In a sales professional’s perfect world, purchasing decisions are made at the conclusion of the meeting by the newly informed meeting attendees.

In reality, though, many decisions are delayed for the obligatory “higher-ups” review.  This is the crucial stage where executives unable to attend the original meeting make fateful decisions at later meetings, often inaccessible to outsiders.

When you’re preparing a proposal likely to generate internal review, it’s important to design your presentation with the afterlife in mind.

But before you go running for your ouija board, understand that this process doesn’t involve any black arts but rather the art of capturing the energy, enthusiasm and information from your original presentation (we’ll call it your presentation “spirit”) and harnessing it for future reviews that lack you…at least physically!

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1. Digitize

Hopefully your original meeting went great and even though the meeting attendees were unable to offer a commitment, they were excited about your proposal and promised to advocate for you internally. That’s excellent news – but since your fate now largely shifts into your advocates’ hands, you need to fill those hands with dynamic, productive resources that will help them woo the decision makers.

The problem is business professionals are already inundated with hundreds of attached PDF and PowerPoint presentations that get lost in the downloads folder or even worse, get blocked by email servers altogether!

Throwing one more on the pile is going to make it difficult for your pitch to differentiate so instead, go the attachment-free route by digitizing your presentation so it’s emailable and accessible online with the simple click of a hyperlink. PowerPoint, Google Slides and Prezi all offer options to host / embed your presentations online, so instead of clunky attachments that rely on desktop software, you can share a consistent version of your presentation accessible on any internet-enabled device! In most cases, you can also offer a downloadable version from the online link…so your reviewers still have the best of both worlds.

 

2. Audio-fy

Of course, if all it took were a fancy online presentation to make that final sale, there’d be many more people doing it successfully. As the sales professional, you’re the one who makes the presentation go – so for meetings you’re not privy to, how can you inject as much of your presentation “spirit” into the afterlife as possible?

A great way to capture your presence and delivery is to record audio narrations throughout the presentation. Most presentation tools allow you to insert audio clips specific to each slide or frame, so instead of overloading your presentation with text that won’t be read anyway, design your presentation with the same visual, minimalist experience you normally would and provide the extra depth through your personal commentary. Viewers will have a much more realistic presentation experience and your message will come across more clearly through your own words!

 

3. Diversify

Even after digitizing and “audio-fy”-ing in preparation for the afterlife, you still have no guarantee your presentation will ever get an opportunity to wow. The decision makers can become elusive, time frames can be extended indefinitely, budgets can dry up and priorities can change. With all those factors working against you, it’s critical to make your presentation as accessible as possible. You can’t force someone to view your pitch (at least legally), but you can offer the path of least resistance.

There are many ways you can diversify your presentation. To name just a few, you can:

• Mobilize: Ideally, your primary presentation will be easily accessible on a mobile device, but it still doesn’t hurt to create a second version of your presentation that’s ultra mobile-friendly by reducing the size of photos, removing complex multimedia and using common fonts. PowerPoint, Prezi and Google Slides also have dedicated mobile apps so you can even generate a link that will push the presentation directly to the app on a smartphone.
• Video-fy:  You can easily export a PowerPoint to a video directly through the platform. With audio included, decision makers will be able to sit back and watch your sales presentation almost like you’re with them in the room. Using a screen recording software allows you to achieve the same effect with Prezi or Google Slides – giving your viewers a cinematic option as an alternative to manual slide by slide progressions.
• Generate a PDF: Yeah, we know it’s boring but some people prefer ol’ tried and true!

 

The afterlife is important too!

If it were up to us, a sale would be done when the pitch is done! We know that’s not always the case though, so it’s important to take steps to prepare your presentation for the afterlife – that stage when you’re unable to present it in-person.

Digitizing your presentation can spare your deck from the dreaded attachment downloads folder, adding audio will help you project your presentation “spirit” to new reviewers and diversifying your presentation through PDFs, videos and mobile-optimized channels will ensure executives are able to easily access your presentation.

If you take these steps, the spirit of your presentation will live on and you may have just prioritized your claim to the few spare moments in their day!

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So what do you think? Are you ready to prepare your presentations for the AFTERLIFE?

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