In less than a second, the decision has already begun. Humans are visual animals. Therefore, the design has a huge impact on the work effect of persuasion. Design affects the audience’s first impression of the content, and affects users’ consumption decisions and marketing effects.
In the first 13 milliseconds of your sales presentation, your potential customers have begun to visually distinguish the image content of the presentation and begin to emotionally process it.
This is 10 times faster than in the blink of an eye.
Before they start to consciously understand what you are introducing, they have already judged your material based on the first impression. They will experience it emotionally and filter it based on a number of cognitive biases.
In less than a second, the decision has already begun
As visual images spread through your brain, this basic visual processing is only the first step in a series of activation and processing. In less than 100 milliseconds , the emotional processing part of the brain will be activated, and soon the cortex of visual habit will follow up to help you decipher what you see. Finally, within less than 1 second of the image being seen, your prefrontal cortex begins to make decision processing. From photon to choice is only a matter of a few hundred seconds. This is why design has such a powerful influence on sales psychology. Your reactive visual processing happens so quickly that it sets the tone for all subsequent advanced cognitive processing.
Through design, you can influence and persuade your potential customers. If the design of the sales presentation is used properly, you won the favor of potential customers before you even start to speak.
Your sales material design will immediately trigger the brain’s first impression
And that emotional response will set the tone for your next sales interaction
Human beings are always ready to discern the emotions of others, which helps us grasp the complex social structure. For example, as long as you see someone smiling, your amygdala can recognize it as “happy” and make you pay attention. A strong handshake or a pleasant greeting can trigger the same effect.
This is the power of the first impression. In a 2009 study at the New York University Neuroscience Center, Daniela Schiller and her colleagues searched for the connection between first impressions and neurological aspects. They found that during the positive first impression, the activity of the amygdala increased, which in turn affected the person’s subsequent attention to the interaction.
Positiveness of the amygdala
The amygdala is the almond-shaped part of the cerebral cortex. The cortex is the part of the brain that controls consciousness, and the subcortical structure is much older in evolution and is crucial to how we process emotions and the like.
When you are scared, it is because the amygdala makes you scared. It’s the same when you feel love. Without the amygdala, you can’t feel anything.
With this direct line to the amygdala, it means that visual design can trigger positive and negative emotions almost immediately. Everyone will immediately make assumptions just through your design.
This is in the hands of any designer with power. If the images are used well, you can create an enhanced emotional response.
The positive first impression produced by these designs is very important for a good in-person demonstration, but when you are doing a demonstration online, its effect is even more decisive. Because at that time you can’t shake hands with people or greet people with a smile. All that potential customers can follow is the visual part. If your first film is dull, so will you. If it is exciting, interesting, or warm, so will you.
Take a look at Jarkko Sjoman’s example of personal branding . The first impression grabs your attention.
This is a good example of how design can use positive first impressions to build expectations. It has two factors that guarantee to grab your brain’s attention
Color: Color is vital to our survival. The inferior temporal cortex that helps us identify objects has some neurons that only respond to specific focal colors-red, green, yellow, and blue. During evolution, these colors have played an important role in helping to express excitement (red), natural (green) or calm (blue).
Recognition: Humans, in fact, a large number of mammals, have a special visual area that only responds to the face. This area is the fusiform face area. This is because the ability to distinguish between friends and enemies and the ability to read the emotions of the face (which is the most expressive part of our body) is so important to our social skills.
In the previous example, color and face were used brilliantly. Fiery pink and orange tones will arouse enthusiasm and excitement. Then your spindle-shaped facial area will be pulled to the face of Walter White (the hero of the American TV series “Breaking Bad”), and you will be frightened the moment you recognize him. With just the color and image design, you will notice this film as soon as you wait for the presentation and want to see what will come next.
The basic design preparation activates the positive emotional response of your potential customer’s brain
This in turn triggers them to reward you with time and attention
Although enthusiasm is seen as a key factor in the sales process, there is another thing potential customers prefer to see, and that is preparation.
For example, after studying the investment decisions of venture capitalists, scientists at the University of Washington found that although VCs like to see passion in the investment promotion process, it is not passion but your preparation that has the most positive impact on financing decisions.
The more time and energy you invest in the presentation, the more time and energy the audience will invest in it. This mutuality has been implanted in your brain and is needed to grow and maintain cooperation. As social animals, we have formed specific mechanisms to ensure that we can happily play with others. The clearer and more convincing your presentation of the product, the better every potential customer will understand your company.
If your slideshow looks like this, wait to see someone yawn.
There’s one thing you’ve never heard of before, that is, sales go forward and backward with good design.
The American Design Management Association uses the Design Value Index (DVI, design value index) to quantify the value of design. DVI compares the index of companies that value design with those of other S&P index companies. DVI is all companies that prioritize design such as Apple and Nike.
From 2003 to 013, the ROI of these 15 design-centric brands was 228% higher than the S&P index.
In 2013, investing 10,000 US dollars in these 15 brands can get almost 40,000 US dollars in return. The same investment in the S&P index can only make $17,500. The British Design Association also made the same discovery. Their design value report found that “for every £100 a company spends on design changes, its turnover can increase by £225.”
