Is Your In-Home Presentation Unique and Powerful (or Unremarkable)?

Why are we still so quick to embrace some technologies and equally as quick to reject others… even when the one’s we are rejecting stand to make our lives and work infinitely less complex and more professional? 

I think it all comes down to a fear of the unknown… a desire to avoid things that have the potential to fail.  But embracing technology in your business is a requirement for success.  Here’s what I mean.

As we mentioned last month, you don’t have to use a battery drill to remodel houses, but you probably wouldn’t dream of showing up to a job without one.

And yet, so many of us are still slow to embrace technology in another key area of our business… specifically, selling! We still deliver paper quotes, handle leads in our head or on paper and run our jobs with relatively manual focus.  And, its not that its bad to do that; but it opens the door to a less than impressive customer experience.

Great tools like MarketSharp help you manage the marketing, production and admin portions of your business, but most of us still make presentations to our leads in an old and uninspiring way using pitchbooks, pricing catalogs, etc.  Plus, by not adopting technology that can make our work simpler, we also send a subtle (or not so subtle) message to our clients and prospects: “I’m less than current!”

I assume you already have a smartphone and a laptop or tablet.  If I’m right, here are FOUR simple ways you can easily incorporate technology into your sales and projects that will benefit you and stand out to your customers.

  1. Create/utilize an interactive presentation with your tablet! Customers love swiping and interacting… and a tablet provides a cleaner and less bulky lookbook than you would ever want to lug into a meeting.  If you haven’t tried it, its easy to build a slide deck for display on your tablet.  Using the PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides apps allows you to easily build a presentation complete with photos, testimonials and all the numbers you need to “get them to yes!”

PRO TIP: Using a home “visualizer” like RenoWorks polishes your presentation and helps the customer see the difference their project will make to their home.  Pair RenoWorks with MarketSharp CRM and Automated Marketing and watch your leads engage faster and close quicker with an amazing presentation the customer takes part in. If you’d like help building an interactive tablet presentation for your company you may want to contact John Anglis who does a great job with this service to our industry.

  1. Consider creating a couple “project-specific” presentations.  If you do exterior and interior work, take the extra time to make a couple different templates…each focusing on one or two of your specialties.  This allows you to focus the client in on what is important to them.  It also keeps them from drowning in information overload.

PRO TIP Keep your presentation concise and organized.  Your clients can only process so much information, so use the slide to communicate a clear, concise message that you and the customer can build from.  Death by PowerPoint is real and you don’t want it to happen to your presentation. 

  1. Let your happy customers tell your prospects how thrilled you are.  “Testimonials” are great and MarketSharp and partners like GuildQuality help you easily capture those.  Integrate them with photos into your presentation.

PRO TIP: Phones and Tablets make it easier than ever to capture high quality video.  Take a chance and start asking your customers to share testimonials via video.  Then incorporate that into your presentation.  You can easily edit videos with the stock editing tools on your device, or use inexpensive editors like Camtasia and CorelVideoStudio to add some extra polish to the video.   Then, be sure to  add videos to your slide deck.  Remember, the key is short and sweet…don’t worry about editing your video…get a good testimonial and keep it as real as possible.  If the client stutters…leave it in, that makes it more real. 

  1. Consider using a tablet in your estimating process.  It is a common fact that many consumers are wary about salespeople ‘figuring up a price’ based on a price book or worse yet, from the top of their head!  There’s something credible about an electronic device coming up with the pricing.  Additionally, this method adds a level of professionalism that many of your competitors can’t measure up to.

PRO TIPGet your hands on one of the new Estimating tools designed to make pricing your products and proposal/contract generation a snap.  MarketSharp is integrated with and recommends either Leap or One-Click-Contractor.  Both of these tools do a great job helping bring your sales process up to speed with today’s customer expectations.

There are a ton of other presentation tips that we have, so let us know if you want more articles like this.  And, reach out to see how MarketSharp can help you collect information on your clients and prospects that will help your presentation stand out even more.

As we move into the summer months, we hope your business benefits from your renewed commitment to a powerful sales presentation.