7 Top Tips for Creating Compliant Sales Presentations How to - PDF document

7 Top Tips for Creating Compliant Sales Presentations How to organise Create compliant Streamline the content content approval process About Simplifje Simplifje is a leading provider of business We offer a number of distinct products software. We primarily work for clients in the and tools which can be deployed fjnancial and professional services sectors. individually or combined to form a broader solution. Our focus is to improve the quality and productivity of our clients’ operations. We work both within individual We achieve this by concentrating on their teams and across many departments, documentation and the way it’s created, linking them together in a common approved and shared. documentation platform. www.simplifje.com info@simplifje.com White paper by +44 (0) 20 7562 22 22 @_Simplifje Simplifje

You want to spend your time doing what you do best – marketing! Sounds obvious – but all too often, Marketing teams’ time is spent on administration or non-Marketing activities. Producing PowerPoint presentations is a great example of this. Marketing is often asked to help with slides – for external conferences, client seminars and internal presentations. But spending time fjddling with images and logos, or searching out compliant content to use, isn’t a great use of your team’s expertise. Far better to use your skills and knowledge of the business where they can really add value – producing presentation content that sells your business. And of course if you work for a regulated fjrm, your presentations are viewed as fjnancial promotions, so they also need to be compliant. To ensure compliance, you need to make sure your fjnancial promotions: Contain accurate Do not contravene the Financial Include the information: is Assets Conduct Authority (FCA)’s correct regulated Under Management and guidelines on fair, clear and not statements and other corporate data misleading promotions, and comply disclaimers correct? with Treating Customers Fairly and other FCA requirements And regulatory compliance isn’t the only problem. How often do we see logos stretched to breaking point because nobody could fjnd one in the correct size for its destination? How often does your business send out materials that don’t meet your brand standards? Collateral that isn’t brand compliant undermines the professionalism of your fjrm. If you want to solve the dual challenges of wasted time and non- compliant sales materials, we’ve got seven tips that will help. www.simplifje.com White paper by info@simplifje.com +44 (0) 20 7562 22 22 @_Simplifje Simplifje

1. Make Content Easy to Find It’s frustrating not to be able to fjnd the content you need for presentations. This frustration – combined with short deadlines – often results in one thing: non-compliant content. The solution is making content easy to fjnd. Store corporate information on AUM, leadership teams, offjce locations and so on in one easily-accessed location. Make sure any disclaimers or disclosures you need to use are easy to fjnd too – and make it clear when they should be used; fjrms often have different disclaimers or regulated statements for different parts of the business. 2. Make it Easy to Reuse Approved Content Another frustration is the need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ when it comes to presentation content. If you have standard content that appears in slide deck after slide deck, it is time consuming and annoying – for marketers and Compliance teams – to go through the approval process every time. Instead, why not ‘lock down’ approved content, making it easy to copy and paste pre-approved information. Making this standard content easy to reuse saves Compliance and Marketing signifjcant time. A centralised repository for approved wording means anyone in your business can fjnd and download the information they need, confjdent that it is up to date, accurate and approved. Intelligent systems can pull through a single change – for example, an update to AUM fjgures or a new offjce address – into every slide and document where it appears, removing the fear of issuing materials with incorrect information. www.simplifje.com White paper by info@simplifje.com +44 (0) 20 7562 22 22 @_Simplifje Simplifje

3. Learn and Improve 4. Make Compliance Sign Off Quick And Simple How annoying is it when you know you had the perfect wording to describe one Getting approval for presentations of your solutions… but can’t remember can be another bugbear. Often they which presentation it was in. Or when are produced to tight deadlines, with you can’t fjnd the content you used when minimal notice. Compliance are under you won that industry award last year. pressure to approve them quickly – and Continuous improvement in marketing struggling in the face of an increasing enables you to refjne your approach, regulatory burden. Make sure your sign increasing ROI. Identifying and reusing off processes are as effjcient as they can winning content is key to this – but it’s be. Introducing collaborative reviewing amazing how often fjrms don’t keep easily can deliver signifjcant time savings, with accessible records of effective, up to date Compliance and Marketing teams able presentations. Archiving presentation to review and comment on presentations content means you can quickly fjnd and in real time. As well as speeding up reuse successful presentations, saving the review process, this dramatically time and maximising ROI. They might reduces the admin associated with not be the same as the way you describe collating and disseminating changes. them. Plus, it automatically creates a compliant audit trail – a tick in the box for FCA compliance. 5. Make Brand Compliance Foolproof Give your team easy access to your brand assets – logos, approved imagery, correct fonts and templates – and make stretched logos and incorrect colours a thing of the past. Your brand should be reinforced, not compromised, by your presentations. Invest time in developing a centralised asset library where you can download the latest versions of brand guidelines and collateral. It will pay dividends in terms of brand compliance and consistency. www.simplifje.com White paper by info@simplifje.com +44 (0) 20 7562 22 22 @_Simplifje Simplifje

6. Make it Easy to Tailor Content to Clients’ and Prospects’ Needs By making approved content and branding easy to access and use, you free up your time to focus on the areas where you really add value – understanding your clients’ and prospect’s needs and tailoring the presentation to their challenges. Spending time on bespoking your presentation is a much better use of your time than digging around for correct descriptions of your business streams or the right spelling of your CEO’s name. This is where you can show how well you know your clients, and recognise how your solutions can help them. 7. Make Sure it Looks Good The best content won’t shine unless it’s presented in an engaging way. Make it easy to fjnd accurate information, and you and the rest of your team can spend more time on polishing your presentation to make it really stand out. Imagery can be a powerful tool – photographs, infographics, even videos or animations showing your products and services can make it easier for your prospects and clients to understand your offerings. And if approved imagery is centrally stored and straightforward to slot into your presentations, it’s easy to make your presentations stand out from the crowd. Photographs that tell a story; infographics that get your message across – keeping brand-compliant and up-to-date imagery online and making it easily accessible is vital if you want to create winning presentations. www.simplifje.com White paper by info@simplifje.com +44 (0) 20 7562 22 22 @_Simplifje Simplifje