CLOUD ESSENTIALS FOR SALES TEAMS
Why PPT Is PFFFT
Perceptions of Powerpoint have been falling for a long time, as evidenced by nicknames such as PowerPunt and ImpotentPoint, among others.
Results from a recent study by Harvard psychologists suggest that PowerPoint undermines information transfer to audiences and fails to improve what people think of your brand.
What do viewers want that PowerPoint can’t deliver? Novelty. Powerpoint is so ubiquitous that its utility as a medium has fallen with enough force to pull PPT viewers’ expectations down with it. As far as viewers are concerned, PPT is PFFFT! At the same time, millennials’ expectations for engaging, versatile, current content and formats have driven demand for new viewing experiences. The Boston Consulting Group puts it this way:
“The future of B2B sales is digital. Already half of B2B buyers are millennials, whose preference for digital interactions is quickly reshaping the customer journey and how buyers communicate with suppliers. In fact, companies with the most sophisticated digital B2B sales organizations are already enjoying significantly higher profits than companies with less developed digital capabilities. And they plan to invest twice as much as others over the next five years—which puts them in a position to widen their advantage.”
That’s why the more engaging information sellers can share with customers during the buying journey, the more informed the customer will become and the better the sales results will be.
The Harvard Business Review includes cloud-based technologies among its top five needs for “fast deployment and at-will scaling of systems to keep up with ever-changing business, customer, and sales force needs”. Close readers will note that the HBR findings were published in 2015, which means that organizations already using cloud-based systems have a competitive advantage over ones that don’t
The future of B2B sales is digital. Already half of B2B buyers are millennials, whose preference for digital interactions is quickly reshaping the customer journey and how buyers communicate with suppliers.
The power of cloud-based sales presentations
Agility is here to stay. More than a buzzword, agility is a competitive advantage that sales teams achieve when they have access to fresh sales and marketing content on-demand. In “Diffusing agility across the organization: How leading brands are building capabilities to market for moments,” Deloitte Insights includes agility as a persistent trend in their 2020 outlook
To create and maintain an edge in today’s complex, demanding marketplace, companies often need adaptive models that can enable them to keep up with the speed of culture, conversation, and digitization.
The agile moves that leading brands are taking to engage their customers
2020 FORECAST
Artificial intelligence
WHAT IT MEANS
Interaction analysis for decision-making and response
Predictive sensing
WHAT IT MEANS
Analytics for social intelligence
Acting in near real time
WHAT IT MEANS
Supporting real-time customer engagement
Modeling brand participation
WHAT IT MEANS
Forming communities around your brand
DO IT NOW
- Personalized URLs for customers and prospects
- Customized presentations based on interactional analysis
- Content creation based on intelligent data
- Open API
- Notifications: views, duration, favorites
- Management analytics: reps, decks, customers
- Branding already done
- Messaging already done
- Multimedia content ready
- Prospect data ready for personalization
- Show off customer participation
- Highlight your collaborations
- Thank your community
- Protect your brand
Hupfer, S. (December 6, 2019). Capitalizing on the promise of artificial intelligence: Perspectives on AI adoption from around the world. Deloitte Insights.
O’Brien, D., Main, A., Kounkel, S., Stephan, A. R. (October 5, 2019). Diffusing agility across the organization: How leading brands are building capabilities to market for moments. Deloitte Insights.
O’Brien, D., Main, A., Kounkel, S., Stephan, A. R. (October 15, 2019). The amplification of consumer participation: How emerging customer engagement strategies are unlocking new value for global brands. Deloitte Insights.