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Too many salespeople prepare a PowerPoint deck for a virtual sales meeting and spend over 95% of the time with the prospect sharing the slides. This makes the slides the focus and the video of the salesperson and the prospect small beside the slides. While the slides are important, they shouldn’t be the only focus.… Continue reading Decide to stop sharing your PowerPoint slides in a virtual sales meeting to engage the prospect

Too many salespeople take the deck that the Marketing department provides, fill in the prospect’s name and organization and think they are prepared for the meeting. Using the deck this way is the biggest mistake salespeople make when using the company standard PowerPoint deck. The deck has detailed information on the company and its products… Continue reading The biggest mistake salespeople make using the company standard PowerPoint deck

We recorded and watched the CBS TV special Adele One Night Only that was broadcast on Sunday November 14, 2021. I was struck by the production and how well done it was. As I considered the show after it was finished, I realized business professionals who present virtually on Teams, Zoom, Webex, Google Meet, and… Continue reading 3 Tips for virtual presenters from Adele’s One Night Only TV special

Why presenters share the full screen The typical approach for many presenters with one screen who want to share PowerPoint slides in a Zoom or Teams meeting is to first share their full screen. Then they start the PowerPoint Slide Show so the attendees see full screen slides. The problem is that attendees see your… Continue reading Share the Slide Show window instead of your single screen when using PowerPoint on Teams or Zoom

Should you use the standard PowerPoint slides that the Marketing department provides to all sales professionals? Absolutely Yes! Why? Because it provides you with the approved messages and is on brand with colors, imagery, and feel. But don’t use it as is. And don’t do the bare minimum that too many sales reps do. They… Continue reading Sales Professionals: How you use the standard PowerPoint deck Marketing provides tells prospects how much you value them

If you have many time periods to show in a timeline visual or you have many events to show on a timeline and cramming it in on a single slide would look too crowded, consider splitting the timeline across two slides. In the video below you will see how to create a sliding timeline that… Continue reading Create a sliding timeline visual in PowerPoint to show many time periods or events

One of the key parts of a consultative selling approach or the Sandler Selling System is to quantify the cost of the problem the prospect is having. By getting clear on the cost of the problem, it allows the prospect and sales professional to determine if the solution will provide a positive ROI for the… Continue reading Quantifying prospect pain or cost of the problem on a virtual sales call using a spreadsheet

A timeline visual is a generic term used to describe any time-based visual. It consists of the time scale for the desired period of time and shapes or text that indicate the events during the time period shown. A Gantt chart is a specific type of timeline visual often used in project management. Here is… Continue reading How to create a time scale in PowerPoint for timeline visuals, Gantt charts, and other time-based visuals

Microsoft makes downloadable timeline templates available at https://templates.office.com/en-us/timelines. Note that some of the templates are classified as Premium templates (denoted by the diamond icon) which are only available to those who have a subscription to Microsoft 365. When looking at these templates, be careful to select a template that creates an accurate time scale. Most… Continue reading Timeline visual templates in Excel from Microsoft

One challenge of virtual and hybrid meetings has been collaborating with the other attendees. Instead of standing around a whiteboard in a meeting room, Zoom offers a whiteboard built into the meeting platform. I think you should use a shared PowerPoint or Google Slides file instead of the built-in Zoom whiteboard because a shared file… Continue reading Why a shared PowerPoint or Google Slides file is a better whiteboard option in a Zoom meeting