Fulfilling your passion goes beyond projecting confidence during a sales presentation. Using emotional appeal is one of the trade secrets of professional presenters and businessmen. By creating a set of common values, emotions, and beliefs about your product, your clients will have an easier time identifying with your brand.
It also helps you connect to your audience faster and sell more effectively. This marketing trick, which business gurus Michael and George Belch have cited as transformational advertising, also improves your persuasiveness as a presenter.
How to Properly Associate Emotions
More than just describing and summarizing your product’s benefits, effective sales presenters add an associated set of emotions to your pitch. In his book, Cutting Edge Advertising, Jim Aitchison notes these as anchors that remain consistent with your audience’s existing standards or beliefs.
This technique relies on giving clients the impression that you believe in the same things they do. Your creative pitch presentation ideas thereby establish your creativity, while making your pitch more memorable.
Combine a Rational and Emotional Appeal
You need to clarify how clients can benefit from your proposal. According to product management expert Roman Pichler, good products are often focused on the user rather than the product itself.
Make this more effective by sharing emotional benefits from using your product. This is similar to what mobile AT&T did with its “reach out and touch someone” campaign, which encouraged its subscribers to keep in touch with family and friends.
According to Aitchison, be familiar with your product and the situations in which your customers will use it. Knowing these lets you decide what kind of emotions you want to associate with your product and your brand. This forms the basis of what emotional benefits to pitch to your clients.
Make Your Brand Own the Emotion
Once you identify what emotion to bring out, it’s time to bring the passion out. Do you want your pitch presentation to sell a warm experience where families can bond together, similar to how McDonald’s does its advertisements? Or, like brand communications specialist Carmine Gallo’s example, do you want to sell a comfortable third place between home and work like Starbucks?
These brands have defined their emotional benefits from ideas that stem directly from their products. More than selling fast food or custom-hand-crafted coffee, these brands emulate a specific personality that like-minded people can relate to. Find out what you want to be known for by getting to know the people who think like you do.
In a Nutshell: Bank on the Power of Belief
Combining rational and emotional benefits are more effective because they can both inform and rouse audiences. By driving home that you believe in the same things your audience does, you make them remember you better.
Once you find that emotion your brand or product can stand for, you can start playing to your passions for better pitch presentation ideas that help you sell faster. Already have your big idea? All you need to do is to get the help of a professional pitch deck specialist to bring them out.
References
Aitchison, Jim. Cutting Edge Advertising: How to Create the World’s Best Print for Brands in the 21st Century. 2nd ed. Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.
Belch, George E., and Michael A. Belch. Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective. 6th ed. Singapore: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2003.
Gallo, Carmine. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
“Product Owners, Focus on the User Benefits, Not the Product!” Roman Pichler. 2012. Accessed September 15, 2015.
