Presenting Customer Benefits: 5 Essential Questions to Put What You Can Give Your Customers Front and Centre

Anyone who’s ever created a PowerPoint presentation knows what it’s like. You spend weeks intensively putting together your presentation and preparing for your talk. Then the time finally comes: it’s the day of the presentation. That decisive day when you have to be convincing to get your message across and achieve your goals.

Your audience really needs to understand what your presentation is about, why it is important and how they will benefit from it. And this is the point where you suddenly realize that you haven’t set out and developed the customer benefits to them. This article is about how to think from your customers’ point of view and how to effectively set out the benefits to your target group during your presentation.

Keep Customer Benefits in Mind during Preparation

When you create a presentation, you are looking to achieve a specific goal, whether to introduce or sell a new product, to promote your company, etc. So you need to have that goal crystal clear in your mind.

But that’s not the only thing you need to remember while preparing your presentation: Put yourself in your audience’s mind. What will they get out of this? Why should your client/customer buy your product or engage your company? How will they benefit? It’s really important to keep your customers‘ perspective in mind, because you can only achieve your goals if the benefits are clear to your audience, convincing them; this is essential in order to reach your goal and win new customers.

Who should think Your Presentation is great – You or Your Audience?

If you yourself are satisfied with your presentation and also think you gave it your all afterwards, that’s great – really positive and providing a sense of achievement. But should your goal be that you yourself are satisfied with your presentation?

No. Because your goal should always be to reach your audience. You can usefully use storytelling or other rhetorical techniques for this, to convince your audience of the benefits your presentation offers by bringing them along with you. You need to make your product or company sound like something they need and want.

So set out exactly what your audience will benefit from what you have to offer during your presentation. For example, remember the launch of the first iPhone in 2007? Steve Jobs managed to market his product with incredible finesse back then; iPhones are everywhere now and Apple is worth billions. He captivated his audience by clearly setting out the benefits:

So… three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls. A revolutionary mobile phone. And a breakthrough internet communications device.

Short, snappy, convincing: the best way to present the benefits to your audience.

It’s never an easy thing to formulate what your customers will get out of your presentation: finding exactly the right words to persuade both your audience and yourself, and putting them together just right, can be hard work.  That’s why it’s so important to clarify what exactly the benefits are, putting yourself in your audience’s mind.

Pinning down the Customer Benefits: Look at Your Presentation through Your Customers‘ Eyes

As a professional presentation agency, we’re very aware that it can be tricky to define exactly what the benefits to your customers will be.  We also know that it’s easy to become so immersed in the subject matter of your presentation during intensive preparation that things seem obvious to you, and you forget that your audience is seeing it for the first time and may not recognise the benefits you are offering.

The result is often a rather woolly articulation of the potential benefits to your audience. The target group being addressed is unclear, and the benefits you are offering them undefined.

We’ve put together five questions that will help you to clarify the customer benefits you’re offering. It really pays to take the time to think about them properly, so that you present a coherent picture. Your customers should feel that they are in good hands with you at every stage of the customer journey.

These are the all-important questions:

1. Why should someone buy your product or service at exactly this point in time – and from you of all people?
2. What exactly are they going to get for their money?
3. How can the audience and potential customers reach you?
4. How can you convince your target group that you are the right partner?
5. Where does your target group spend its time?

Conclusion: Keep the Customer Benefits Firmly in Mind

If you want your presentation to resonate with the audience, you need to think about how it comes across from the customer’s point of view. Without this, all your hard work will go to waste. Keeping what we’ve written above in mind, and taking the time to to answer the five questions, will really pay off.

It’s the only way to achieve your goals, and to acquire new customers. Give it a try!

If you need help answering the five questions, or indeed any help regarding PowerPoint presentations, our PowerPoint agency is here to help. Feel free to email [email protected] with any questions. We’re here for you.

You might also be interested in the following articles:

• Call-To-Action for Your Presentations
• Storytelling in Presentations: Connect with Your Audience
• Preparing Your PowerPoint Presentation: 11 Tips