Are You Presentation Ready?

I have been in the promotional marketing business for more than 25 years. However, I came from the advertising world. Yes, I worked on Madison Avenue. And yes, at times it was as crazy as Mad Men portrays it to be. So, I’ve always felt that I could present our brand in the best light. I could develop great presentations to “sell” our company. 

Lately, however, I’ve been asked more and more to provide a Capability Statement. It first popped up about six months ago. I’d never had the request before, so I had to google it to see what they were talking about!

Since I completed mine, it has been requested at least a dozen times. I attended a Supplier Diversity Conference not too long ago and one of the presenter’s said, “I am only accepting Capability Statements from companies today”.

Thank goodness we were prepared and had ours to give. Many of the attendees were scratching their heads because they didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. And I only saw a few as I visited the various companies attending.

If you Google it, the first definition states that a capability statement is a brief outline of a company that is trying to secure government contract work. Well, I wasn’t speaking with a government entity, these were corporations. So, I guess that definition needs to be updated.

Basically, a Capability Statement includes four different sections. The first is a brief overview (and they want brief) of your company and the products or services you offer.

The second section is a listing of your core competencies. What do you do best? What makes you stand out?

The third section is about your past performance. In this section I not only included a list of some of our clients and how long they have been with us (I think that shows satisfied past performance). I also included some images of some of my favorite custom products that we have manufactured over the years. Not only does it show our creativity it helped make the page more interesting to view.

And the final section is our differentiators. This is where you highlight what makes you different than your competitors. 

I have to admit this took a good bit of time to get it right. And, I do believe I will update it again soon. There are already some areas I think I can improve upon. 

Now, this is the structure I choose. There are many. And I suggest you find a format and categories that work best for you. Maybe you don’t want to highlight some areas that I have, or maybe you need more. It’s all about what makes you stand out.

So far, this one has done the job for us. We have made it very appealing as a one-page document (which is what they want). Giving you an overview in a glance. I also had my local print shop print it on a nice white glossy paper stock that has some weight to it. 

It is now a great stand-alone piece about our company.

At a recent trade show, I handed this out instead of our brochure. It is less expensive than our brochure and gives much of the same information. 

The feedback has been excellent. And as I said, companies are asking for it. As a matter of fact, I had to register as a vendor recently with a large company. And one of the requests was to upload your Capability Statement!

Communications are changing, yes. And while our websites are vital to our business, we still need some of the collateral materials to showcase our business in a non-digital format. 

At one point, people had said that the printed business card was going to be dead. Everyone would just tap phones and exchange information. Now, that’s well and good, but when you are at an event and they have giveaways, they want your business card. Why? Of course, they want to capture the information of everyone that attended.

The same goes in networking situations. I like to exchange cards because I write on the back of the cards what we talked about and what I need to do to follow up. Maybe I’m old fashion but I do think that’s easier than trying to quickly type myself a message. 

When we are presenting to a new large corporate client, we leave behind a folder with our logo on it. Inside we include our brochure and case studies. And yes, the case studies are colorful and printed on a heavy glossy stock. If we have reviewed a power-point presentation, then a copy of that is included in the kit as well. 

And of course, we always give a nice gift. Typically, we’ll give everyone a nice journal notebook and pen at the beginning of the meeting so they can take notes. 

So far, we have received very positive responses to our “branding” method.

The request a few months ago for a Capability Statement made me think about how we are presenting ourselves and how succinct we may or may not be. As a result, we changed some of our copy in our brochure.

A potential large client recently asked us to give, via a zoom call, a “high level” overview of the company. They have given me a thirty-minute presentation window. I’m just starting to develop my overview using my Capability Statement as a guide. Because this is one of the company’s I met at the Supplier Diversity Conference a few months ago and handed them the statement; I guess it intrigued them enough for this next step.

So, if you don’t have a Capability Statement or haven’t reviewed your own sales materials in a while, it might be time. We are branding professionals and it should look like it. We don’t want to be thought of as a cobbler who has no shoes!