Sales presentations are very important if you are in B2B sales. Every new prospect asks you to 'send something across' as soon as you reach them. Subroto Bagchi is a seasoned B2B salesman and a successful entrepreneur. Here are his tips on how to create a B2B sales presentation that works. These tips are from his new book,  Sell: The Art, the Science, the Witchcraft , which came out just 2 months back. 1. How do you begin a sales presentation? Most B2B sales presentations begin with 'about us'. The salesperson talks about his company and its offices across the world and his list of clients. Subroto recommends you begin with the client. He has this advice to share: Salespeople, almost all of them; they tend to push content about themselves. Why don't they personalize and contextualize the slide deck and say: "This is what we have learnt about you, your needs, and this is why we would like to share the following information with you"? The client i...

You have to deliver a keynote speech at an event. Here is a simple template you can use to structure your keynote speech. Decide on your  3 main messages,  that you want to share with your audience Then follow this structure: Story 1 followed by message 1 Story 2 followed by message 2 Analogy 1 followed by message 3 and so on Remember that your story contains your message. What we are doing is to narrate the story first and then share the message. Your analogy works the same way. Mention the analogy and then your message. This template is modular. If you have less time, reduce one story or analogy If you have more time, add one story or analogy Gaur Gopal Das is a prolific speaker and a life coach in India. I have developed this keynote speech structure inspired by his 18-minute talk where he has used this template very effectively. This is the structure Gaur Gopal Das has followed in his keynote speech. Gaur Gopal Das has 2 stories a...

I have analyzed 170 print ads published over the last 3 years looking for design lessons for presentations. Why? Because newspaper ads are designed by professionals and it is a great place to learn about design. In the first post of this series ( 5 Tips to use Colours in presentations [Design secret #1] ) I talked about colours. This post is about fonts. In this post I answer the following questions: WHICH font should I use in my presentation? HOW MANY fonts should I use in my presentation? Should I write my slide title in all capitals? What is the ideal font size for a presentation? #1 Which font shoul d I use in my presentation? I will answer this question at two levels. First, you need to decide the type of font you want to use. Second, you decide which specific font you want to use within that type. Two types of fonts Serif fonts Sans-serif fonts Look at this advertisement by ROLEX. The line below ROLEX logo...  THE LADY-DATEJUST is written in sans-serif...