I’ve had people ask me on more than one occasion, “I love the idea of whiteboarding my solution at a customer site, but what do I do about a leave-behind when there’s no guarantee they’ll write ’save’ on the whiteboard?”. Taking a digital photo of the whiteboard and emailing it to your customer is one option, but not a very professional one given the poor image quality due to bad lighting and flash glare.
Luckily there’s a much more professional approach that will do more than provide a slick and powerful leave-behind - it will impress your customer and demonstrate the lengths to which you are willing to go to provide excellent follow-through. Little will they know, however, that this approach takes almost no time and very little cost.
The first step is to take a digital photo, but don’t concern yourself if the lighting isn’t perfect. Just take two or three shots from a couple of different angles. If there are different visual concepts on the whiteboard that articulate separate ideas (or separate parts of a larger story), take separate pictures of each one.
The rest is a simple, two-step process:
1. Download and install a free copy of Clear Board, a simple software tool that will take your whiteboard photos and transform them into production-quality, full-color images. If you want to take it to the next level (and I always do), copy the image out of Clear Board, paste it into PowerPoint, and put your logo in the upper left, your customer’s logo in the upper right, and put some key takeaways or other meeting notes in the bottom left and/or right, along with your contact information.
Clear Board before & after
2. Visit Mimeo, the leading internet printing site which offers on-demand print jobs with 24-hour turnaround. Use their print driver to automatically submit your Clear Board or PowerPoint files online, and specify 5 millimeter laminate for as many whiteboard “slicks” as you need (usually 8.5/11 landscape). Mimeo will ship your laminated “take-aways” directly to your customer, in as little as 24 hours following your meeting.
This extra effort will go a long way towards helping you stand out even more from the other “PowerPoint Jockeys”, and it may even propel you to the top of the short list.
If you have any questions about the above, please feel free to contact me at corey@whiteboardselling.com
