Seven Mistakes to Avoid with Online Sales Presentations Ideally, online sales presentations should be as intimate as a personal sales call and as effective as a well-run trade event. Unfortunately, few presentations achieve this ideal, due to these seven common pitfalls: Mistake #1: Inadequate preparation. There’s a woeful tendency in our wired world to pretend that communicating via a computer requires less preparation that communicating face-to-face. While tools exist to make online presentations easy, preparation remains essential. For an online presentation to be effective, it must be as smooth and effortless as a top-notch face-to-face presentation, and must also use the online environment to its best advantage. Be sure to test the system before you go live; a dry run is a good idea if the presentation is particularly important (like an earnings call). Enlist the help of an objective proofreader. Be sure that the mechanics of the meeting are in place -- more than one online presentation has flopped because of something simple, like the wrong time on the confirmation e-mail. Mistake #2: Thinking too linearly. Online sales presentations offer new tools for communicating with customers, including instant polls, chat rooms, running demonstration, video clips, shared white boards, and so forth. These tools are intended to create an interactive, multimedia environment where participants can make choices about how they wish to participate. The old, linear A-to-Z slide presentation just won’t work in the online meeting environment. In a face-to-face presentation you might break for a video clip, an online presentation might merely point to a link and let the participants decide whether to view the video now or later. Similarly, where a face-to-face presentation might have an evaluation form collected at the close, an online meeting can have an instant poll to make certain that your presentation is on target. Mistake #3: Relying on “talking heads.” Customers are busy people. If you want them to actually participate in an online sales meeting, you’ll need to make the event engaging enough to keep them away from e-mail and other online distractions. The worst thing you can do with an online presentation is to assume that participants will listen politely to talking heads droning through a set of bullet points. This doesn’t mean that you have to make every online presentation a circus show, but it does mean that your presentation material must be able to secure and hold the customers’ attention. Mistake #4: Attempting to “do-it-yourself.” Online presentations involve technology that’s relatively new, so unless you’re very technically savvy; it’s a good idea to have a technical support person handy during your presentation. That way, you have somebody who can handle any logistical problems. Similarly, if the online presentation is complicated and involves multiple presenters, you may want to hire a professional moderator to help transitions topics and act as the “voice” of the participants as they use chatting and instant polls to interact with the speakers during the presentation. Mistake #5: Failing to promote the event. If you want customers to spend their time participating in an online sales presentation, you’ll need to offer them something of value. The best ways to attract participants is to offer the opportunity to interact with a recognizable speaker. Another way to increase attendance (and retention) is to offer participants a gift if they register, sign on, and actually attend the entire online event. Beyond this, remind attendees frequently that the presentation is coming up. Remember: unlike face-to-face sales presentations, online presentations are sandwiched into customers’ busy schedules and thus easily forgotten, or dismissed. Use e-mail, immediate messaging, and phone calls to keep your customers committed to attending the event. Mistake #6: Getting off on the wrong foot. With face-to-face presentation, it’s not unusual to start the meeting a little late, as people get coffee, greet each other and get settled. That’s not the case with an online presentation, because participants will already be sitting in their own offices, surfing the web or reading e-mail as they wait for the event to begin. If you don’t start on time, most customers will just shrug and move on to other tasks. Even though you must start on time, don’t just launch into the content. Create a welcome slide that explains what participants can expect from the meeting and go through the “ground rules” for using the online meeting technology. Mistake #7: Neglecting an emergency plan. Technology may be excellent, but it’s never perfect, so it’s best to troubleshoot potential problems, before you go live with an online presentation. Figure out what might go wrong and decide how you’re going to adapt. For example, if the presenter loses his or her connection, what can you ask participants to do while the presenter reconnects? Similarly, if you learn, through the chat feature, that some attendees can't hear the presenter's voice, how are you going to address the problem? An emergency plan also has a powerful side benefit -- you’re much more likely to be relaxed and comfortable during your meeting, if you know that you’re not going to be blindsided. > To try a 15-day trial of Macromedia’s Breeze web conferencing solution, click here.