Why Use a Rental Projector

Studies have proven time and time again that nearly two-thirds of our population learns better visually. For sales professionals, this means that you can elicit an emotional reaction from your audience. Your potential client may not be able to envision your product or what it can do for their company with a flat presentation with no visual aids. Visually, you can walk the client through the advantages of purchasing what you are selling. A projector will help you close the deal by showing a client how they can be happy with your product.

A projector also forces you to think through your presentation long before you actually present it. You need to create all the visuals ahead of time. This gives you time to think about your audience, what objections they may have and how to overcome those objections.

Types of Projectors for Sales Professionals

A sales professional is often on the go. This means that you need a projector that is lightweight and portable. Larger projectors are also difficult to carry in your luggage if you have an out-of-town meeting. Look for units that are seven pounds or less (or rent a projector when and where you need one) and fit your audience, which includes taking into account the brightness of the screen.

Generally, you will be set up in a room with a lot of ambient lighting. If this is the case, use a brighter projector. For most situations, a rental projector with 3,500 to 5,000 lumens will work for the average size audience. If, however, you are presenting in front of a much larger audience, consider renting a projector with at least 5,000 lumens.

Consider Resolution and Contrast Ratio

Your projector may be lightweight and bright. If it has low resolution, however, your audience won’t be able to properly see what you are selling. Consider renting an HD projector, which has 1920 x 1080 resolution versus the standard 1280 x 800 resolution of the Wide XGA projectors. The HD projectors are also clearer and provide more detail in your projected images, however, they are more expensive as compared to LCD projectors.

Another item to consider is contrast ratio. The contrast ratio refers to how white your white shades are and how black your black shades are. If a projector can’t adequately display certain shades, then your image will look very pixilated when blown up and projected on to a screen.

The best rental projectors have color control settings, which let you adjust the displayed. You can tweak the color based on your personal preferences or the amount of ambient light in the room. Usually, LCD projectors display colors more naturally than DLP projectors. The latter, however, gives colors a more vibrant look than LCD projectors.

The Takeaways

Projectors give you an edge over your competition. You’ll look more professional with a good visual presentation, and you’re more likely to impress your potential client, helping you close the deal.

Projector123.com offers you the most professional, versatile projector for rent on the market, at a surprisingly affordable price – a perfect for your next sales meeting. Click here now to learn more.

Your sales force knows best what your customers want and need. Before introducing a new product, ask for their input, including how they would market and position the product. Your sales people will feel that their opinion matters, and it creates positive interaction between employees and managers.

Keep Challenging Your Team

Nobody likes to be bored! A bored salesperson may start looking for another job or be less successful in their position. Develop goals that are attainable, but challenge your sales people. Make them work a little for that next commission. Just don’t put the commission permanently out of their reach.

Always Offer a Helping Hand

Sales calls can be challenging at times – even for a seasoned field professional. Ask your sales person if they would like help making those calls. They’ll appreciate the help, and this may make them an employee for life.

Keep the Commission Competitive

Companies don’t want to go broke with commissions and bonuses, but you also need to keep up with your industry. If a competitor has a better commission structure, you may lose your best employees to them. Try some sales contests with monetary rewards for either individual sales people or teams.

Institute these contests on a quarterly basis so that your sales force can make some extra money throughout the year.

Create a Culture of Trust

Trust is an important part of any company. Employees need to trust each other and their managers. Have an open-door policy. Your sales professionals should feel comfortable coming to you with any questions or concerns that they may have.

Commission and bonus structures shouldn’t be a mystery. If necessary, put together a PowerPoint presentation of this structure, or a PDF that explains the compensation in explicit detail. Schedule a time when you can get all of your sales force together, and use a rental projector to visually display how sales people get their commissions/bonuses.

Show Off Their Accomplishments

Periodically, acknowledge achievements. This may be as simple as giving a monetary reward for their work to having your own awards ceremony for outstanding work. Record or photograph these events. If you have an annual party, get a rental projector, and show off slideshows of photographs, or play the videos throughout the evening.

Bring in a Motivational Speaker

Motivational speakers are trained to help encourage and motivate your sales force. Hire one to get your sales force excited about their job, new products or the prospects of the upcoming year or quarter.

If you need to obtain a rental projector for your next event or speaking engagement, Projector123.com gets you your rental projector the day before you need it. Click here now to find out more.

