Have you ever witnessed a terrible sales presentation? I remember one which was so bad I couldn't look, it was so embarrassing.

James had gone to a lot of expense to travel to another city with his team and rent a meeting room. It was critical that the presentation was a success, because he was looking for half a million dollars of financing from investors.

At 10:00 am the room was full and James walked up to the front. 'Thanks for making it here today everybody. We've got something exciting to show you.'

Then he clicked on his laptop and . . . nothing. Clicked again . . still nothing.

'Just a second folks, we've got a little technical hitch'.

Five minutes later, when neither James nor his technician could get anything showing on the projector screen, he decided to try and just describe with words what his concept was about and why the investors should put their money into it.

But he hadn't got a script, it was all in the laptop and half an hour later, the room cleared. It was over, an utter failure.

That might be an extreme example, but here is a simple and effective structure you can always use to make a strong presentation. It's easy to remember, PPP and Call to Action.

Problem - Describe a problem that the customer has that you can supply a good solution to. Choose something relevant to the client and the industry he or she is in as the problem, of course. Ideally an issue which is expensive / time-consuming / frustrating or a combination of all of these.

Promise - Make a Promise - which is in essence, 'Our product (or service) can fix that problem'.

Proof - Don't just make an unsupported claim, supply some convincing evidence, which can be case histories, a practical demonstration, testimonials etc.. 'Look at the results that customers are getting using the product'.

Call to Action - Don't finish without making it easy for the client to commit to some further, positive action. ''This is what you have to do now to get things moving ' - and invite the prospect to have a demonstration, book a test drive, place an order, as appropriate for your situation. The call to action must achieve a degree of commitment by the customer, so that he or she is moving closer to purchasing. Make it easy.

Memorize this simple formula and you will find that having a structure makes any sales presentation easier and more effective.