Adviser presentations are one of the key tools in gaining new clients and improving relationships within your existing audience.
A bad presentation can ruin months of hard work. Use this guide to take your presentations from ordinary to impactful.
How you begin is vital.
- It is crucial to grab the audience and tell them right upfront why they should listen to you and what they're going to get out of it
- Don't begin with an agenda. An agenda will put the audience to sleep right off the bat; there is no more effective way to lose their attention before you've even begun to tell them anything important.
- Instead:
i. Begin with 'Making the case for…'. Overly draw attention to your real purpose; they know you're there to sell them something, so acknowledge it, and then…
ii. Explain the topics you'll cover and give them reasons to listen. "There are three things I'm going to talk to you about today" - make them as compelling and punchy as possible.
iii. Focus on giving them either something educational, something genuinely interesting, or something with a clear benefit for them and their clients. This gets their attention so you can deliver your 'sales' messages. - Differentiate yourselves from all other fund managers, who begin their presentations with self-indulgent and self-congratulatory messages about how big and great they are. They are all the same, and nobody cares!
Clear simple messages per slide in a coherent narrative.
- Make sure every slide has a simple key message, and that message fits into a coherent over-arching narrative.
- Make sure that message is explicitly clear: use a 'key message' end line for each slide to remind them what it was when they read/share the presentation later. They won't remember if you don't, and therefore won't do a good job of selling.
- If there's anything else on that slide that isn't validating that single message, get rid of it.
Visual impact is more memorable than lots of words.
Try and build your presentations without bullet points. Wordy, text-based slides have no impact on the audience. Take the trouble with the design to convey your message per slide in a much more interesting, visually impactful way - and therefore a more memorable way that's easier for others to relay.
Address the adviser and their clients' needs.
Always address the adviser directly (using 'you' and 'your clients'), thinking about the fund and opportunity from THEIR point of view: how will they use it? How will they talk to their clients about it (e.g. sell it to them)? What role will it play in their portfolio? What are its benefits, and what problem will it solve and how?
End by repeating the same key messages you started with.
"So the three things we've covered today are…"