Getting Your House in Order

A Must Checklist When Contracting Your Presentation

You have a BIG presentation coming up, and you’ve decided to take the leap and hire a professional presentation specialist to assist you. You’re hoping to avoid the typical mundane presentation you would typically generate because the upcoming opportunity warrants the expense to deliver impact with a memorable impression. After you pull the trigger to move forward with outsourcing, the next step you are faced with is to translate expectations into a clear direction. However, you are suddenly faced with a communication barrier in front of you.

Considering you would generally muster through endless file assets to build the presentation, now you find yourself trying to explain it to your resource all the while juggling a tight deadline. The last thing you want to do is throw this person into the ocean to see how well they will swim because that will only cost you time and money, leaving you both gasping for air.

Here are five tips that will help with efficiency to utilize when preparing for your contractor’s download and to keep you both on the right track for a presentation success:

1. Distribute Brand Guide or Style Guide - What defines your company’s DNA is a necessary item for your contractor to review. It will allow them to wrap their head around your company’s makeup and understand how your image is assembled. If you don’t have this type of guide or even if your current guide is too general, distribute past marketing materials to help with the identification of your brand. If your arsenal is empty, then find examples in the marketplace that display where you’re heading with a “look & feel” to avoid leaving it open-ended. Giving your contractor too much slack to see what they come up with is dangerous, toying with time and expense. Realize there is no “magic pill” and it takes hard work to meet expectations to concept a great presentation.

2. Define Your Audience’s Pain Points and Desires - Create a simple summary for the Presentation Specialist that explains what is troubling your audience and how your company provides help to solve their problems. Stick to the general rule of threes and determine differentiating category solutions that focus on their aspirations like wealth, safety, success, security, love, acceptance, etc. You probably think the world of your product or service because of your everyday involvement, but your freelancer will not see this so quickly without clarification. If they can’t see it as an outside individual, there is a strong chance that neither will your audience. Try to take yourself out of the equation and ask yourself some hard-hitting questions like, “why should your audience care some much about what it is that you sell?” or “what makes your product or service so different than your competition?” The answers to these types of questions will help the contractor create around an emotional response opportunity within the layouts and bring your presentation to life.

3. Organize Your File Assets and Artwork - Turning over a bunch of elements to your freelancer will need to happen to help build your presentation. What may make sense to you about your assets will not necessarily be understood by the contractor. How you organize the items into folders and how you identify the file names of your articles needs to be as clear and literal as possible. From past presentations files, slides, documents, logos, brand artwork, font files, style direction, etc. it’s best practice to put these assets into an organized folder structure and possibly rename the files to coincide with your overall direction. This effort will help move things along and keep your distribution tight between the both of you. Also, use a universal sharing tool like dropbox.com to avoid endless back and forth emails. Read this additional article to help you along, “Time to Organize Those Presentation Assets.” The time that you will save your resource getting up to speed and operating smoothly is invaluable for you both in accomplishing a successful turnaround.

4. Specify an Emotional Tone or Theme - Founded on your audience’s issues or cravings, describe what the overall feeling of the presentation needs to be. Not only something that captures their attention but something that is objective to your authenticity. The story that you are trying to bring to life in the slides that present your product or service needs to personify how you can help your prospect reach their goals. Do not try and sway away from the truth of your company’s personality because they are smart and will pick up on any deviousness toward something you’re not. Stick to what makes you so unique and build a narrative around your genuineness. This will gain trust and traction for you in their eyes, allowing the opportunity to build upon a trusting foundation for a lasting relationship.

5. Copy Direction - Displaying the correct amount of copy on your slides can get tricky, so it’s essential to have a plan before downloading your Presentation Expert. Realize a human being is not wired to listen to a speaker, review slides and also take notes in the same moment. Simplifying your presentation message for your audience to digest is critical. Start by overwriting your thoughts for what you trying to say on each slide but establish instruction for your contractor to summarize and find the vital points in the message. This copy will be assessed and scrutinized by an unbiased person, which is useful because it’s how your audience will encounter it as well. Following the “less is more” philosophy to paraphrase, eliminate unnecessary words like conjunctions and adjectives, is the way to go. Your primary objective is to keep your audience’s attention on the presenter and not forcing them to read a brochure on a screen. If you feel it’s necessary to have a leave behind of the presentation, I suggest not to bother because most people never read this material after the fact, instead it will be tossed into the trash. If something is needed to reference on a later date email them a PDF or create a self-playing video for reference.