Marketing Ideas

If your sales presentations aren’t getting you a lot of return phone calls, you should read the following tips for ensuring your sales presentation is the best it can be.

1. Time it. Your audience has a limited attention span, no matter what their age! CEOs get bored just as quickly as teenagers. If you drone on for too long, you’ll lose any interest gained in the first part of the presentation. Keep it short and to the point.

Follow the 60% rule: however much time is set aside for your meeting or presentation, use 60% of that total time. If you have a half-hour scheduled, use about 18 minutes for your presentation. If you have an hour scheduled, your presentation should last about 40 minutes. This allows your prospect to think it over and ask questions without being rushed.

2. Match your prospects’ tone while speaking. If your prospects (or main prospect, the highest-ranking person in the meeting) talk fast, you should talk fast. If your prospects talk slow, and take time to pause before the next phrase, you should try to do the same. The way they speak is the way they best understand speech back to them.

3. Watch your body language. The way you hold yourself can contradict the words coming out of your mouth. If you’re slouched over and have your arms crossed, it’s going to be hard for the prospects to get excited about anything you have to say. Stand up straight, use eye contact with everyone in the room (not all at once – although that would be an interesting trick!) and be careful of how much you use your hands. Use your hands to point to posters or other visuals to emphasize a point, but try not to let your hands get distracting by flailing about.

4. Use visual aids. Visuals aids should be just that – things that help you make your points – they shouldn’t be your point. Don’t rely on your visual aids to tell the whole story for you. Visual aids can reinforce your message and they increase retention, so definitely use them, just don’t abuse them! And definitely don’t read straight from them like a boring college professor – paraphrase the words on the visual or add information to them with your speech.

5. Keep your prospects involved. Do this by asking questions or use your presentation as a stage for a demonstration. Let the prospects use your product as they or their customers would in a real situation. Use their reactions and questions to gauge their interest.

6. Avoid clichés and overused phrases. People will start to ignore you when you say “We’re the best, forget the rest” or “I’ll be honest with you.” If you use phrases that are old-hat, you’ll lose attention and interest. Take time to rehearse your presentation and if you find you’re using clichés when you don’t mean to, write down some alternative wordings and practice with those.

7. Practice, practice, practice. You can also find phrases or parts of your presentation that don’t work and you’ll have time to fix them before the real deal. This is the best piece of advice because the more you practice, the better you’ll become and the more comfortable you’ll become with your presentation.

Believe it or not, there is a world outside the Internet. People still receive and look at mail. They also often go outside. The multitude of billboards, signs and posters are a testament to the fact major marketers realize this avenue still retains great value.

Catalog printing and poster printing are tried and true marketing gems. Booklet printing provides for an alternative to catalogs for companies without an extensive product or service line. Return on marketing dollars makes a business owner happy when utilizing these traditional techniques.

Of course, one has to craft their catalog and poster campaign with creativity. Concise wording and attention grabbing colors are both critical. Ensure that you deal with a trusted professional when seeking catalog printing, booklet printing or poster printing services. An inferior product can translate to missed potential customers.

Your audience can be ascertained through basic market research. There exist myriad purveyors of direct mail lists which allow you to effectively target your desired niche. Smart placement of posters accomplishes the same end. Posters additionally provide for an opportunity to display your web site address thus helping sales coming from your interactive efforts.

All business owners should review their comprehensive marketing plan. Many will find they are missing key components and letting a segment of potential customers slip through their net.

Advertising is not about imitating what has already been done, or even copying techniques that have been successful in the past. Advertising your business and being successful with it means having a marketing style that is unique and distinct.

Sure it pays to imitate what the others have done so you can also reap the same rewards. In fact, why rock the boat when the same marketing technique has been very effective with other businesses.

But the danger of doing so lies on being stuck with the same old strategy and failing to see other possibilities and new perspectives to help you develop a more unique and appropriate tactic for your business. In fact, getting stuck to one marketing strategy, your advertising posters for one, can be difficult to get out of because as they say, it is easier to teach a dog new tricks than to unlearn old ways that is not working anymore.

To be successful in your advertising campaign, copying other successful strategies can be a worthwhile process. But having your own unique style is way better in ensuring that you generate the leads you need to grow your business.

It may take you awhile, but having a distinct marketing campaign can help you not only to create your very own image that your clients will recognize for years to come, it also guarantees that you build a stronger relationship with your clients.

What do you need to get your clients to clamor for more of your posters, booklets, and even business cards? A good headline should do it.

Yes, Iʼm talking about pure, raw and unadulterated headline that packs a mean punch wherever it hits. Youʼll say, sure! A good headline does give you the enticement you need to make your audience thirsting for more. But what can you do to make sure that you have one for your marketing collaterals?

For one thing, you have to make sure that your headline is the first thing that your readers would see in your material, and not your name or your store address. I know that you want people to know you. But letʼs face it. Itʼs not you that the clients would be buying. Itʼs your product. So get off your high horses and teach yourself to write a great headline.

Second, write your headline like youʼre the only business that can provide the solution to their problems. Make it sound like youʼre the miracle drug of all miracle drugs. If thereʼs one thing that would make your audience hopping to your store itʼs the benefits that you can give, more than that of your competition.

If you have a great headline, you can convince your target not only to read your ad, but to clamor for more. Heck, you can even convince your clients to buy, which I think is the objective of this exercise in the first place.