In the past couple of months I have met with four entrepreneurs, all highly passionate about their products and excited with the potential for them in the market.
Recent posts by Mark Gibson
6 min read
The Role of Sales and Marketing Consultants in Start-ups
Topics: inbound marketing marketing messaging lean startups
2 min read
A Guide to Creating Engaging Powerpoint Sales Presentations
Recently I posted a question on a LinkedIn forum eliciting ideas for best-practices in PowerPoint presentations for an upcoming client project.
This was as a result of reading Seth Godin's blog-post on "PowerPoint makes us stupid - these bullets can kill", which led to an older post entitled Really Bad PowerPoint.
I didn't get much of a response to my request for ideas on PowerPoint best-practices, so I did some research of my own and came up with my own idea of what a best practices PowerPoint sales presentation should look like.
The following ideas combine to form the structure of my best-practices PowerPoint sales presentation and if you like it, please leave a comment and share it with friends. If you dont like it, I'm interested in why not.
1. I used MindManager from Mindjet to create the mind-map and story-board and highly recommend this extremely useful tool to create new ideas either individually or collaboratively.
2. I used the 4-MAT system developed by Bernice McCarthy for presenting the information in a way that is proven to create understanding for all learning preferences.
4. The salesperson expresses an opinion very early in the I.M.P.A.C.T buying cycle to initiate the buyer-seller engagement and create opportunity in a Value-created Selling (consultative selling) approach.
5. In this approach we do not present the relevant product features and capabilities of our solution until we have created emotional engagement.
6. If you can't tell your story in under 20 slides then you have work to do to create clarity and distill your message. Try to remember slides are visual aids, not a crutch; we are not training, we are selling. It's up to the presenter to know the script and to bring the images and story to life. A great presenter engages the buyer emotionally at the outset through expressing an informed opinion and asking questions and brings them on the journey as you relate your solution.
7. Remember Seth's rules, pictures convey emotions and engage the imagination, bullets can kill.
8. Finally, can you present without using Powerpoint, using a flip-chart, visual confection, the back of a napkin or some other presentation medium or tools suggested in the comments below.
This was as a result of reading Seth Godin's blog-post on "PowerPoint makes us stupid - these bullets can kill", which led to an older post entitled Really Bad PowerPoint.
I didn't get much of a response to my request for ideas on PowerPoint best-practices, so I did some research of my own and came up with my own idea of what a best practices PowerPoint sales presentation should look like.
The following ideas combine to form the structure of my best-practices PowerPoint sales presentation and if you like it, please leave a comment and share it with friends. If you dont like it, I'm interested in why not.
1. I used MindManager from Mindjet to create the mind-map and story-board and highly recommend this extremely useful tool to create new ideas either individually or collaboratively.
2. I used the 4-MAT system developed by Bernice McCarthy for presenting the information in a way that is proven to create understanding for all learning preferences.
- 4-MAT is powerful for conveying new ideas in training, presentation environments and in teaching all ages and we use it to present our Selling in the Internet Age training and ELearning materials
- If you are not using 4-MAT for your presentations, then I recommend you investigate this method. (If you find anything better, please leave a comment)
- 4-Mat answers the How, When Why and What-if questions in a logical order to engage, inform, extend and refine conceptual understanding.
4. The salesperson expresses an opinion very early in the I.M.P.A.C.T buying cycle to initiate the buyer-seller engagement and create opportunity in a Value-created Selling (consultative selling) approach.
5. In this approach we do not present the relevant product features and capabilities of our solution until we have created emotional engagement.
6. If you can't tell your story in under 20 slides then you have work to do to create clarity and distill your message. Try to remember slides are visual aids, not a crutch; we are not training, we are selling. It's up to the presenter to know the script and to bring the images and story to life. A great presenter engages the buyer emotionally at the outset through expressing an informed opinion and asking questions and brings them on the journey as you relate your solution.
7. Remember Seth's rules, pictures convey emotions and engage the imagination, bullets can kill.
8. Finally, can you present without using Powerpoint, using a flip-chart, visual confection, the back of a napkin or some other presentation medium or tools suggested in the comments below.
Topics: messaging value 4-mat powerpoint
3 min read
Get Clarity in Messaging or Get Trampled by the Competition
The symptoms of marketing under-achievement are fairly standard and there are tens of thousands of companies Worldwide with good to great products that are under-performing in marketing. Here are a few symptoms of a problem at B2B company, Acme Inc.:
Topics: inbound marketing messaging value differentiation
3 min read
Connecting Brand with Positioning to Create Clarity in Messaging
Innovation is happening everywhere as our economy transforms from the 20th century model of mass production and lifetime employment in monolithic corporations to individuals and knowledge workers in small businesses investing in their sweat and ideas to make a living and to live their dreams.
