What Do You Take To Your Presentation?

I would bring your computer with not so much a presentation but examples of the state of the client's world. Show where they rank for their keywords (I always ask what they feel should be their top search terms) and where their competition does. Have a site report done, I like Woorank, it hits the high points. I also have a few notes on their site and how well it is likely to convert and have some good examples to show of best practices.

Leave behinds like your rates and so forth, maybe.

I just bring my laptop and screenshots of Google first page rankings I get my clients.

I also show them the live results in the google searches and tell them I can do the same for them.

Collateral is your literature, brochures and so forth.

Good question Cathy....I used to bring my laptop, but now rarely do so. It was not helping me and sometimes just distracted the prospect/owner. I want to keep their attention focused, not scattered, if you will.

I take a small leather folder, printouts of sheets I want to discuss with them like seo rankings, printouts of some webpages I want them to see, yellow legal pad, price sheet, simple agreement, recent article about growth of online, and thats usually it.
....having lots of 'stuff' to dump on the prospect has never helped me sign clients.
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Bruce

What I take to presentation depends on what I'm pitching.

Lately most of my entry has been through mobile marketing. Using a mobile-friendly website as a lead-in product, the only thing I take is my mobile phone, an order form and a contract.

If I am using SEO as a lead-in product, then I take some very basic keyword research, some data on their ranking, in-depth data on their top three competitor's information including the keywords they're using, their ranking for those keywords, and info on the back links that they have. They also have an in-depth questionnaire for them to fill out so that I can gather in-depth information before making a formal proposal to them. My SEO pitches are always a two appointment close. I can do it in a one appointment close, but I find they always want less work done. Using the two appointment close, I can usually get an order for double the number of keywords.

If I'm using Web design as a lead-in product, I take my laptop so I can show them samples of my work. I also take an order form and a the contract.

Keeping it simple is definitely the key. The more details you give him and the more you verbally vomit on them, the less likely they are to do business, or if they do business it will be for smaller order.

When first learning sales, I was told an interesting story that taught me a lot:

There was a salesman who sold water filtration systems. His pitch was very in-depth. He loved the product. He told his customers about how many microns the filter had and exactly how the system worked and what it did to the water as the water was running through and the types of pollutants and debris that it removed from the system and the health benefits they would get when they started drinking the clean water and he went on and on and on. His closing ratio was horrible. He sold less than 10% of his presentations.

There was another salesman in his office who had a closing ratio of 90%. The salesman with a low closing percentage asked the other salesman, “How do you sell so many of your customers. And telling them everything about the product. They have only information they could possibly need and very few of somebody. What are you doing differently?”

The salesman with a high closing ratio said, “I keep my presentation simple. I say, 'Check this out! Dirty water goes in this and clean water comes out this end. Isn't that cool?! Sign here and I'll let you keep this one.'”

Always keep your pitches simple. The customer does not care how you do what you do, they just care about whether you can actually get it done.

It depends, really, but I don't do many presentations.

Sometimes I just take ME (previous work allows me to do it and customer just want to talk, not to be pitched) and sometimes I bring in all the big guns if I really need to show who I am, what I've done and what I can do for customer:

Print Portfolio
Laptop for Web Developement/SEO portfolio
Business Cards
A smile, confidence and a positive attitude.

Small companies want to see all the goodies, bigger companies (or really experienced marketing managers) want to see past results and a integration into their efforts.

But in the end every customer needs a different approach.

If i do take a presentation i always print the company i am talking to logo on it. For example if i am doing a power point presentation i may put there logo and the top left corner and mine in the top right. In between i may put ABC Companies Web Presentation.

Its a small thing but they see there logo and your logo and become more comfortable with your company.