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

How to organise content Create compliant content Streamline the approval process

7 Top Tips for Creating Compliant Sales Presentations White paper by

Simplifje is a leading provider of business

• software. We primarily work for clients in the

fjnancial and professional services sectors. Our focus is to improve the quality and productivity of our clients’ operations. We achieve this by concentrating on their documentation and the way it’s created, approved and shared.

About Simplifje

We offer a number of distinct products and tools which can be deployed individually or combined to form a broader solution. We work both within individual teams and across many departments, linking them together in a common documentation platform.

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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

• f 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.

You want to spend your time doing what you do best – marketing! Sounds

• bvious – but all too often, Marketing teams’ time is spent on administration
• r 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 information: is Assets Under Management and

• ther corporate data

correct? Do not contravene the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)’s guidelines on fair, clear and not misleading promotions, and comply with Treating Customers Fairly and

• ther FCA requirements

Include the correct regulated statements and disclaimers

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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.

• 2. Make it Easy to Reuse

Approved Content

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

• n 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.

1. Make Content Easy to Find White paper by

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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.

• 5. Make Brand Compliance

Foolproof

Getting approval for presentations can be another bugbear. Often they are produced to tight deadlines, with minimal notice. Compliance are under pressure to approve them quickly – and struggling in the face of an increasing regulatory burden. Make sure your sign

• ff processes are as effjcient as they can
• be. Introducing collaborative reviewing

can deliver signifjcant time savings, with Compliance and Marketing teams able to review and comment on presentations in real time. As well as speeding up the review process, this dramatically reduces the admin associated with collating and disseminating changes. Plus, it automatically creates a compliant audit trail – a tick in the box for FCA compliance.

• 4. Make Compliance Sign Off

Quick And Simple

How annoying is it when you know you had the perfect wording to describe one

• f your solutions… but can’t remember

which presentation it was in. Or when you can’t fjnd the content you used when you won that industry award last year. Continuous improvement in marketing enables you to refjne your approach, increasing ROI. Identifying and reusing winning content is key to this – but it’s amazing how often fjrms don’t keep easily accessible records of effective, up to date

• presentations. Archiving presentation

content means you can quickly fjnd and reuse successful presentations, saving time and maximising ROI. They might not be the same as the way you describe them.

• 3. Learn and Improve

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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. 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.

• 7. Make Sure it Looks Good
• 6. Make it Easy to Tailor

Content to Clients’ and Prospects’ Needs White paper by

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