Example of a Great ScreenCapture Presentation
This is a presentation (in the video after the jump) that I lobbed in over the wall to a number of executives at a $2B medical services company. Long story short… they called me in, and moved forward with this plan.
The longer version is that I don’t think I could have hardly even gotten in the door without sending this presentation in the way I did.
Normally, the sales process is a complicated and somewhat precarious one… where you try to identify the right prospects, then attempt to get a meeting with the right people within that prospect organization who can either push the sale forward or better yet, pull the trigger. Along the way, you hope to get the good luck of getting to the right person on a good day when it is a favorable time for them to push the process forward, and/or you hope their personal psychological state isn’t one where they are distracted during the half hour you get with them. Of course, they could be very interested, but also too busy. Or they could be the right person, but too lazy. Or… a myriad of other options.
So how did I change that process and solve a lot of the inherent challenges within the sales process with this particular prospect? I produced a personalized pitch that changed the whole sales process for the benefit of BOTH the prospect, and myself. Basically, I took the clock and scheduling out of the loop. I put together what I wanted them to see, along with what I wanted to say, and assembled a Keynote presentation, and edited the whole thing into a consumable piece of digital video media that they could watch at any time that was convenient for THEM. And the benefits were numerous.
First, I didn’t have to spend hours or weeks making call after call in an attempt to get on someone’s calendar within the company so that they could simply hear my pitch (which as we all know might probably have been the wrong someone anyway). Next, the targeted executives to whom I sent this presentation (via personally labeled DVDs) wound up watching the presentation at their leisure (some of them even watched it at home), which was very convenient for those busy executives. Lastly, I got to present EXACTLY what I wanted to present without interruption, with the exact wording and pace that I wanted to use, and took as much time as I thought the topic warranted. When’s the last time you’ve had that happen in a live meeting?
In doing this, from my perspective; 1) I ensured that I got the message to the right people, 2) I got the message to all the people whom I thought should hear it, decreasing the potential for gatekeepers to block me, and increasing the potential someone would call me, 3) I freed up a ton of time for myself not having to chase the customer to get meetings, and 4) I communicated all the basics to the customer without even having to step foot into their office, making the next meeting extremely fruitful. From their perspective; 1) I allowed the busy executives to view the presentation on their time, 2) I gave references to additional information if they wanted to learn more without talking to me, 3) I allowed the executives time to discuss the material amongst themselves and organize the internal team who would speak to me, and 4) I got to all the appropriate executives without forcing them to align their schedules to get a common time to sit, and/or without delaying weeks to get my schedule to align with theirs individually.
So in the end, the message was not only delivered quicker than I could have done by getting a face to face meeting, it also got watched multiple times, got passed to some execs that I had actually missed, and overall it just simply impressed the hell out of them. Thus the presentation certainly turned out to have the desired effect.
As a side note, I can’t help but think that even if the customer had not been interested, how much time would this approach have saved me in the qualification process of figuring out they weren’t interested? ”Hi, Mr. CMO, did you see my presentation? Yes? Are you interested in speaking further? No? Great! Thank you for your time, and don’t hesitate to call if you change your mind.” In my experience, also uncovering those quick ‘no’s helps in ultimately closing more sales.
I think this is a good example of where sales presentations need to go. If you need help in producing this type of communication, I’m available to consult on it:
