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Yes, minutes-not hours. Not days. Not all weekend. Not anymore. If you’re ready to connect with customers and prospects and share your solutions-here is the quick and easy way to design highly persuasive sales presentations.

Sales presenting is a critical part of professional business. If you’re good at it…you’re prepared. You’re also well ahead of the curve of folks who are suffering under these false assumptions:

A. I’m more creative ad-hoc

This is a scary belief. If you are telling yourself this fiction, watch out. If you hear it from a co-worker or teammate, challenge it.

Creativity is best when you’ve got a solid story structure and have rehearsed like wild.

B. I’m best when I wing it

Variation on a theme. Do not fall for this illusion. Winging it is a joke. Even if you’re a pro. Even if you’ve done it before. Even if you have a very attractive alternative for how to spend your time before your pitch.

Don’t fall for this kind of thinking. It can be a cover-up story you’re telling to yourself to avoid hard work.

C. I already pitched to this group before

Things change. People change. You’ve changed. If you’re going to be at the top of your game, approach your presentation with fresh eyes and new enthusiasm.

Relying on a dusted off presentation is a really bad idea.

O.K. Now that we got those out of the way, what are you going to do to create powerful sales presentation-fast?

Follow these 6 steps and you’ll be off to a great start.

1. Start With Targeting The Client’s Problems

Based in your research and understanding, identify the top problems your client faces. Start here. Show that you understand, know and are listening to your client’s true needs.

2. Prioritize Options

In traditional newspapers, articles were written with the most important facts and news first. Then, if the editor needed to cut the story, they would cut off the bottom-which contained less important information.

Approach your presentation planning the same way. Organize key concepts by importance. Then, if you need or want, you can skip the less important points based on time and client interest.

3. Highlight Benefits

Building your presentation on your client’s top priorities, structure your story. Using a presentation storyboard is the fastest and easiest way to plot your strategy, organize the time and highlight important benefits.

While your company may offer several types of services such as consulting, training and sales presenting-focus on the specific benefits that address your client’s issues.

Many sales presenters neglect to consider this point. They may find certain benefits more intriguing or important. But what you prefer is not crucial. Focus benefits to connect-the-dots with the problems your client wants to solve.

4. Engage and Interact

Old-school selling often encouraged sellers to: “tell, tell, tell.” Instead, organize your presentation to include times for the audience to interact. Plan your sales presentation with ample time for discussion, Q & A, and client interaction.

Hint: do this early on. The sooner you hear what is important to your client, the better. You’ll be able to adapt and flex your message to match the mood.

5. Personalize With Relevant Examples

Be the person everyone wants to listen to. Share your personal experience through short, powerful and relevant examples. This is where practice and rehearsal really pay off.

Work through your potential examples with your presentation coach. Practice sharing anecdotes. Speak briefly. Share your story with passion.

6. Finish With Clear Compelling Message

It’s often said that people remember the beginning and end of a sales presentation-more than anything else. End on a bang, people will recall you, your brand and your offer.

If you must make a decision to cut a section in order to end with impact, slice away. Take a surgical approach to send the strongest message in the shorter amount of time.

Using these 6 tips, you will be able to create persuasive sales presentations in minutes-not days.

Millions of inventors and entrepreneurs set out every year with good ideas and great products, but what separates the many from the few is executing the fundamentals. One of these basic tenants that many businesses struggle with is setting the right price on your product and achieving the delicate balance between making a profit and keeping merchandise competitive.

There are many factors that go into pricing your product. Many companies will over-estimate or under-estimate how much a retailer is willing to pay for a quality product, as well as what the end-consumer will pay.

Here are a few key tips to competitively pricing your product to retailers:

1. Know your target consumer – Who are you selling to and why would they want your product? Take your time to do thorough market research before deciding the value of your product. Many companies will hire outside companies to help in this crucial step.

2. Know all your costs – This includes expenses like your sales and marketing team, cost of labor and materials, salary expenses, as well as your company’s future growth plans, your expected profit margin, and a realistic revenue goal.

3. Know your competition -Making a head-to-head comparison between your competition’s prices and costs can be very helpful when determining how to price your product. You can bet that any retailer you are selling to will check out your competition to gauge your prices.

4. Know your market – Are there new laws being considered that may affect your business? Or maybe the price of your materials has been on the rise? Consider the future stability of your market when making price decisions.

Everyone wants to sell to big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, but don’t forget that bigger retailers might mean a higher sales volume, but don’t expect to make a high profit off of them. Smaller retailers, on the other hand, will accept higher prices, but offer small sales revenue. Knowing who you are selling to is key to setting the right price for your products.

Lastly, after you set the right price, don’t forget to continuously monitor your prices after you get into stores. Keep an eye on the market, your competitors and the profit of your products. Be ready to shift the price of your product when it is necessary.

Striking the right balance between earning a profit and remaining competitive can be difficult, but with the right tools and know-how the task can become a little less daunting and help set your business up for success.

I spent many years in corporate life sitting through both presentations and meetings. I’ve also run a lot of courses on how to deliver effective presentations and how to organise and run successful meetings. One thing I’ve learned is that presentations and meetings tend to have a lot in common – and not in a good way.

1. They’re often organised without any clear purpose or outcome in mind.
2. They usually consist of one person passing on information to other people who have little interest in it.
3. They usually take place because someone in authority decides they should happen, not because the people involved want or need them.
4. The people who have to attend spend most of their time wishing they were somewhere else.
5. Often, even the person delivering the presentation or chairing the meeting also wishes he or she didn’t have to do it but they had no choice in the matter.
6. They nearly always go on longer than expected because no-one really knows how to bring them to an end.
7. People are often expected to deliver presentations or chair meetings as part of their job but get no specific training in how to do it properly.
8. There is technology available to help but most people have no idea how to use it effectively.
9. Organisations develop a “culture” (which is a fancy name for “habit”) of how to run meetings or presentations and people copy what they see everyone else doing, which perpetuates the bad practice.

A cynical view? Possibly. Accurate? In my experience, definitely!

It amazes me how many organisations still allow poorly organised or badly thought-out meetings and presentations to take place, soaking up hours of people’s valuable time and costing huge amounts in terms of staff costs. They would see a great return on investment if they questioned the way they do things and just gave people some basic training to help them improve the situation.