5 ways to use a new promotional video from Marketing in a PowerPoint sales presentation

As a sales professional your Marketing department is regularly producing and making available new resources for you to use in your PowerPoint sales presentations. If you’ve recently been sent a new promotional video for a product line or service, here are five ways you can incorporate it into a PowerPoint sales presentation whether it is delivered in person, virtually, or in a hybrid format where some people are in the room and some are virtual.

The default: Put it on a slide by itself

You want the prospect or client to be able to see the video, so the default option that most sales professionals use is to insert the video on a blank slide and resize it so it takes up most of the slide. That way when it plays the video will be large on the viewer’s screen.

If you want your sales presentations to stand out, you need to do better than the default that everyone else uses. Here are four ways to use the video that go beyond the default method.

Put the video on a slide with other content to give it context

Instead of making the video large on the slide, make it smaller so you can add other elements to give the video context. Include an image that introduces the product or expert who is shown in the video. Add text that explains why the content of the video is important in the buying decision. To make the video large when it plays, use the PowerPoint feature to play the video full screen, like in this example.

Trim the video to show only the point you are making

Marketing spent a lot of money to create the video and it often covers many points. To make a greater impact, use the PowerPoint feature to trim the video to just the 10-30 seconds that makes the one point that will help the prospect move along the buying journey. Then you can use the video again later and trim it to make a second point. You don’t have to show the entire video each time you use it.

Mute the video and narrate it yourself

Marketing has a talk track and music in the video. You don’t have to use the audio they have provided. Mute the video in PowerPoint and narrate the video (or a clip) yourself. This allows you to customize the explanation and tie it to a specific need or objection the prospect has previously raised.

Use a screen capture instead of the video

Instead of using the video in your presentation, take a screen capture of one frame and insert it on a slide as an image. You get the high quality visual you want and you can use it to share a customer success story that builds credibility with the prospect.

Using video effectively in a presentation is a skill that sales professionals need to learn in order to keep clients and prospects engaged, especially in virtual or hybrid meetings. In this video sales leader Colleen Francis shared that sales professionals need to embrace virtual meetings because clients and prospects want them and virtual meetings allow sales professionals to be more productive.

The skills of virtual presenting and the new skills sales professionals will have to learn in order to manage hybrid meetings will continue to be important moving forward. If you want to improve your skills in virtual presenting, check out my articles at EffectiveVirtualPresentations.com and the videos on my YouTube channel. To learn some of the new skills needed for hybrid presentations, check out my articles at EffectiveHybridPresentations.com.

If you are a sales leader who wants their team to learn the skills to create and deliver effective virtual PowerPoint presentations, contact me so we can discuss a customized training course.

By Dave Paradi

Dave Paradi has over twenty-two years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written ten books and over 600 articles on the topic of effective presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. His focus is on helping corporate professionals visually communicate the messages in their data so they don't overwhelm and confuse executives. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 4.8 million times and liked over 17,000 times on YouTube.