How successful do you think your last presentation was? Presenting your business’s products or services to clients is crucial to the long-term longevity of any business, but in the highly demanding B2B sector, getting your message across is imperative. However, presenting doesn’t stop there. Internal communications within your company can be vastly improved with well-designed presentations, which everyone from the CEO to the salesforce can benefit from.
Rick Lippiett, creative director at agency Glass, says, Like meeting people, first appearances are critical. A slick, well-branded, high-production value presentation will lend your business an air of credibility and will also make a statement about your attention to detail and your delivery values. Sloppy presentation means sloppy delivery in most business people’s minds.
For all businesses, presenting their goods and services is an essential component of their business’s brand message. Communicating this message in a dynamic and informative presentation is vital. Alex Brayshaw, account director at agency DNX, says a presentation’s impact is about more than great-looking slides.
For many years, marketers have relied on the office PowerPoint whizz to add bells and whistles to a presentation. But a good presentations doesn’t rely on the latest screen animation. It’s about a point well made, evidence to support it, passion for the product and knowledge of your subject. Using a visual to help reinforce an idea is very important, particularly when you’re presenting digitally where you need to show flash animations and maybe even live video.
With the widespread penetration of Microsoft Office products it’s no surprise that PowerPoint is, for many business managers, the default presentation package. Today however, there is a diverse range of products that can be harnessed to provide your presentations with the impact they deserve.
Information overload
It’s all too easy to forget the purpose of your presentation. When faced with a plethora of options, a presentation’s content can become masked by the overuse of graphics and animation that do little except confuse the viewer. In the B2B marketing arena, this can mean a lost sale simply because the presentation didn’t understand how the information should be communicated and what its audience is looking for.
Ross Williams, MD at agency Rawnet, says, Whatever presentation system you’re using, it’s about supporting your messaging in a compelling and persuasive way. That’s where a good presentation makes a difference. So many companies know what they want to say, but they don’t know how to present it in a way that their audience will remember.
Peter Stephens, director at BOP Training, reinforces the message that companies must resist the temptation to allow the tools you are using to dilute and confuse your presentation’s message. A presentation’s impact is lessened considerably when the presenter allows the technological aspect of the presentation to be the main focus; it becomes a crutch to hide behind, he says. Remember that the technology is just the tool to facilitate the communication of your marketing message.
Presentation technology has of course radically changed over the last few years. Where the overhead projector and plastic slides were the norm, today the laptop reigns supreme. As Lippiett at Glass says, A laptop has become crucial for delivering a presentation and with it comes a whole host of angst-ridden issues. For example, have you remembered your power supply or extra battery? Have you remembered your DVI-VGA adaptor so that the BARCO (a leading supplier of projection technology) will project the image onto the wall? Is there even a projector available? And if so, does anyone know how to operate it? Or switch it on? Do you know how to set up your laptop to display in Mirror Mode or as two separate screens? Will your carefully crafted presentation even fit on the old 800×600 resolution VGA projector you find yourself using? Did you remember to bring speakers for that stunning piece of motion flash/QuickTime that won’t mean anything without sound? What do you mean there are no speakers? What’s that funny light flashing on and off next to lamp? Has anyone got a spare bulb? Does anyone know the number for technical support?
Start with the right tool
Presentation is a skill to be developed, but choosing the right tools goes hand-in-hand with the presentation’s content. PowerPoint might be king, but you do have a plethora of other options. PowerPoint is available on both Windows PC and Mac platforms.
If you’re a Mac-only user then PowerPoint’s Mac cousin is KeyNote. You could also take a look at Opus, which is another PowerPoint-like presentation package. Outside of the standard presentation applications you may need to include full-motion video or rich media and graphics. If you do, then Adobe’s Director can handle all of these components. Beware though, this package is complex and requires a steep learning curve.
If you’re interested in presenting your pitch online, then take a look at Flash. This Adobe application can enable you to create what are, to all intents and purposes, specialised websites that present their content with sound, graphics, video and animation. Again, you will need specialised skills to get the most from Flash.
Also from the Adobe stable is Presenter. It expands the capabilities of PowerPoint to enable you to include video and software walkthroughs.
Other innovative systems like WebEx that are first and foremost an online meeting and conference platform can be expanded to offer a rich environment for web-based presentations.
Death by PowerPoint
Smaller businesses in particular are looking for an off-the-shelf presentation package that inevitably leads them to PowerPoint. The problem with a system like PowerPoint is that it tries to be a one-size-fits-all solution, but not all companies are the same, says Williams at Rawnet. Often a business will use PowerPoint because they don’t know anything else is out there. Also, the package may in the end give you what you want, but perhaps 80 per cent of the functionality just gets in the way of getting the job done.
Simon Morton, director of Eyeful Presentation, also highlights a lack of control over a presentation’s creation. Systems like PowerPoint are too easy to use. Companies will spend thousands of pounds on its website, but won’t give a second thought to the presentation they are producing. What’s more worrying is that 45 per cent of companies see PowerPoint as their key sales tool, yet they get a PA or school-leaver to create their corporate presentations. Unlike their website they don’t bring in experts who can help them create professional presentations. What’s more, over 70 per cent of companies don’t have a formal process to update their presentations.
However, Hugh Bishop, chairman at integrated communications agency Meteorite, points out that even with its faults, PowerPoint is still a safe bet when you need compatibility across multiple systems.
The death of PowerPoint is over-exaggerated, he says. PowerPoint is killed by poor use rather than poor function. We recently conducted a search for one of our clients who wanted to produce a presentation template that could be used by property developers, hotel managers and marketing directors, and after testing several programme packaging, PowerPoint still came out on top.
The main reason for this is that it is flexible. Access to PowerPoint is widespread and with a little education it is not only effective, but also easy to use. Businesses just need to take the time to train their staff properly.
Future presenting
Web-based presentation solutions like Fabric, Pitch Doctor and WebEx’s Meetmenow illustrate that a move away from systems that simply sit on your PC’s desktop are gaining pace. With more presentations done on the move, it makes sense to have the versatility that a web-based presentation can give.
However, Lippiett at Glass cautions that you must be confident in your web connection or risk not completing your presentation. Live web demos always worry me, he says. Every time I see them, there is always a slow-running or stopped network. My golden rule is to have as much as you can locally and even if you’re jumping out to a web-based application, if you can have some functionality locally, it will save you some network-related stress.
A good presentation requires not only an investment of time, but also of your company’s resources. Bishop at Meteorite says that if you make the right investment your presentations will deliver your marketing, training or brand message every time.
The underlying crux of B2B presentations is the content, he says. Unless companies are willing to invest in content for example, going beyond the company’s standard image library – no matter how advanced the presentation technology is, many B2B presentations could still be considered dull.
Unfortunately, more often than not, the technology is ahead of the content, meaning that B2B presentations often suffer, not because of technology, but because businesses don’t have the imagination or bravery to be bold enough to make them compelling. It is the old classic ,’A bad craftsmen always blames his tools’.
Choosing a presentation system for your business doesn’t end with choosing the package itself. Often, businesses will install a presentation system without thinking through how this will be utilised within their company, but more importantly, how the system will be supported with the digital assets that it will need to operate successfully.
Think through what you expect from your presentation system and how you will support this within your company, but above all else, place the audience for your presentations first. If you can deliver what they expect from your presentation, you’ll not only make your business stand out from the crowd, but routinely gain the lucrative contracts your business deserves.