Step 4: Strategy Implementation

Plan your work and work your plan. Strategy implementation begins with a viable action plan. Whether you use a flowchart, project management software or tool, or a simple spreadsheet, be sure to include all of the following:

Task description
Start date
Any prerequisites that must be completed prior to completion of each task
Deadline
Milestones
Responsible party(-ies)
Necessary resources
Status update

Be sure that all parties involved have access to the document, and can provide regular updates and track progress of the action plan as a whole. Form teams and ad hoc committees as necessary to complete tasks in a collaborative and timely fashion. If you’re creating an action plan for a small business, look for tasks that can safely and cost-effectively be delegated, so that you can focus on more critical action items.

Implementation of the strategy would also include:

Budget creation
Policies and procedures
Organizing the company’s resources
Keeping staff on tash

Step 5: Evaluation and Control

It is shocking how many companies take the time to implement all prior steps, yet drop the ball on this most critical of components. Though it can be a bit tedious, it is positively essential to track progress of the plan – not only its implementation, but also to measure whether or not it is creating the desired affect by accomplishing the firm’s goals and objectives.

Evaluation and control would include:

Measurement – what and how to measure, benchmarks, and tracking.
Desired Targets – know what specific targets you are aiming to hit
Comparison – compare your actual results to what was predicted or anticipated in the strategy
Adjustment – adjust your action steps as necessary to ensure that all objectives and targets are met

When you take your plan to the staff or to the board, be sure to put your best foot forward with a slide show rental projector rental from Projector123.com. Easy, fast, reliable and professional – Projector123.com is the top choice for LCD rental projectors. Click here now to find out more.

Step 2: Environmental Scanning

Essentially, the environmental scan includes an internal evaluation of the company, an analysis of the industry (including market trends), and evaluation of the competition.

Perhaps the most commonly used internal evaluation is simply the SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This is a quick and easy tool for evaluating the overall assessment of the company’s current status. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors, while opportunities and threats are external factors. Strengths and opportunities focus on enhancing what is already working for the company (what can only strengthen the company’s position), while weaknesses and threats emphasize what needs to be changed or altered in order for the firm to remain competitive.

An external evaluation of the company focuses more on the industry itself: advancements or changes in technology; legislative/regulatory issues; market trends and shifts; market opportunities and threats; consumer buying habits; changes with regards to verticals or suppliers; the economy itself; and other outside influences that impact the company.

The third element of environmental scanning involves a thorough evaluation of the competition. This can be tricky, as it is difficult to set aside preexisting opinions about the competition. Sometimes it may be necessary to hire an outside firm to perform competitive analysis in your industry. However, at the very least, competitive analysis would include:

-       a complete list of your competitors, from strongest to weakest with regards to their ability to effective solve your customer’s problems

-       brutally honest list of strengths and weaknesses for each competitor, including your firm

-       a rating system that ranks your company against the competition. Ratings would include price, efficacy, speed of delivery, ease of use, customer relationship, product leadership, innovation, etc.

This step will allow you to see how your company measures up in the marketing place, and where improvement or focus is needed.

Step 3: Strategy Formulation

There are many factors to consider in the formulation of your strategy, including:

-       competitive position in the market

-       marketing budget

-       marketing strategies

-       public relations strategies (if pertinent for your industry; includes goodwill activities)

-       distribution channels

-       sales process

-       brand strategy

-       pricing strategy

-       new product rollout

-       etc.

Each of these steps builds upon the prior step. Therefore, you will use the information gleaned from the environmental scan (as well as the company’s objectives) to create an overall strategy for the firm. Ideally, the company will play to the identified strengths and opportunities, proactively address the weaknesses and threats, and take steps to gain a competitive advantage. The next step is strategy implementation.

Will you need board of director approval for the final version of your strategic plan? You can rely on Projector123.com to provide you a professional grade, affordable PowerPoint rental projector. Click here now to reserve yours today.

Ideally, strategic planning would be conducted annually, usually about three to four months prior to the end of the fiscal year. This allows time to begin to implement the plan no later than the start of the next fiscal period.

Step 1 – Mission and Objectives

Unfortunately, for some companies, the mission statement is nothing more than ink on paper, as opposed to a real driving force for the forward momentum of the company. The mission statement should include a founding principle upon which the company was created, and remains the foundation for all that the company does. The mission statement is an unchanging purpose, set from a visionary perspective.

