Four Best Practices for E-mailing Sales Presentations June 02, 2008
By Dave Paradi
Many times we are asked to e-mail a sales presentation either as a substitute for a live meeting in the early stages of the sales process or so the prospect can share it with others. Here are four best practices to make sure your presentation gives the prospect the best image of you and your products or services.
1. Save the presentation as a show file. In PowerPoint, you have the option of saving the presentation as a PowerPoint Show (using the PPS extension instead of the normal PPT extension). The advantage of doing so before sending the file to a prospect is that a PPS file automatically opens in full-screen show mode. This means that the prospect immediately views the information instead of having to load the file and start the show themselves. It is better than how they receive most presentations, and makes you get noticed. It gets them—and anyone they forward it to—to view the key information quicker instead of wasting time loading and running your presentation.
2. Add navigation instructions. Why should you add navigation instructions to the bottom of every slide? First, not everyone knows how to advance a set of slides using the keyboard to go both backwards and forwards when necessary. You want them to know how to get back to that previous slide if they need to. Second, if you use timed animation builds on the slide, you don't want them to advance through your planned animation inadvertently. You can have the navigation instructions appear only when the builds have finished. The navigation instructions can be as simple as "Press the right arrow to move to the next slide. Press the left arrow to go back one slide." Place the instructions in the same spot on every slide so the viewer knows where to be looking for them. You can include graphic arrows as well as text to make the instructions more clear.
3. Include hyperlinks to information on your Web site. The sales presentation slides should only contain a limited amount of information or else they will be too overloaded to be understood. Direct the prospect to more information on your Web site for more details on certain products or services. On the relevant slide, include a hyperlink to the specific page on your site that contains the detailed information. For example, “to see the full product specs, click on this link to read the full list on our web site.”
4. Include a call to action. At the end of the presentation, make sure the last slide is a call to action slide where you detail what you want the prospect to do and how to do it. The "what to do" may be to call you to schedule an appointment, to visit your Web site to complete an assessment that will indicate specific benefits or to attend an event you are holding. The "how to do it" needs to be clear and give options if possible. You should always have your contact information listed, with options of phone or e-mail given as a minimum. If there is a spec sheet that they may want, give the option of downloading it from the Web or calling a customer service number to get a copy faxed or mailed.
By using the four best practices listed above, your e-mailed sales presentation becomes more of an interactive conversation with the prospect even if you can't be there to present in person. It only takes a few more minutes to prepare your presentation using the ideas above, but when your prospect receives the e-mail, they will be impressed with your efforts.
Dave Paradi teaches professionals and executives from Fortune 500 corporations to non-profit agencies how to transform the overloaded text slides they currently use into persuasive visuals that sell ideas, products and services effectively to decision makers. He is the author of "The Visual Slide Revolution" and co-author of two "Guide to PowerPoint" books from Prentice Hall. His ideas have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail and BusinessWorld India. Learn more at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.
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