Periodically in the sales and marketing world, we come across a tool or program that makes our lives that much easier, and anything that makes sales and/or marketing easier is a win in my book. I use the tool Clearslide to load PowerPoint presentations about our recruitment network, and then I am able to send them to an email address in a professional online format rather than as an attachment.
Not that impressed? Well this tool then sends me alerts whenever that specific email is opened, as well as sending me detailed reports of how long the presentation was viewed, which slides were viewed and for how long, and even allows the viewer to send me questions or notes in the presentation.
More than that, I am also given a custom link that I can have a prospect log on to, and control the presentation as they view it. With this option, I can easily toggle to a screen share mode to take them on a tour of our website, or even allow them control if I wanted them to be able to explore our private site themselves. Adding video or sound is also extremely simple, and every “pitch” is saved to reference back to as needed.
Why am I sharing this with independent recruiters you ask? Recently, a firm approached the network requesting a presentation to share with a client that was looking to hire a firm with international capabilities and trading partners. While he already had a solid PowerPoint to send of his own capabilities, adding in a few slides on the network that allows him local trading partners globally could only increase the appeal over competitors. I was able to turn the entire presentation into an online link through Clearslide, and then share these statistics with him about how the viewing went:
When I hover over the particular bars, it informs me of how long that specific slide was viewed. I know from this that the slide they spent the most time on was the pricing information as well as the list of countries where trading partners were located in. I can also see that they reopened the whole presentation about an hour later just to revisit the slide indicating the country list. This gives the firm owner the advanced knowledge to really drive the selling point on his international reach and cross country placements he has made, which in itself is much more than a simple attached presentation can do.
As a marketing piece, these presentations are easy to add to websites, profiles, or outbound mail including signatures to give prospective clients an easy way to view your company information. With 2016 quickly approaching, this is definitely one tool I’d recommend adding to your business toolbox.