Part of strategic planning involves getting back to basics – evaluating the company’s mission statement, not with the intention of changing the mission, but rather, for the purpose of focusing the key business activities on the foundation of the mission statement. For example, if your company’s mission statement is to provide better solutions, are you doing that? If not, it’s time to innovate. If your company’s mission statement includes integrity in an otherwise challenging industry, are company executives, representatives, and policies acting in accordance with this mission? Take a hard look at the founding principles and make necessary changes to align actions with mission.

Along with evaluation of the mission statement comes objectives – specific, measurable targets or goals. In other words, what is the company trying to accomplish? Unlike the mission statement, the objectives may change from time to time, but with the same general purpose. For example: gaining market share, becoming (and maintaining status as) the industry leader, national or global recognition, awards (perhaps for safety, innovation, etc.) and other objectives related to market share, reputation, or the company’s position in the industry.

Objectives should be specific and measurable, and action items in the firm’s strategic plan should be designed to accomplish these broad objectives. For example, if “being positioned as an innovative leader within the industry” is one of the firm’s objectives, then specific action steps would be related to research and development of innovative products, services or technology, testing and evaluation, marketing and public relations to gain positive press for the new innovations, etc.

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INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this discussion is to provide basic, comprehensive information to assist you in developing effective presentations. The use of visual aids, coupled with good public speaking skills, work hand-in-hand to create effective presentations. Your speaking style and stage presence are personal talents that you can refine with much practice and experience. Each aspect of effective presentations, however, could not be detailed in this discussion. Instead, much emphasis is given to visual aids which are essential to all successful presentations.

DESIGNING THE PRESENTATION

There is no secret to developing an effective presentation. Establishing your objectives, planning and organizing your material, and using appropriate visual aids are the essential ingredients. The recipe for effective presentations calls for all three ingredients, and you must use them in the order in which they are presented here. By establishing your objectives first, you can prepare material that supports each objective. The use of visual aids will move you further along toward your objectives by illustrating and emphasizing your ideas more effectively than words alone. Let’s begin, then, at the beginning: As you start to design your presentation, you must ask yourself, “What do I want to accomplish by making this presentation?”

Establishing the Objectives

For any successful presentation, you must know your objectives. It is these objectives that drive your presentation and move the audience to your end goals. Your end goals may be that the attendees take a particular action, adopt a new perspective, or respond to facts and information. Establishing these goals requires careful planning. The key to designing your presentation is determining these objectives. After all, they become the foundation upon which your content, organization, and visual aids are built.

Establishing the objectives for your presentation requires an analysis of your own goals, as well as your audience’s needs and expectations. By considering the nature of your audience, you can more easily determine what you will present and how you will present it. An audience analysis will enable you to:

• Select appropriate points of emphasis in your presentation
• Develop a useful level of detail
• Choose and prepare appropriate visual aids
• Create a tone that is sensitive to your audience’s circumstance

Your presentation will ideally form a bridge between something you have and your audience wants. Let the audience analysis influence the form of information presented so you can create this bridge.

Planning and Organizing Your Material

When you have determined the characteristics of your audience, then you are ready to plan and organize your material. The tips listed below will assist you in tailoring your approach accordingly. Keep in mind that the use of visual aids will help to produce effective one-way or two-way communication. Many factors are involved in choosing these visual aids, and the type of interaction you want to develop with the audience will influence your choice.

Planning Your Material

• Do not wait to prepare your presentation while on you way to the training session. You cannot do your best at presenting or persuading by “winging it.”
• At a minimum, prepare an outline of goals, major issues to be discussed, and information to be presented to support main themes.
• Limit content to your major point and no more than five key supporting points.
• Analyze your audience. Prepare your content considering such things as whether they are likely to be friendly or unfriendly, lay or technical in their background, and whether they want only to listen or to respond and contribute.
• Select appropriate visual aids and a presentation style that will be effective in the physical setting for your training session.

Organizing Your Material

When organizing your material, consider an “old chestnut” of public speaking – “Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em; tell ‘em; and tell ‘em what you told ‘em.” This recommendation:

• Recognizes the importance of reinforcement in adult learning
• Completes the communication for the listener
• Informs people who arrive late of what they missed
• Recognizes the importance of organization, highlighting, and summarizing main points for the audience
• Serves to clarify main themes for the audience at the end of the presentation

Using Visual Aids

Visual aids help your presentation make things happen. Visual aids help you reach your objectives by providing emphasis to whatever is being said. Clear pictures multiply the audience’s level of understanding of the material presented, and they should be used to reinforce your message, clarify points, and create excitement.

