sales presentation

Creating a compelling sales presentation is instrumental in drawing in new clients. Make sure you portray your offerings, products, and services in a positive way that encourages your audience to make a choice that benefits you.

What exactly is a sales presentation?

Essentially, it’s a performance before an audience aimed at promoting a sale. This presentation might be paired with a slide show. There are diverse strategies for crafting such a presentation.

One strategy is to utilize a pitch deck, a tool startups use to relay their ideas to prospective investors for the purpose of raising capital.

B2B companies utilize sales presentations to showcase their products and services to other businesses. In some cases, a webinar serves as a type of sales presentation, offering extra value to the audience.

What you won’t find in a sales presentation are sales metrics. Generally, a sales presentation comes into play prior to the sale, with the outcomes and metrics included in a sales report that is compiled post-transaction.

Following this, you’ll find a pitch deck template that is ideal for developing a sales presentation. Simply copy the necessary slides from this template and utilize them to elaborate on your proposal.

What components are necessary in a sales presentation?

Sales presentations have been a strategic tool for a substantial period of time, assisting millions of individuals and corporations in securing deals. There’s been much deliberation among professionals about the characteristics of an ideal sales presentation,

such as the number of slides it should encompass and the categories of information to be featured. The majority of marketers propose that a pitch deck presentation should consist of around 10 slides, typically organized as follows:

  • Introduction
  • The problem at hand
  • Solution provided
  • Market potential and opportunities
  • Product description
  • Traction or progress
  • Team behind the project
  • Competitive landscape
  • Financial metrics
  • Funding requirements and deployment of funds

However, the objective of your sales presentation might not be to promote a startup to prospective investors. If your goal is to market your company’s products or services, the presentation may have the following structure:

  • Introduction
  • The issue addressed
  • Proposed solution
  • Product overview
  • Emotional appeal
  • Pricing
  • Conclusion

Feeling overwhelmed by this task? Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered!

Five Strategies for Crafting a Persuasive Sales Presentation

To turn your viewers into customers and ensure your presentation is effective, it needs to be aesthetically pleasing and conducted well. Here are five suggestions to help you refine your presentation:

Keep it Short and Sweet

Aim for a concise and clear sales presentation. You don’t need a doctoral thesis to talk about your product or service. In fact, keeping some elements under wraps to create a sense of curiosity around your offering can be beneficial. Give potential customers just enough information to pique their interest.

Narrate a Story

Help your audience connect with your product by narrating a story. For instance, utilize a character to showcase how their life has been transformed by your product or service. This could stir a desire in potential buyers to experience a similar transformation.

Understand Your Customers’ Needs

Presenting to an audience indifferent to your product is pointless. Hence, before crafting your presentation, contemplate what your ideal customer requires.

What challenges do they encounter? How can your product provide a solution? Your presentation should simply highlight these aspects, convincing customers that your product is exactly what they need.

Encourage Dialogue by Posing Questions

Pose questions to your audience during the presentation to foster engagement. This interaction will reinforce your human side and foster a connection with them. Also, ensure you provide opportunities for the audience to question you.

Avoid Rote Learning

While rehearsing your presentation speech is crucial, it’s best to avoid verbatim memorization so as not to sound robotic or insincere.

Being well-prepared for the presentation will help you remain calm and create a positive impression. Don’t neglect body language; your non-verbal cues can convey more than words at times. Regardless of how many times you’ve given the presentation, always strive for a fresh delivery.

Crafting a persuasive presentation in 8 steps (or fewer)

Building a compelling presentation is quite straightforward. Here, you have access to all essential design elements and data visualization tools required to make your presentation visually appealing and memorable.

1. Sketch out a blueprint

Before you delve into the design, formulate a comprehensive blueprint of your presentation, outlining all crucial details to be included. If feasible, designate which sections will fit into which slides right away. This practice will save you a considerable amount of time down the line.

Aim to keep your slides free from clutter, placing only the bare minimum of text and data on each. Bear in mind that the presentation’s purpose is to persuade and convert, rather than merely inform the audience.

A screenshot of a Google Doc containing an outline for a sales presentation.

2. Opt for a template

Seek out a premade template that resonates with your style, or select one from the range of theme builders.

If you begin using a template and later find that it’s not quite the right fit, you have the flexibility to modify it without exiting the editor. Add the appropriate number of slides based on your initial blueprint.

3. Pick images and graphical components

You’re free to use all photos, icons, and illustrations present in the templates at no charge. To locate a particular element, utilize the search feature. You have the freedom to personalize all icons and illustrations and apply your brand’s color scheme to them.

If you have an established brand identity and associated graphic materials, you can upload these to the library for use in your presentation.

4. Insert the information

Incorporate the information into your presentation in line with your pre-determined blueprint. Progress at a comfortable pace, moving systematically from one section to the next to ensure nothing is overlooked. If need be, you can alter the dimensions of the text blocks within the editor.

5. Integrate your brand style elements

Adjust the template’s color scheme to reflect your brand’s palette. Achieve this by initially creating a color palette and theme aligned with your brand colors, then apply these colors to the template within the editor.

To change the font, highlight the required text and apply your chosen font. You have the option to either upload your bespoke brand fonts or choose from our comprehensive library.

Incorporate succinct data sets or statistics into your presentation in the form of infographic widgets. For instance, widgets displaying percentages and data arrays are visually appealing.

6. Enhance with interactivity, animations, and audio commentary

If your audience will be perusing the presentation independently without your active participation, strive to make it interactive and animated. Add an audio track to facilitate a more accessible absorption of information.

Consider creating two distinct versions of your presentation – one stripped of these elements for personal meetings, and another enhanced version for post-meeting distribution.

Examples of interactive features could be buttons triggering pop-up tooltips, hyperlinks to other slides, or external webpages. Animations could be effects applied to specific elements, or even animated icons and characters. Audio commentary can significantly aid in retaining audience attention.

7. Leverage presentation notes

When presenting in person, have personal notes prepared. These will be invisible to the audience and serve as your guide during the presentation.

Such notes will assist you in recalling the narrative sequence and prompt you for opportune moments to pose a question or interject humor. However, remember these notes serve merely as a guide, and shouldn’t be read verbatim to your audience.

8. Upload or share your presentation via a link

Several methods are available for distributing your presentation to clients. You may share a link directly to the presentation or download it as an HTML5 file for offline viewing. Animations and interactive elements will remain intact. Alternatively, a static version of the presentation can be downloaded in PDF format and printed for offline viewing.