Making stunning presentations of your ideas, products and services is a killer business skill and one that is rare. It’s not that people can’t learn to do this, it’s just that most of the examples we are exposed to through PowerPoint slide shows are deathly as learning tools.

Cliff Atkinson, author of Beyond Bullet Points, stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast to share his wildly successful presentation system. Cliff’s approach not only goes beyond bullet points, the making of a visually stunning PowerPoint deck, he breaks down the strategy behind getting you ideas across in ways that not only entertain, but engage.

Cliff refined his systematic approach to presenting powerful ideas by getting results winning folks over that really mattered - juries. Law firms saw the results his presentations were getting and he quickly became “the go to person” for persuasive presentations.

His book should be required reading for anyone who ever fired up a copy of PowerPoint, but make no mistake, the title aside, this is a great tool to learn every aspect of presenting, 1 on 1 or to groups of thousands.

4:00:05 PM    

Apple announced this week that they are dropping the price of their tiny mp3 player called the Shuffle to $49. This price and the allure of all things iPod makes this a great marketing tool.

Here’s what I mean. If you have a product or service that already includes or could easily benefit from the addition of audio content, then why not dump it all onto a Shuffle and make that part of your pitch - get an iPod Shuffle with you order seems a lot sexier these days than a bunch of CDs or downloads.

At that price point it makes it a great sales tool for the right prospects. Sign up to go through our demo and we will send you a free iPod Shuffle packed with our favorite podcasts covering the latest industry trends.

Speaking of podcasts, if you do a show, what about loading up your ten hottest episodes and running a contest where people can win your show.

How about that really big fish you’ve been trying to get in front of - imagine your message delivered via FedEx and an iPod Shuffle. I’m thinking that one makes it to the top of the pile! (You know, you could do worse trying to impress that guy or girl you’ve been trying to get to notice you too.)

What a killer instruction manual delivery tool for how to put together or get more out of your product.

Authors, want to get your book reviewed by a couple really big sources? Try sending an audio overview with you reading a couple of really great passages.

The uses are countless and I believe that even though you may increase your product or service expense, the appeal of the iPod will actually help you sell more units. Big companies have been using this pitch as a giveaway for some time now, but the Shuffle at $49 makes this trick affordable to even the smallest of businesses.

I intend to use this is several creative way in coming months.

4:00:03 PM