Visual aids involve your audience and require a change from one activity to another: from hearing to seeing. When you use visual aids, their use tends to encourage gestures and movement on your part. This extra movement reinforces the control that you, the speaker, need over the presentation. The use of visual aids, then, are mutually beneficial to the audience and you.

Visual aids add impact and interest to a presentation. They enable you to appeal to more than one sense at the same time, thereby increasing the audience’s understanding and retention level. With pictures, the concepts or ideas you present are no longer simply words – but words plus images. The chart below cites the effectiveness of visual aids on audience retention.

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First, Break the Ice

Remember – all your attendees are either new to the company, your location, or the department (or all three!) and they are likely feeling a bit apprehensive about starting. Therefore, an icebreaker is necessary to put everyone at ease and allow individuals to mingle and get to know each other. Keep your icebreaker simple and interactive. For appropriate ideas, try an online search for “business meeting icebreakers” or “corporate icebreaker ideas.” Either should yield good suggestions for your business meeting, without coming across as hokey or contrived.

Next, Address Ground Rules

This would be the time to instruct your employees on codes of conduct, general company policy (for example, where smoking is allowed, badges visible at all times, the tardy policy, time clocks, etc.), plus any “zero tolerance” policies (sexual harassment, falsification of documents), etc. Get these important updates and information addressed and out of the way immediately.

A Brief History

Every new employee orientation should include a brief history of the company. Knowing the company’s roots allows new employees to understand the company’s mission, as well as instilling pride in their place of employment. This would be the time to explain the company’s vision, mission and purpose, as well as to showcase any “bill of rights” kinds of practices.

Procedures and How To

This would be the part of the orientation where new employees are taught some logistical details. Some examples would include:

- navigating the facilities – perhaps review a map, show where fire exits and bathrooms are located, include information about employee break rooms, cafeterias, nearby lunch spots, designated smoking areas, parking, fire extinguishers, etc.

- parking – rules, regulations and locations, as well as any restrictions on who can park where and where the parking tag or permit should be displayed

- time and attendance – how employee hours are tracked, how to use the tracking system, how often payroll checks are distributed and how are they distributed (interoffice, snail mail, direct deposit, etc.), what happens if payday falls on a scheduled holiday, etc.

- appearance – employee dress code details and specifics.

Benefits

Here you would review health and dental plans, explain different choices related to coverage, and tell employees how to complete and submit their forms and by what deadline. Also included in this section would be additional and optional services such as 401K plans, retirement benefits, accidental death & dismemberment (AD&D), vacation and holiday pay, and a schedule of planned holidays. Review the policy for requesting time off from work, explain the difference between scheduled and unscheduled absences, unpaid time off, sick pay, etc.

Corporate Culture

Remember to share any company traditions or regular events (annual picnic, awards banquet, casual Fridays, competitions, etc.) and allow time for Q&A on any remaining questions they may have.

The easiest way to enliven your employee orientation is with the use of a vivid LCD rental projector – this ensures that all attendees can easily view the slides and can help keep your participants on track and engaged with the presenter. Click here now to rent a projector from Projector123.com.

Think Outside the Slide Show

With an LCD rental projector, you can take advantage of many facets of audiovisual aids – slides can be colorful and engaging, and you can break up the monotony with film snippets designed to emphasize a point or simply to make your attendees laugh. Consider a sort of self-deprecating humor that pokes fun at various working conditions – perhaps a scene from one or more of these movies and television shows:

“Swimming with Sharks” – the cutthroat world of advertising

“The Office” – office politics and relationship dynamics

“Office Space” – cubicle life

“Employee of the Month” – slacker-turned-star at a Cosco type of establishment

“Jerry Maguire” – outrageous sports agents

“Ally McBeal” – lawyerly antics

“Tommy Boy” – sales reps and rejection

You can use your imagination to find many more. The idea is to keep the conversation lively and interesting, which will hold your audience’s attention longer during drier material.

