An overview of software solutions that simplify the creation and storage of presentations and improve the content, making it more engaging and sellable.
Unclosed deals
When taking a simplistic look at the sales funnel, there are three main parts. The top portion is advertising and interaction with potential leads through marketing channels: digital campaigns, organic search, email marketing and cold calling. The middle- strategies and tools that stimulate the transition from a potential customer to a potential client: conversion tracking, split testing, increasing sales and productivity software). Finally, the bottom sectionis a conversation with those who make decisions and are able to successfully close deals.
It’s not hard to guess that the most important part is the bottom one. That being said, enterprises spend a huge piece of their budget on advertising channels hoping to generate potential leads and increase interest in their sites. You then add to this separate expenses forsite analytics and optimization. Likewise, research has shown that often over 90% of a company’s marketing budget is spent on the top and middle part of the funnel. And, not coincidentally, that this roadmap has led many new companies to close during their first business year.
How can tools for virtual presentations help B2B?
In 2018, a Microsoft survey found that among all types of meetings, people are happiest when they meet in person. But, with the spread of the COVID-19, teams around the world have had to put that preference aside for their health and safety.
Over the past year, salespeople have faced the challenge of creating inspiring presentations without the tools they would normally use. But at the same time, lockdowns have significantly accelerated the development of virtual collaboration solutions and video conferencing systems. Luckily, tools for B2B sales promotion were not left aside. Today, they not only allow one to compose colorful slides but also give suggestions based on the audience’s emotions, answer frequent questions and overcome customers’ objections with AI.
What are the essentials for such software?
- Create more entertaining and intelligent presentations than your competitors (preferably better looking than 1997 PowerPoint slides);
- Reduce preparation time by automating routine functions;
- Provide instant audience feedback;
- Offer a library of proven and effective presentations;
- Come with built-in artificial intelligence or machine learning functions that can edit slides and provide guidance;
- Generate analytics about users’ engagement, mood and interaction with the slides;
- Support mobile devices (yep, we still have to remind people of this in 2021)
With these in mind, let’s take a look at examples of such software.
Pitch Avatar
Create engaging presentations, quickly train salespeople and close deals from a single dashboard.
Pitch Avatar is a service for creating, optimizing and managing online marketing presentations. A user can download a pre-made presentation and customize it, or download separate materials that the Presenter will play back to clients in a single document, regardless of the original file formats. If the slides contain only a visual component and you want to create a video, text2speech voiceover is available. There is a built-in library of presentations for top IT products. If the user makes a presentation of a product from the ROI4CIO’s database, the solution will automatically add the missing content — use-cases, reference, ROI calculator, and price calculator.
Presentations made in the product can include polls, an option to ask the salesperson a question, and reactions to each slide. The recorded presentations or single slides made in Presenter can easily be shared on social media or by a link. The service offers analytical reporting: statistics on the most successful slides, viewing history, per-slide user reaction analytics and reports for teams.
Pitch Avatar is suitable for training new salespeople or as a quick preparation for those who need to present an unknown product. Firstly, this is achieved by the availability of all sales presentations in users’ organizations. Secondly, after reviewing reports on previous demonstrations, the seller is already familiar with typical customer questions and ways to deal with objections.
During the presentation, the Presenter is used as a teleprompter: the smartphone displays what to say on each slide, how to answer a question, and to handle the objection. You can also use a smartphone with the Presenter app as a remote. Another feature of the service is the ability to simultaneously show several presentations to different viewers and even answer their questions without any interruption to the demonstration.
Main features:
the creation of presentations according to customized sales logic, teleprompter for remote presentations, interactive slides, slide voiceovers, library of sellable IT product presentations.
Use case:
IT products sales, remote presentations, simultaneous presentations to different clients, new seller training, presenting an unfamiliar product, creating professional presentations.
Pricing: 15 day free trial, subscription is per user per month
Slide creation: yes
Live Presentation: yes
Offline Presenting: yes
Templates: no
Sharing on Social Networks: yes
Prompter: yes
Collection of Feedback: yes
Analytics: yes
Slidebean
Software that is focused on creating pitch deck presentations by separating content from design, allowing you to focus on the essentials.
Slidebean — a tool that makes it easy for presenters to create professional-looking slides. The software consists of a collection of design templates, premium fonts, and color palettes.
