Why choose PresentiaFX as an alternative to PowerPoint? On average, bullet-point slides yield only a 15-20% recall of information after just five minutes. Yet most PowerPoint presentations are given in the same, ineffectual way.

PresentiaFX - PowerPoint Alternative

For most sales people it is difficult to use PowerPoint to communicate effectively, but with PresentiaFX presentation software slides can be delivered in a more considered way than PowerPoint ever can.

Effective presentations are about clear communication. To present well, we need to understand when and why to use slides, what audiences are looking for in a flash presentation, and how to make our messages stick. Flash presentations work well when slides and presenter work together – seamlessly delivering the right information, at the right time, to captivate the audience.

Most sales presentations fail to articulate a clear value proposition. Those that do often hide the reasons to buy at the end of a sales presentation, way too late to have any real impact. With PresentiaFX flash presentations you can develop a clear value proposition, and use it to structure your sales presentation.

Improve your flash presentations with PresentiaFX and increase your sales

1. Bullet points don’t work. Stop reading slides aloud to prospects – they can read for themselves. Use visual PresentiaFX slides to make your sales presentation effective instead of PowerPoint bullet points.
2. Stop talking about your company – present your sales messages in terms of what your customer needs, and the benefits they can get. PresentiaFX flash presentations are interactive which allow the sales presenter to access exactly the right slides and presentations that are relevant to their prospect with one mouse-click in play mode.
3. Make your sales presentation memorable by making it interactive, visual, and using proven mnemonic techniques… easy with PresentiaFX… boring with Powerpoint!

Innovative presentation software 

Plus Two, the makers of PresentiaFX presentation software, are a specialist flash presentation design agency. Plus Two typically recommend building a flash presentation by asking fundamental questions about who it is for, and what your sales objectives are – and then building a story from there.

Don’t simply re-use slide material that you have already. Sometimes, however, nothing else is possible, and when you already have presentation material that works, it can make sense to re-use it. In this situation, PresentiaFX flash presentations allow the sale presenter to access just the right slide or presentation on demand from the 3D searchable wall of content. How do you make the most of the presentation material that you have? How can presentation optimisation make your flash presentation work?

Successful presentation optimisation starts by having clear sales objectives for your flash presentation. Then, the flash presentation can be optimised in terms of those objectives. If a presentation isn’t aiming to do anything in particular, how can it be optimised to do it better?

1. Go through all the slide material in the flash presentation and eliminate everything that is interesting to you but not to your sales audience. Limit the amount of information in your sales presentation, and what remains has more impact. Many companies go overboard in proving that they are big and global and powerful – which has its place, but can usually be achieved in just a couple of slides… not lots of PowerPoint slides.
2. Group content into coherent presentation sections. When deciding what sections to create, ask What matters to the audience? What headings would they be interested in hearing you talk about in your flash presentation? Five sections is optimal. Any more than seven is too many.
3. Eliminate slide bullet points. This doesn’t just mean cut down the number of words in your bullet points, or increase the font size in your bullet points. It means get rid of them. They don’t work. Slides that are going to be presented shouldn’t make sense without a sales presenter talking. If the audiences read your slide bullet points they think they have understood your sales point, and they disengage, sometimes without bothering to listen to what you are saying. Use visual cognitive dissonance in your presentations instead.
4. Look for the slide visuals that help you get your point across. Presentation optimisation involves turning “visual aids” into something that actually helps the sales presenter. Does a slide show a series of dates? Then use a timeline on your slide. Does a slide explain the order in which something happens? Show a process map on the slide. Does a slide compare numbers? Find the right graph for your flash presentation. Does a slide explain how something happens? Show this by moving photographs on a slide. Can’t find the right visual? Use some photos to illustrate your point in your flash presentation.
5. Presentation design matters. To optimise your flash presentation you will want it to look good. Consolidate the number of colours and fonts that you use. Destroy all Clip-Art, and cut out the more tacky stock photography. Only use animation to guide attention or to convey meaning – never to make things look “interesting” in your flash presentation.
6. A flash presentation is about a speaker and their slides. Presentation optimisation must, therefore, optimise the flash presentation and how the flash presentation is delivered. Practice delivering the flash presentation; often, using a camcorder to watch and review can give valuable and rapid feedback. Don’t say what you would say if you were presenting – actually present the flash presentation, even if only to an empty room. When delivering the flash presentation, remember that people rarely complain that a flash presentation was too quick. Don’t speak too quickly – but deliver your slide material in a concise and pithy way.

