Sales Graphics Blog

We spend a lot of time talking about the aesthetic gains clients get when they work with Sales Graphics, but there’s more to this story than engaging video and presentations that sell. We also spend a lot of time thinking about optimizing our product for performance and reliability.

When it comes down to crunch time confidence in your presentation software means everything. That’s why we worked with the team at a premium-subscription channel to get their feedback on their transition from PowerPoint to CustomShow.

The graph above represents how presenters allocate their time using PowerPoint. As you can tell, they spend lots of time customizing slides, finding approved videos, and collaborating with co-workers.

The average person spent 72 minutes on every PowerPoint presentation, but when the team switched to CustomShow that number dropped to 40 minutes. That’s a savings in excess of 30 minutes per presentation, but we also saw some other interesting statistics.

When people switched to CustomShow they spent much less time finding the latest versions of slides and worrying about design. Instead 92% of time was spent tailoring slides to the sales prospect. This represents not only time gained, but also significant revenue savings.

Let’s take a step back and quantify this. If 100 people in a sales team give five presentations per month (a little more than one per week), then that team can save 3,000 hours per year. If each of these account executives earns $50 per hour in salary and benefits, the time saved on presentations can equate to a $150,000 savings. In other words, we’re not all about aesthetics and design, but we do think about that too.

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Television channels with true personality require upfront presentations that speak for themselves. Static charts and problematic PowerPoints don’t convey true excitement, and so this year we delivered upfront presentations for A&E, Bio, Lifetime, and History Channel.

In some cases we took existing creative for the channels and brought it to life in our presentation software CustomShow, but for some clients (including A&E pictured above) we designed upfront presentations from start to finish. Our creations don’t just talk about what it feels like to tune into a favorite television show, they reproduce the feeling. The new generation of television presentation upfronts starts here.

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When Cablevision spun AMC and WEtv into their own company last year the two sales teams were confronted with a challenge that even the most consistent and longstanding brands face. They needed to figure out how to present a solidified brand image.

When it comes to large organizations making sure everyone is on the same page is difficult enough, but for two brands who had just merged, it seems the challenges would be numerous. AMC uses widescreen for example, while WEtv prefers to stick with the standard 4:3 presentation layout.

Fortunately for everyone involved, a few members of the team had a bit of experience with our presentation software, CustomShow. Before long the sales teams at both WEtv and AMC had signed up and they recruited us to work on their upfronts.

AMC commissioned us for the second year in a row to create their presentation. Our goal was give viewers a taste of each property and then delve deeper on demand into the content that’s necessary for making buying decisions. WEtv, on the other hand, enlisted us to adopt some of their existing creative into a compelling animated presentation.

Today everything both teams need is accessible on demand through a unified slide library. Managers control which presentation slides are editable and which are indispensable, updates can be sent team-wide, and perhaps most important of all, the sales and marketing teams at WEtv and AMC have become unified by a slide library that lets them keep their brand image intact.

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This year the Telemundo upfront event swung into action on high definition IMAX screens in New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. The wall filling graphics that covered the big screen during the event jettisoned viewers into a Telemundo experience highlighting the network’s most significant accomplishments to date, but thanks to CustomShow, the presentation from that night lives on in the hands of the Telemundo sales team.

It all started when the Spanish-language broadcast network commissioned Sales Graphics to create a “Welcome to Our World” space themed multimedia experience. We designed the graphics for their online media kit and created a consistently branded look-and-feel for their Museum of Natural History event, but the space flying didn’t end when the IMAX screens turned off for the night.

Instead, our presentation software CustomShow let the Telemundo sales team re-use and reintegrate the stellar space experience into everything they employ to sell the network across multiple devices. Everything that exploded off of Internet browsers and the IMAX screen at the upfront was ready for delivery the next day on laptops and iPads.

Telemundo didn’t miss a beat. In fact, their “Welcome to Our World” presentation on CustomShow turned out extremely well. The sales team that uses it in the field might say CustomShow handles like PowerPoint on steroids, but for everyone who has seen the cinematic experience on the iPad or an IMAX screen, the brand’s upfront feels more like a movie.

Anyone who has ever hired an architect knows the power of experience. There’s a big difference between Frank Lloyd Wright and the kid next door playing Lincoln Logs, which is why making the mistake of hiring the latter could result in a toppling house toy instead of an architectural marvel.

In this way, presentations are a lot like buildings. That new startup might not warrant the results of true professionals, which is why half a century of experience at Sales Graphics could make all the difference for your company. We are presentation designers with a well rounded employee base always looking toward the future. Our creative presentation solutions have helped companies stand out from the competition for decades, and while we are very much cognizant of the newest technology trends, we also know what keeps the best of the best around for years to come.

That’s why Sales Graphics is the Frank Lloyd Wright of presentation agencies. We understand timelessness and believe that the first impression and a foot in the door can determine a lot more than the fate of a Lego set. We’ve been here 50 years and plan on being here the next 50, so when it comes time to building the future it should be clear, the answers are here with those that believe in the power of heritage and innovation.

Take a single step into Ferrari corporate and one thing is immediately clear. Every decision there is based on performance. The brand’s offices are positioned above a showroom floor that serves as a constant reminder of everything they have achieved. With a Ferrari on display there’s no doubt, this is a brand that takes presentation seriously.

For the times when Ferrari can’t fit actual cars in the conference room they rely on next best thing. Ferrari chose Sales Graphics to build their sponsorship packages and while we couldn’t quite figure out how to get the car to the top floor where our offices are, the result looks like it was built while gazing upon the source of inspiration.

The final presentation looks and feels like it was made by the same people who design the lines and contours of next year’s model. Ferrari’s presentation decisions are cutting edge and high performance, but like any good brand, they’re founded on timelessness.

USA Network asked us to design their Upfront presentation to match their on-air brand. Using our CustomShow® presentation software, we were able to bring their characters to life inside each slide. The presentation included interactive nagivation and a wide selection of videos.

Thank you to the Fitting Group, who is featuring our CustomShow presentation software in Challenger Brand News this week. We are indeed going up against Goliath in the form of Microsoft PowerPoint. The good news is that no one loves PowerPoint, everyone simply tolerates it.

As mentioned in the article, we’ve been able to convince major brands to switch to CustomShow. Our customers include “DIRECTV, CNN, Bravo, The New Yorker, A&E, ELLE, The Wall Street Journal and Dior. And that’s just the short list.”

Here’s what Challenger Brand News has to say about CustomShow:

Beyond being dazzling, CustomShow sports a number of boons. On the one hand, it allows control over the information being presented in a way that ensures that the company’s brand guidelines are consistent. But on the other, it allows quick and easy customization of presentations to permit flexibility.

More than anything, CustomShow is a presentation program for a world with a short attention span and high visual expectations.

And they don’t even mention our new Web meeting capability, which plays high-definition video smoothly. You can find the entire Challenger Brand article here.