A simple interface divides presentation creation into two steps. First, the user enters text, and then the automated artificial intelligence visualizes this data and helps you create a stand-out picture. This feature lets users create impressive slides even with zero design knowledge. The function especially fits SMB’s on a budget and without in-house designers.
Slidebean includes everything you need to create presentations, including professional icons, photos and diagrams. All of your slides are always kept up to date, synchronized without user interference and transferred to any device like smartphones, tablets and PCs. The product also offers the function of using a smartphone as a remote control for navigation through the presentation.
Being a cloud-based solution allows it to integrate seamlessly into websites with a simple HTML script, with no additional plugins or installation. The software is also compatible with any operating system as it only requires an up-to-date browser and internet connection to work. Ready presentations may be exported to PDF and PPT.
Main features: the creation of pitch decks, automation of work with AI tools, creating visually attractive slides more easily.
Use case: startups, marketing agencies, SMB’s that need help designing and creating presentation templates.
Pricing: freemium, subscription starts at per user for a month billed annually.
Slide creation: yes
Live Presentation: yes
Offline Presenting: yes
Templates: yes
Sharing on Social Networks: no
Prompter: no
Collection of Feedback: no
Analytics: yes
Prezi Business
Prezi is a popular online presentation platform with an innovative approach to a slide show.
Most presentation software uses a slide-by-slide approach, where moving between individual slides is linear, like turning pages in a book. Prezi instead offers a unified large digital canvas on which the slide moves, shaping according to the story that is told. The slides are zoomed in or out, rotated and presented at unusual angles, which allow you to achieve a more dynamic and engaging show that captures the audience’s attention.
Prezi offers two ways to edit presentations: one is a series of slide stacks and another has a planetary structure, where each subtopic is fixed on the main topic’s orbit. During a presentation, the solution allows you to use a mobile device as a remote. For simplified branding, there is a “Smart Branding” function: after uploading a custom company logo to Prezi, the system automatically selects complementary colors for the slides. A recently released update includes the ability to appear in front of content in a virtual presentation: slides seem to float near a user.
There is integrated Zoom and Webex, so you can present video live, as a pre-recorded show or with voiceover slides. The product Includes audience engagement analytics for each slide, and in the more expensive subscription plans offline presentations are available.
Prezi works through web browsers, is compatible with all programs and computers and is SOC2 certified.
Main features: non-linear slide show, integration with video conferencing tools, presenting through video.
Use case: remote teams, educational organizations and initiatives, marketing agencies.
Pricing: freemium, free trial, subscription starts at .50 per user per month.
Slide creation: yes
Live Presentation: yes
Offline Presenting: no
Templates: yes
Sharing on Social Networks: no
Prompter: no
Collection of Feedback: no
Analytics: yes
Visme
A single tool for creating, storing and sharing content. Allows you to create graphs, diagrams, logos and presentations.
Visme is a data presentation and visualization tool that helps you to create engaging content by transforming information into a colorful slide or infographic.
The platform provides useful organizational and managing tools, allowing you to sort and classify files and set access control for individuals and groups.
Visme offers a wide range of images, fonts, icons, templates, and backgrounds to choose from. There are animation effects, slide linking, and transitions that usually can only be found in Microsoft Powerpoint. The platform also supports website banner creation.
Also included are tools that allow you to import third-party data and work with it within the platform. All of the content created in Visme can be shared on social networks, published on other sites or downloaded in various formats.
Visme provides data about attendees of custom presentations and generates a report of users’ interactions with slides. These analytics help project managers track the number of unique visitors and highlights the most captivating content and the overall time spent on the site by each visitor. The reports are available both online and for download.
Main features: “all-in-one” web solution for making, storing and sharing visual content.
Use case: blogging, professionals in any sphere who don’t know a lot about design.
Pricing: freemium, subscription starts at per user per month billed annually.
Slide creation: yes
Live Presentation: yes
Offline Presenting: yes
Templates: yes
Sharing on Social Networks: yes
Prompter: no
Collection of Feedback: no
Analytics: yes
FlowVella
A mobile-first presentation tool for creating presentations on Apple devices, available in a web version. Allows you to make slideshows and presentations for offline use.
FlowVella is downloadable presentation software that can be used offline. The main feature of FlowVella is the Kiosk mode, which creates interactive presentations on screens at conferences, trade shows, museums or anywhere else.
