to Revitalize Your Website

Every year it happens like clockwork: temperatures climb, the days get longer and winter grays give way to spring greens, bringing along with them the irresistible urge to clean house and embrace a fresh start. Why not keep that motivational momentum going and apply it to your business – and, more specifically, to your website – as well? After all, there’s no time like the present to sweep away the old and outdated and bring in fresh new ideas and technologies that will provide a welcoming environment where a thriving online community can take root and grow. Here are seven steps you should take today to ensure that your site is up-to-date, relevant and doing all it can to bring you new customers and grow the community around your brand:

1. Take it from the top.

First impressions can make or break a visitor’s decision to spend their time on your site or to move on to your competitor’s. As screens and attention spans shrink, so too does your window of opportunity to capture and hold visitors’ attention. Your home page must walk the line between offering a clean, uncluttered presentation and providing clear navigational cues. To gauge your site’s first-impression performance, give it the five-second test. Type your web address in your browser, let it load, then start the clock. After five seconds, close the window. What did you take away? What jumped out at you first, and what was most memorable? If the answer to that question is a jarring color or generic stock photo, it’s time for a change. Likewise, if nothing in particular stuck with you, then your home page may be lacking in focus. Even in that brief glance, you should be able to come away with a favorable impression of your company. You should also be able to tell right away what your company does and where you as a visitor should go next to accomplish the goal that brought you to the site. If you identify weaknesses in any of these areas, it might be time to revisit your site’s design and navigation to bring it up to modern standards. Remember, too, that you may be too familiar with your site to be truly objective, so if you can recruit a few friends, family members or colleagues to do the five-second test and give you their notes, all the better.

2. Check your small-screen savvy.

Today we live in a multi-device world populated by multi-device users. More and more, these users are spending less of their Web browsing time on their desktops and laptops and more on their handheld smartphones and tablets. If your website is even just a few years old, it may not be as easy to navigate on these smaller screens as it should be. To be sure, bring it up on your phone’s browser. Then borrow your friends’ phones and do the same. Then rinse and repeat on every modern mobile OS that you can get your hands on. If you can’t load it, browse through it, view the content and complete core functions effortlessly, then neither can your users. In order to ensure that your site is providing the best possible user experience regardless of which device they might be using to access it, you must make sure that your site’s interface is clean and clutter-free so that you make optimal use of the available real estate to allow the most important content to take center stage. Also pay close attention to details such as the amount of time it takes to load your site via mobile networks, the size and readability of typography, the level of contrast between the text and the background, the function of menus and the “pressability” of links, buttons and navigational tabs. If any of these are found lacking, it’s time to take proactive steps, whether it’s by building an app, developing a dedicated mobile site or migrating to a new responsive design platform.

3. Give it the touch test.

Along those same lines, knowing that many customers will come to your site from a smaller screen with a touch-based interface, it is vital to reassess whether or not your site allows visitors to touch and go. Again, log on to your site with a handheld and try it for yourself. Are your buttons and menus big, bold and easily seen? Are they readily accessible, with a buffer around them to allow a greater margin of error for fingers versus mouse-clickers? And most importantly, do they work? In the world of touch, roll-overs and hover states are non-existent, so replace buttons that require users to mouse over them to get a sense of action with style enhancements that draw attention to them as action elements. If a client is frustrated by your features and can't navigate easily, they will quickly move on and spend their dollars elsewhere. For a great example of a brand that has built a beautiful site utilizing readily accessible buttons and smarter small-screen features, check out Starbucks’s website on your favorite touchscreen device.

4. Flash? Fuggetaboutit.

Speaking of frustration, let's talk about Flash. The mobile Web is officially a hostile environment when it comes to Flash. Apple’s iOS does not – and probably never will – support Flash. Android does support Flash, but the performance of Flash content on Android devices is less than ideal. If you have Flash anywhere on your site, do your business – and your customers – a huge favor and get rid of it immediately. HTML5 and JavaScript are two smarter, more modern options that can replicate the same effects that once required Flash while providing a beautifully seamless experience for mobile and touch-based platforms.

5. Track your traffic.

Do you know where your site visitors are coming from? Do you know what keywords they’re using to find you? The answers to these questions and others like them can help you shape and sharpen your website to strengthen its performance. By utilizing a metrics toolset such as Google Analytics, you can not only determine how visitors are finding your site but also what’s keeping them there based on the amount of time they’re spending on your site, page by page. Armed with this data, take a fresh look at your site and see what you can do to give your visitors more of what they’re looking for. Is there one particular keyword set that drives the majority of your site traffic? If so, then make sure everything that pertains to those keywords is front and center. Is there a particular type of content on your site that gets the most views? If so, add more around that subject matter.

6. Keep it fresh.

Does your website reek of staleness? When was the last time you published a blog post? Or added new client testimonials? Or updated your portfolio or case studies? If your website has stagnated, it will be immediately obvious to visitors. Today’s Web surfers don’t want to spend time in a dead space that’s void of activity. They demand access to the latest information and intelligence, so make sure that your website is not a graveyard where ideas and conversation go to die.

7. Focus on the community connection.

Bringing new visitors to your site is only half the battle; your ultimate goal is to keep them coming back again and again. To accomplish this, your site must be more than just a brochure on glass. It must provide a home base where the members of your tribe can come to be informed and to share ideas and information. To this end, it must offer content that’s relevant to the questions, concerns, hassles and fears that your clients face every day. It should also offer a way for them to contribute and to interact with other members of the tribe. This can be as simple as giving visitors the ability to leave comments on your blog or publish reviews of your products or services. However, it can also be as complex as a community ecosystem where people can share the things matter to them in ways that are meaningful to them. For example, NASCAR driver Ryan Newman’s Fan Club site is built around keeping its members engaged and active by giving them many different ways to share and interact. They can post their own videos, build photo albums, join the conversation on community message boards and even chat with other members in real time. Think about ways you can enhance your website in order to serve your community, even if they don’t directly serve your brand and your business. By providing an arena where these types of exchanges can take place, in the long run, you’ll benefit immeasurably from constant exposure and engagement.

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