Could Adding an Interactive Presentation to Your Sales Toolkit Help Improve Your Buyers’ Experience?

Could an interactive presentation be a smart move for your business as part of your sales toolkit  – or is it just a waste of resources?

Have you seen other companies take the leap with interactive presentations and tools? Perhaps you’ve seen a touchscreen experience at an event? Or you may have been in a sales meeting where an interactive presentation has been used to encourage conversation and enhance the buyers’ experience.

You might be feeling inspired to invest in something that improves the effectiveness and alignment of your sales and marketing teams – to meet the needs of your customers and help your entire team deliver a strong and compelling message.

But wait a minute; what’s wrong with your old presentations? You might be thinking something along the lines of: “What’s worked in the past will surely work again”?

No, it won’t.

There has been a huge shift in the way customers engage and buy from suppliers; from being more informed, to a larger buying committee, to increased pressure on delivering value, a multitude of changes have taken place.

Presentations that are linear and content-heavy are just not relevant anymore. We are now squarely in an ‘experience economy’, companies that understand this are reaping the rewards by creating experiences that focus solely on value and opportunities for the customer, putting them at the very heart of the story.

Long gone are the days of ‘Content is King’ – it’s now ‘Interactive content is King’. Customers don’t want to sit through a presentation that’s all about you, or your company. Instead, it should be about making it relevant and personal to them.

Perhaps you’ve been looking at interactive presentations for your business but still aren’t quite convinced it’s going to be the right fit for you – or if it’s going to give you a good return on investment.

It’s true that interactive sales tools aren’t the right solution for everyone. So, how can you tell?

The above video talks you through an interactive sales tool that we developed for Isotrak

As an experienced interactive design studio we’re going to tell you more about why an interactive sales tool can be indispensable – when used in the right scenarios.

1. Better engage with your audience

91% of B2B buyers prefer to consume interactive and visual content (DemandGen Report)

According to John Medina, who wrote Brain Rules, you’ve got mere seconds to grab someone’s attention – and only 10 minutes to keep it. At 9 minutes and 59 seconds, you must do something to regain attention and restart the clock – think about something that appeals emotionally and is relevant.

There are so many reasons to develop an interactive sales tool, but possibly the biggest one is giving power back to your audience to steer the conversation in the direction most relevant to them – instead of just sitting there being talked at in the form of a one-way, linear presentation.

Imagine for a second that you have a new product – or complex solution that you’re trying to show the benefits of to your customers. With an interactive sales tool, you’re able to start a two-way dialogue, ask questions around the challenges and direction they need to take their business in and then tailor the content and messaging to show them in real-time the impact, thereby creating an environment where the customer is at the heart of your story – in other words creating a customer-centric presentation.

A conversation will always be more engaging and if you let the buyer open up and give them the opportunity to talk about themselves, not only will you gain invaluable insights but you’ll leave them with a much more favourable and memorable impression. It also demonstrates that you’re responsive, flexible and have your audience’s interests at heart.

2. Customers want to do their own research

60% of B2B buyers have already made their purchase decision before ever speaking to a sales person

You’ve probably noticed in this age of instant access to information, customers are more informed. Not only that, they’re increasingly self-educating deeper into the sales cycle to learn all they can about overcoming their challenges and finding the best solutions to their problems.

Interactive content is very effective at educating buyers and giving them a personalised outcome to their research. This is because it lets your customers access the most relevant and actionable information to them and presents it in a more intuitive and immersive way, which in turn encourages and compels them to dig deeper into your brand.

3. Enhance your brand and build credibility

88% of marketers say interactive content differentiates them from their competitors (Business2Community)

These days, a lot of us are up against some tough competition. You can’t take this lightly if you want to come out on top, which is why businesses have to focus on getting maximum exposure for their brand, building credibility and projecting the right values for the brand.

This only truly comes from engaging with customers and the wider stakeholder community. So, by using an interactive presentation and content you are establishing yourself as a flexible, innovative and dynamic business that harnesses the power of visual storytelling to create valuable and lasting customer experiences.

4. Demonstrate value and opportunities for your customers and their business needs

As mentioned above, buyers are under increasing pressure internally to deliver greater and greater value from their partner relationships. They often have to provide a business case as to why they want to work with a particular supplier. So, you need to give them everything they need to demonstrate to their internal stakeholders why you will deliver the results and value the business needs.

Sure you can do this through static content and presentations but that doesn’t make the customers life any easier and it certainly makes yours harder. Being able to effectively articulate the value and opportunities you create and the benefits and value you’ll drive for the customer and their business in a memorable and visual way is paramount.

Advice from the interactive design experts

If developing an interactive sales tool in the form of a persuasive and engaging presentation sounds like a great idea, we’ve put together three main rules to follow.

Ideally, your presentation should be:

1. Personalised – Your content has to be personal and connect with the people you are talking to, ideally on a business and emotional level
2. Relevant – Make the content relevant to your audience, not generic to capture a diverse audience
3. Memorable and engaging – People have to remember you and your value proposition, and be able to retell this to the wider business

We’ve explained this in greater detail via our recent blog on the subject, but follow the above three rules and you won’t go far wrong in terms of content.

Bear in mind, there are many more factors to consider when developing your own interactive presentation from scratch. Check out our blog, ‘10 Important Factors to Consider When Creating an Interactive Presentation‘ to see the process we go through with our own clients.

This should hopefully give you a good starting point – whether you’re developing an interactive sales tool yourself, or via an agency.

Develop an interactive sales tool that will transform your buyer experience  

We hope tis blog post given you a better idea of just some of the reasons to develop an interactive sales tool for your business. It’s about making that all-important connection with your audience, differentiating yourself from your competitors, allowing buyers to find out more for themselves, and giving them true value with a memorable, engaging presentation.

Not sure where to start – or what your options for interactivity are? An interactive design agency with the right experience should be able to help. If you’d like to know more about how you can create the best interactive sales enablement content, get in touch today on +44 (0)117 329 1712 or hello@popcomms.com. We’d love to hear from you.