FlowVella solves the problems that occur when a presentation needs to be displayed on a stand or in an exhibition pavilion. This is usually associated with WiFi connectivity issues and a device switching to the sleep mode after a few minutes of inactivity. Kiosk mode turns your slideshow into a portable version of a digital billboard. The presentation is protected by a PIN, so there is no need to worry that the slideshow will be interrupted by a visitor turning everything off accidentally.
Like other presentation apps, FlowVella provides slide templates to choose from — there are 19 of them — but unlike other apps, this one always shows if a template or slide is optimized for mobile and widescreen devices.
Users can import images from Dropbox, Instagram, Box and Google Images; you can also embed photo galleries, videos, text and hyperlinks to different content. Since FlowVella is focused on tablets and phones, it lacks the ability to build tables, graphs and bulleted lists.
Main features: Kiosk and offline mode, allowing to create and demonstrate presentations at stands and pavilions, mobile-first app.
Use case: outdoor presenting, real estate agencies, SMB.
Pricing: freemium, subscription starts at per month
Slide creation: yes
Live Presentation: yes
Offline Presenting: yes
Templates: yes
Sharing on Social Networks: yes
Prompter: no
Collection of Feedback: no
Analytics: yes
Swipe
Create presentations using markup with the ability to share access by link and displaying slides correctly on any device.
Swipe is a product for creating online presentations. Basically, it is HTML markup for the quick design and organization of slides. Swipe displays a list of the essentials to get started: public or private indicators for slides, general settings and some of the most commonly used buttons (View, Present and Edit).
All slides can be scrolled horizontally, so you can get an idea of the content in a matter of seconds and edit if needed. Slides move within the presentation by drag-and-drop. External files are also added via drag-and-drop: these can be JPEG / PNG / RAW images, videos, Keynote, PDF and 15 more different file formats.
Presentations can be controlled, broadcasted live from any device via mobile internet or WiFi. As the presenter goes through the slides during the presentation, everyone else who downloaded the shared URL can monitor the progress of the presentation on their personal devices in real-time.
Swipe is not so much a designing tool for making slides from scratch as a platform for building an interactive and cross-platform presentation with pre-made content.
The updated product now has a premium version that is aimed at businesses, it includes analytics and an overview of users’ interaction with a presentation. It also makes it possible to send secure links: by creating several unique links to the same slide show, the user may send them to different people. This is meant to be used when working with leads or investors to track their engagement slide by slide.
Main features: a presentation on the big screen is synchronized with devices of those who followed the link to it, analytics of users’ interaction with slides, cross-platform, secure links.
Use case: presentations for investors, the educational sphere, sales teams, marketing agencies, startups.
Pricing: freemium, subscription starts at per user per month, billed annually.
Slide creation: yes
Live Presentation: yes
Offline Presenting: no
Templates: no
Sharing on Social Networks: no
Prompter: no
Collection of Feedback: yes
Analytics: yes
SlideDog
A multimedia presentation tool that combines PowerPoint, PDF, Prezi files, video clips and web pages into a single slideshow.
SlideDog seamlessly integrates all the media you need for demonstrating at meetings, events, sales presentations, conferences and lectures. The product allows you to switch between different presentation files — PowerPoints, PDFs, movies, images, web pages, audio — without any delay in playback.
SlideDog works as a launching platform for presentations on a PC (the solution needs to be installed). It identifies what software is installed on the computer and uses the best available to play specific formats. The entire process can only be seen by the presenter themself on the SlideDog user interface, while the audience is watching a continuous presentation.
After installing SlideDog, slideshows are formed by simple drag-and-drop into the playlist. Files are displayed on a large screen in full-screen mode, switching between slides happens through fading transitions. The internal interface of the application is similar to a PowerPoint multi-monitor, which displays useful information for the speaker — slides, notes and a timer. The solution comes with an application that allows you to use your smartphone as a remote.
SlideDog supports polls, feedback collection and direct communication with a speaker during the presentation by shared links the audience.
A significant disadvantage of SlideDog is that it only works on Windows.
Main features: the ability to seamlessly integrate a wide range of multimedia files into a presentation.
Use case: SMB’s that use various file formats while working with an audience.
Pricing: freemium, subscription starts at per user per year.
Slide creation: yes
Live Presentation: yes
Offline Presenting: yes
Templates: no
Sharing on Social Networks: no
Prompter: no
Collection of Feedback: yes
Analytics: yes
