Use smart design to give customers what they want

A real-estate agent came to me with an idea for a pre-sentation to help sell her services. She wanted to create a self-guided PowerPoint slideshow that would run in the company lobby and could also be given to prospective clients.

This in itself was a terrific idea, but after reviewing her rough presentation, I realized that we needed to work on its focus. Her slides danced around the idea of selling beach properties but never really got to the point. The audience had to dig to find what they wanted to know. In other words, it talked about her products, but it didn't sell them.

I've found many salespeople do not state their wishes up front because they fear appearing pushy. In sales, however, some directness is needed, and successful salespeople can balance an up-front sales pitch with sensitivity and common sense. They know ways to get straight to the point, but nicely.

With this sales technique in mind, I began to redesign the agent's presentation. On a white background, I filled the page with ReMax's famous balloon logo. Since the presentation is self-guided, I designed the navigation to work like a Web site.

In the first example, I inserted a short video of children playing on a beach.

The second example shows a link you can reach from the first example's roll-over buttons.

The third example shows one of the properties with a more detailed description. The back-arrow button returns users to the original property showcase, and the home button returns users to the main menu slide.

For a final touch, I included the company logo, address and phone number on every slide. For sales situations, this is a must. The result is a tasteful presentation whose sales approach isn't pushy or offensive but respects the buyers' time by showing them exactly what they've come to see.