Pitching for new business is hard. Pitch presentations can be stressful, time-consuming, and complex. Avoid common sales pitch PowerPoint presentation mistakes and things can be a whole lot easier.

So, what are some of the common mistakes that presenters and bid managers make with PowerPoint presentations? What should you not do?

Flash presentations - Agenda

Don’t ignore the prospect’s agenda and instructions. They won’t care if you talk about the things they ask about or not. If they are grappling with some difficult issues right now, they would probably rather you didn’t remind them.

Instead: make sure that you talk about the things you have been asked to address in your Flash presentation, and if the prospect is facing challenges, offer a solution to these challenges.

Flash presentation - USPs

Don’t only talk about the things that the prospect has asked about in your flash presentation, so that your pitch presentation becomes indistinguishable from your competitors’. Don’t consider your competitive value proposition, and don’t think about whether you could map your competitive value proposition to the topics you have been asked to cover. Under no circumstances attempt to shape the prospect’s thinking in a new way to match your USPs with your slides.

Instead: don’t be afraid to try and shape the agenda. If your flash presentation story flows in a certain way, tell it that way and spell out for the prospect how you are covering the items you have been asked to address in your slides. If you think the prospect would benefit from seeing the issues in a different way, attempt to change their thinking by using PresentiaFX’s interactive features to access content on demand.

Flash Presentation Focus

Don’t list all the reasons why the sales prospect might possibly want to choose you. The more the better. Make sure that you have so many arguments that each member of the pitch evaluation team will remember something completely different. That way, when the decision-makers sit down to discuss your sales pitch, they won’t be able to agree on what you offer.

Instead: structure your flash presentation with a clear and memorable value proposition. Five items is memorable, any more might not be.

RFP and Pitch Presentation

Don’t use the sales pitch presentation to talk through the detail of your written submission. The tender response is most likely full of technical detail. Most high-level decision makers are keen to have you explain all of the technical detail of your bid in fine detail, and don’t need to hear any arguments actually selling the merits of your bid in your presentation.

Instead: keep your pitch presentation at a high level, and concentrate on selling, not explaining with your presentation slides.

Question and Answers

Don’t worry too much about Q&A in your flash presentation. You’ll be able to handle the questions as they arise – after all, you know your business, and no question would be too hard to answer. Anticipating questions, preparing answers, and building slides to support the answers will only ruin your spontaneity, and take away from the excitement of the sales pitch.

Instead: prepare for Q&A by listing possible questions, and thinking about how your answers can relate back to your value proposition. Prepare slides to support answers and access them using PresentiaFX’s search features in play mode.

Solution vs Ability to Deliver

Don’t spend all your time presenting your solution, and don’t say anything about your ability to deliver that solution, or in giving a sense of what you would be like to work with. After all, if the audience like your ideas they will have to choose you to deliver them. They couldn’t just ask a competitor to adapt their solution.

Instead: talk about your team and your company, not just about your creative solution in your flash presentation.

Flash Presentation Rehearsal

Don’t try to make your sales pitch slides perfect. Spend the night before making dozens of changes to the sales presentation, making sure that all of your presenters are exhausted during the pitch. Let everything else eat into rehearsal time, so that none of your pitch team has ever presented any of the slides before they do it for real.

Instead: lock down your slides the afternoon before you present. From that moment on, get great at delivering the slides.

Presenter Involvement

Don’t let your bid team get on with things, and only bring in your presenters – who are busy senior executives – the night before. They can make sure they are happy with the direction of the pitch presentation at the last minute.

Instead: if a presenter is going to play a significant role in your pitch, they need to be available, and involved in enough time to have input to the direction the pitch is taking.

Bullet Points

Don’t just use bullet point slides. Every prospect loves to have somebody save them effort by coming in to read aloud! Spruce-up any text-heavy slides with clip art, a really busy PowerPoint template, or an incredibly complex diagram that is labelled in six-point font.

Instead: replace bullet points with graphics, images, charts, and animations. Don’t read aloud to grown adults.

PresentiaFX helps sales people win new business in ways that PowerPoint just doesn’t!