Reward Desired Behavior

If you want employees to retain information, then reward them for it. Let them know at the beginning that each person will be required to take a “quiz” at the end of the training and whomever scores the highest will get a prize. Make it a good prize – perhaps a $25 or $50 restaurant gift certificate or something similar.

If the training is mandatory and participation is more of an issue than retention, then reward enthusiasm. Give small prizes (mugs, pens, $5 gifts or smaller) to those who ask intelligent questions, offer suggestions, or otherwise participate in the conversation. People love to be rewarded and are more likely to participate when there is some kind of recognition or tangible reward involved.

Offer Different Formats

People learn in different ways, so it’s important to present the information verbally, visually, and in a tactile fashion. One easy solution would include a slide show projector rental combined with a handout that allows space for note taking. If you have physical products that are part of the training, allow participants to touch and hold the products in addition to using a video or slide show format with audio.

Projector123.com is the top choice for LCD rental projectors for annual corporate training. Click here now to rent a projector online.

Use a Takeaway

“Out of sight, out of mind” is just human nature, so it’s important to have some kind of takeaway for your participants, otherwise all the time and hard work you’ve put into the even may be for nothing. With a small, intimate gathering, you can conclude the evening with a sentiment such as this:

“I’d like to thank everyone for coming tonight and for sharing your vision with us. As you’re out and about in life, please think of this group and make referrals as often as you see fit, remembering that whatever you send out always comes back to you in abundance. I’d like to thank our sponsor, _________ (if you had no sponsor, then mention your own company, since you put the time, money and effort into coordinating the event) for keeping this event free and accessible. And I’d like to remind you to follow up and take action – keep in touch with each other and with me, let us know how you’re doing and whether our referrals are successful. Thank you and good night.”

If you’re intending to create regular networking meetings, you would also want to let everyone know the date and location of the next meeting, so they can mark it on their calendar.

For larger gatherings where folks will be exiting at different times throughout the event, a “swag bag” or “goody bag” is a great way to provide a takeaway. Many times, insurance agents or other companies may provide the bags (with their advertising info printed on the outside), and you can let participants know ahead of time that they can submit items (advertising specialties, business cards, flyers, coupons, samples, etc.) for the goody bags which will be distributed to participants.

Get Feedback

You may think your event was a raving success, but perception is everything, so it’s a good idea to get some feedback from other participants as well. You might initiate individual conversations, email out a quick online survey (http://surveymonkey.com is an excellent tool with free options, or if you used http://evite.com to invite participants, you can use this same tool to conduct a feedback survey) or simply ask around. Be sure to ask for specific feedback with regards to ways a future event could be improved.

Follow Up

Follow up with any leads or connections you made, and encourage your fellow participants to do the same. There is a saying, “the fortune is in the followup.” Call your leads and tell them you enjoyed meeting them. Find ways you can help each other’s business. Send referrals and ask for referrals. Be specific about what you need.

Now is the perfect time to secure your slide show projector rental for your upcoming event. Visit Projector123.com to learn more about what’s included in our $95 projector rentals.

Facilitate Mingling

The key to any successful event is mingling throughout the group. Whenever you bring together a group of people, there will nearly always be those who mingle easily, working their way through the room and making connections and building rapport, while others are feeling a bit nervous or insecure in a room where they don’t know anyone.

You can facilitate mingling by warmly and gently approaching those who appear a bit “lost” and striking up a conversation. Ask questions about what they do and what kind of characteristics their ideal client would possess, and introduce them to another nearby person (even if you don’t know that person and have to introduce yourself at the same time). Then you can leave these two new connected individuals together so you can repeat the process elsewhere if needed.  While you certainly don’t want to get stuck babysitting anyone all night, taking the time to make a gesture like this can help a slow starter or a shy person begin to feel at ease and continue networking on their own.

Promote Yourself

Don’t fall into the trap that so many event coordinators find themselves in – just because you’ve coordinated the event, it doesn’t mean you should avoid promoting yourself. You can do this in any number of ways:

-       create “swag” bags to give to each attendee and include information about your business

-       give each attendee a flyer on their way out of the event

-       if it’s a large gathering and you’re planning to make announcements, include a mention of your product or services

-       pass out your cards

In the final installment of our Successful Networking Event series, we’ll look at ways to end the event and conduct follow-up to ensure profitability. In the meantime, be sure to visit Projector123.com to arrange for your LCD projector rental for your next networking event.