Topics: messaging value positioning lean start-ups
2 min read
Note to Sales - Execution Perfection, FC Barcelona 4 – Arsenal 1
Tonight I watched the quarter final of the UEFA European Champions League to see my favorite football (soccer) team FC Barcelona play Arsenal. I have written two prior blog posts on the way FC Barcelona goes about professional training and development of players, plays football and approaches playing and winning the game.
Topics: sales performance fc barcelona
2 min read
A Messaging Architecture to Convey Value, Position, Differentiate
A Messaging Architecture Captures your Value Proposition
In the dot.com boom and Outbound Marketing World of just a few years ago, marketing, advertising and branding agencies engaged well funded startups in positioning and branding exercises and at the same time relieved the investors and company of a lot of cash.This sort of top-down branding went hand in hand with lavish launch parties and first-mover takes all mentality that fueled the dot.com boom and subsequent bust.
Driving eyeballs was what mattered and often the brand message was disconnected from the underlying value of the products and the sales team's ability to articulate it in conversation with buyers.
It is difficult to imagine spending lavish sums on branding, positioning and advertising in today's Inbound Marketing, lean-startup World, where every dollar spent is closely scrutinized and analyzed for ROI, and where it is recognized that B2B brands are built over time, based on customer success.
To me it seems obvious that the branding should be based on the value the company creates for customers and we can capture this information through a careful analysis of how customers use the products/services.
Brand Positioning
What matters in messaging is connecting your brand and positioning message with the most visceral value-creation proposition for each interested group of buyers in your prospect universe. Al Reis in the book "Positioning" suggests rather than try and create something new and different in the mind of the buyer, we need to manipulate what is already there and re-tie the connections that already exist.Brand Messaging Process
A methodology for messaging value is built from the bottom-up, based on connecting value-creation to buyer-needs rather than a top-down "Mad-Men" view of the World into the reality of selling products/services...we have tried both approaches and bottom-up works best.- Start your journey to clarity in messaging value with a sales and marketing messaging alignment workshop. The output of this process is Messaging Architecture that will help marketers and salespeople position capabilities and engage buyers in conversations around their problems vs. the product features.
- Identify your buyer-persona's and their roles, goals, issues and problems that your products/services can address
- Next, map your relevant capabilities that can help buyer persona's solve their problems
- Group Win-themes into logical clumps and abstract the positioning pillars to create clarity in positioning vs competition.
- At this point we will have enough information to create visual confections and visual stories that salespeople can use to engage buyers in conversation around their issues.
- With the Value Proposition in place, the Brand Message including mission-statement, tagline, corporate positioning and corporate presentation (visual confection) can easily be derived.
- Content Creation Templates are used to develop consistent content across the company for both blogging and Website content by insiders as well as external writers, by extracting win themes and buyer persona issues and appropriate keywords.
- Create a "Mission Statement" that helps employees connect their daily toil with company vision, revenue, profit and customer satisfaction goals.
- Create a positioning statement that identifies the market segment you wish to occupy in the mind of the buyer and why your product/service is different and valuable.
Topics: messaging value marketing messaging differentiation branding
3 min read
Start-up Sales and Marketing Insights and 2010 Priorities
CSO Insights have been publishing sales performance data for technology companies for the past 16 years.
This year is the first time they have broken that data set down to include a survey of Start-up sales and marketing performance. In their 2010 Sales Performance Optimization Survey, a total of 182 startup sales leaders completed the comprehensive survey of all aspects of the sales and business development process.
As a consultancy we focus on solving marketing and sales problems in both start-ups and in established companies. Established firms trying to sell innovative technology to early adopters, have similar problems to startups, except for the cash-flow constraints.
This survey of 182 start-ups of which 60% were based in the USA highlights a number of issues of which we have first-hand experience. We believe the following data are interesting and worthy of discussion.
Topics: CSO Insights marketing messaging lean startups
2 min read
HubSpot Partners Combine to Create Value for Software Start-up
On Monday two weeks ago we received a surprise call from a prospective client who was running a HubSpot trial. We started the trial to gather data to make the business case for an investment in our Sales and Marketing Messaging Alignment process , HubSpot, and our HubSpot implementation support.
Topics: inbound marketing hubspot buyer-persona
2 min read
Sales & Marketing Performance Tip - Define Your Perfect Prospect
Sales and marketing aligning to define their perfect prospect is one way of improving lead generation and getting more from marketing investments, according to CSO Insights 2010 Sales Performance Optimization Survey of more than 2800 companies.
Topics: CSO Insights marketing messaging buyer-persona
3 min read
2010 CSO Insights Survey: I Want Inbound Leads, Marketing Alignment
CSO Insights * yesterday released their 16th. Sales Performance Optimization Survey of more than 2800 Chief Sales Officers (CSO's) around the World from many different industries.
