Producer Self-Management

Presentation tools

Try this powerful new way to engage your prospect

By John Edward Love, CPCU

I have a new secret weapon for you: a presentation tool that will shake things up and help you command your audience's attention as you lead them through the decision process. In addition, you can use it to develop content for your Web site that adds sophistication and creates a more interactive experience. But first, a few reminders before you win the next big one.

Think about the audience for your typical insurance proposal. Would you agree that:

• You are presenting during business hours on a day when, like most days, your prospect has about 20 other pressing things to do?

• Yours is usually one of several proposals they will review?

• The audience is used to receiving proposals in PowerPoint and, like all of us, they are somewhat numbed by the "same old, same old"?

Would you agree that your presentation needs to be short and engaging with dramatic impact?

A great sales presentation focuses on affirming that the features and benefits of your offering meet the needs—expressed and unexpressed—of the buyer. Wrapping dynamic public speaking skills, with effective presentation tools, around your core message is what winning presentations are all about. As always, I will caution that you need to have properly managed each previous step in the sales process to be set up for the win.

"In a way, these people are buying you, not just brake pads," said Richard (David Spade) to Tommy Boy (Chris Farley).

If you're a producer and you haven't watched the 1995 movie "Tommy Boy," you need to do your homework. Chris Farley's character, the not-too-bright heir to an auto parts factory, figures out what he's doing wrong and begins selling on the basis of connecting with people's needs and wants, and his success takes off. What he also realizes is that he needs to connect emotionally with prospective buyers and relate his product to their hopes and, perhaps, the resolution of their fears.

Visual stimulation is a great way to engage your audience emotionally. (So is smell, but I haven't figured that one out yet in the context of an insurance proposal.) Let's stick with the visual approach for now. Your goal is to use images and motion that trigger the audience to: (1) increase the brain activity necessary to follow you, and (2) begin connecting emotionally with the images they are seeing. You want to stimulate your prospects as you guide them toward positively connecting their needs with your offerings.

Appealing to the visual sense

Neurolinguistic experts teach us that the brain stores images and associates concepts and emotions with them. Words are not processed in our brain as letter-by-letter associations but rather in whole words that are usually attached to an image. The word "cow" in your brain is really not the letters c-o-w but the image of a cow (mine is a Holstein from the farm I lived on). If you want to connect with your prospect on a deeper, more emotional basis, you should design your presentations to incorporate more graphic images and less text.

Why aren't more producers already delivering presentations that are visually captivating? Simple answer: They don't spend one day and $400 on software and materials. You'd only have to do it once, and it would cost you less than a round of golf and lunch.

What am I suggesting? First, go to a stock art Web site and purchase high-quality photos and graphics you can use for your presentations.

For stock photos and graphics you can use Google images, but often you won't find what you're looking for or there will be royalty issues (you won't technically have the right to use the images even though you can download them). Or use sites like www.shutterstock.com, www.gettyimages.com, and www.istockphoto.com where you buy "credits" in bulk and then use those to purchase the images. You can search based on key words, and filter based on the type of file you need (vectors, images, video, etc.).

In fact, you and other producers, or your agency, can work together to buy dozens of images in bulk and share the use of them within the agency (be sure to read the licensing agreement that comes with the pay-for-use stock sites). The graphics available for free in Microsoft's Office products are very limited and, in my opinion, don't look very good. Certainly they are not designed with insurance/risk management themes in mind.

You should also get in the habit of carrying a decent digital camera with you at all times so you can take photos of local buildings where prospects are based, or anything else interesting that will later help you tell a story. Point and shoot cameras with resolution of 5 megapixels and higher take photos that look good on the big screen; even better are digital SLR cameras with a telephoto lens (e.g., 55mm - 250mm). Imagine talking about your commercial auto policy quote with an image on screen of the prospect's fleet in the parking lot (man, do I sound like an insurance geek there)!

The limitation of PowerPoint is that it is a linear tool. It encourages you to present in A-B-C-D order. If you insist on continuing to use it, at least invest in software plug-ins that help you create sharper graphics and smoother slide transitions, and explore more of its functionality to learn how to incorporate video and animation.

A cool new tool

For those of you who are willing to make a switch, I recommend a Flash-based presentation tool—Prezi—that starts with an infinite canvas and has a very short learning curve.

Prezi is the coolest presentation tool I've seen in years. I've made my living doing presentations in financial services for more than 22 years, and I'm telling you: Jump on Prezi (www.prezi.com) before everyone else does and use it as the platform to transform your presentations into dynamic and compelling sales tools.

Prezi is based in San Francisco and originated out of developers from Eastern Europe. As a professional presenter, I've been frustrated with the challenges of working within PowerPoint or Apple's Keynote. I've used both for years, and they still have their place; but because everyone uses them, audiences have become numb to their appearance.

PowerPoint and Keynote are also similar in being linear tools, whereas Prezi doesn't limit the direction of your presentation. You can sign up for a free account, but your presentations will be stored in the cloud and may be available for others to see—not something you want to do with a prospect's insurance proposal. For $59 you can upgrade your account to keep your presentations private. For $159 you can download Prezi to your laptop and work computer and store Prezis offline. That's what I use.

The idea behind the product, according to Prezi, is: "When information is collected in one space, rather than separated into chunks, you can see the relationships between topics—making it easier to connect ideas and understand each other better."

Your learning curve for Prezi is minutes. Watch their videos on how to get started, and you can quickly be on your way. I start by dragging all of the images, videos and graphics I want to use from a file on my laptop onto the Prezi virtual canvas. I can then begin spreading them out and adding text. The "path" tool that allows you to pre-set the order of images and text is cool and easy to use. Even better, you can break away from that path anytime you want and use the mouse to go to anywhere on the virtual canvas.

By rotating the text or images, you can create an animated effect that engages your audience. It can actually make some viewers experience motion sickness, so don't overdo it. You can shrink the size of text to hide a text block deeper within an image or other block of text and then zoom in on it—another cool effect that's great for emphasizing key points.

The functionality I'm most excited about is the ability to embed video files and Web site links (remember to be connected to the Internet if you want the hyperlinks to work). This is game changing. Not because you can't do it with PowerPoint or Keynote, but because it's easier with Prezi and feels more natural. In fact, load 100mb of videos in slides on PowerPoint and watch the performance begin to suffer—including, occasionally, crashing your system.

With Prezi, when you're telling your story to a prospect, you have the ability to play videos of testimonials from other clients, biographic introductions of your service team, and other specially produced videos that explain your services and products. Boom! You just went black belt in your presentation and crushed the competition!

You can also save Prezis and put them on your Web site. You could, for example, do a Prezi that explains why disability insurance is important, compare different LTD products, and embed a video (you could post it on YouTube) with client testimonials. The viewer can use the mouse to move around the Prezi canvas and revisit sections of interest. You've just added a feature that engages your site visitor and drives the sales process forward—and it was easy and inexpensive!

Somewhere out there is a 23-year-old producer with computer skills that far surpass mine, and I hope you'll e-mail me with your thoughts and suggestions. If it's okay with you, I'll post them on my Web site for others to learn from. Innovation in business tools is occurring on an hourly basis, and I look forward to helping you develop your ideas.