In terms of sales, the cost of design is too low compared to your highly paid sales team. The cost of designing better sales materials may be less than 1% of your sales team’s salary. But it may increase the performance of the entire sales team by 5 percentage points and increase ROI by 400%.
Good design pays off. Zuora, the subscription and payment platform, discovered this. This is the first film that was called by their sales director Andy Raskin to be the best sales presentation I have ever seen , claiming that this material has helped Zuora make some of the biggest lists:
This article not only uses psychological elements to summon the amygdala, and uses primary visual systems such as bright colors and smiling faces, but also points out some other important things in terms of ideas and preparations throughout the introduction:
Organization: The first film did not directly introduce the product, but first explained the background of the problem under the larger picture of a changing world. It uses design to construct a story from beginning to end, so when you come to the product introduction, the viewer has been moved by the story.
Simplicity: In the words of Mark Twain: “I don’t have time to write a text message, so I have to write a long one.” The simplicity of the presentation material shows the level of preparation and the work done. The clear and fascinating visual signal it displays is part of the broader narrative provided by the presenter.
The demo of the payment software should look like this. If the film describes what technology it uses, it will be very boring. On the contrary, it does not, but uses a beautiful and simple design to lead the viewer into a journey of “order economy”. In the end, potential customers will want to be part of the story told by Zuroa.
Personalization of sales introduction can save potential customers’ cognitive energy
So as to guide them to familiar places
People are divided into groups, and things are gathered together. When people are familiar with something, they are more likely to make a positive decision. This similarity-biased mental model resides in your prefrontal cortex. It is a part of the brain that helps you make decisions under the combined effect of thinking, memory and emotions.
Left: ventromedial prefrontal cortex, middle: orbital prefrontal cortex, right: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Mental models, sometimes called heuristics, are the secret weapon of the brain. By matching what is happening in the world with past experiences and patterns we have established before, they can save us cognitive energy. Then we can make decisions based on this model instead of accepting too much new information.
These heuristics can be used in design to make your presentation look more familiar and positive to potential customers, even if they have never seen it before. You should customize your own film according to your company:
- If you are demonstrating to a start-up company , use a flat, minimalist design and copy. The key decision makers are probably inside the house, so it is more important to tell a story effectively with your design that day.
- If you are presenting to a company , you can use more classic designs, colors and messages. These films will be forwarded to multiple stakeholders for review. They need to be independent.
Marketing automation tool Eloqua uses this different strategy to attract start-ups and businesses in sales presentations:
In this demonstration for start-ups, the company focused on Eloqua’s sales expansion capabilities, and they adopted a cartoon design style suitable for this audience. Fonts, images, and colors are more lively than corporate sales presentations :
Although the two films talked about some of the same topics, the corporate version of the presentation feels much more corporate, using more commercial language, images, and ideas. Each film contains more information, and the overall design is more traditional.
These customizations can be as simple as changing the copy and color, or as complex as redesigning the entire presentation to suit the other party’s brand and logo.
When potential customers watch the demo, the topic will feel very natural and will project a positive model for their company onto your company. This will make them feel that your product is already part of their company, give legitimacy to your brand, and make it easier for them to make decisions.
By doing this, you combine familiarity bias and reciprocity. Your presentation will give people a sense of familiarity in terms of design, and you will also show how much you have done with this company and how much you have prepared for the presentation.
Benefit: Good design can make you more confident as a salesperson
And this is the biggest factor in effective sales
Good design affects not only your audience, but also you. If you stand in front of a presentation where you put in your energy and feel confident, you yourself will be more efficient.
There are many secrets to Jobs’ success, and preparation is one of them. With the support of Apple’s design power behind it, it is not surprising that he is confident in his presentation.
When the audience watched his presentation, their visual cortex went into a state of overspeed rotation, their amygdala became emotional, and their prefrontal cortex weighed all this information to make decisions. Their brains are doing many things.
But his mind kept turning.
The back position of the cingulate
The back of his buckle was all green. Research shows that when we are introspecting, this area will be lived by ourselves. This part of the brain is involved in our self-awareness and is related to our treatment of previous memories.
This is sometimes called “metacognition”, or thinking about thinking. Our brain circuits are used for self-assessment. They will constantly criticize our own performance and judge whether we are doing well or not. Again, the prefrontal cortex plays a role here.
Research on self-assessment shows that when we are confident in our performance, areas of the prefrontal cortex related to executive function and mental theory are activated.
Through this effort to produce well-designed demonstrations, we activate these areas of our own brains. We become more conscious and see ourselves more positively. And more positive views of oneself are often associated with more success.
Visual design is useful because the brain holds this set. It uses the original purpose of our human brain-to quickly grasp a large amount of visual information and give it meaning. You make it easier for the brain to digest visualization tasks, the more rewards it will give you.
When your potential customers are sitting in front of a well-designed presentation, you will feel confident that their brains are on the side with you. If you use faces, colors, emotions, and heuristics in your design, you are taking advantage of your brain’s vision.
From basics, to emotions and even decision-making, you can establish your visual arguments at every stage. If you do this, you can be confident in your design and in winning sales.
