What is sales presentation in business communication?

Today’s crowded market makes it tougher than ever to close a complex sale. Customers have access to enormous amounts of information, making it challenging for a salesperson to offer a fresh perspective on why their business offers the best solution or provides something that customers can’t find anywhere else. As complexity in the buying process has gone up, budgets have gone down and buyers have grown more worried about making the right decision. In such a competitive marketplace, salespeople need persuasive tools to convert opportunity into success.

The sales presentation is one of the most important tools available. When done well, a sales presentation can help build a connection with potential customers and distinguish your business from competitors. It can set the tone for all the conversations that will happen as the sales process progresses. Unfortunately, many of today’s sales presentations don’t account for all the variables required to truly connect with a target audience.

What makes a great sales presentation?

To take advantage of those opportunities, salespeople need to draw on the right techniques for putting together a compelling presentation. This begins with crafting a 
set of messages that push potential customers to think about their challenges and environments in a new way. Since different customers will have different concerns, messages must be presented in a form that is flexible enough to span a broad variety of issues. This is why many of the best sales presentations are modular systems that always articulate the business key value proposition, but allow the salesperson to tailor much of the content for the specific customer they’re addressing.

In addition to getting the content right, the sales presentation should deliver it in an interesting, persuasive way – a feat that storytelling accomplishes quite well. Studies show that storytelling can help sales messages resonate to a much greater extent than a straightforward description of product benefits. For example, a 2007 study found that showing advertisements in narrative form elicited more positive responses than ads that asked a test audience to think about arguments in favor of a product. Why is storytelling so impactful? Our brains process information by associating it with meaning. By connecting products to familiar themes and real people, a story can help audiences understand the value of what a salesperson is selling and make that information more memorable.

Powerful visuals are the final ingredient. Whether a presenter uses PowerPoint, Keynote, whiteboards, or 
a demo shown on a mobile device, the medium is only
 as good as what they do with it. With the right amount
 of thought and energy devoted to developing slides
 that complement the content, visuals can bring the salesperson’s story to life and help his customer “see” what he’s saying so they can understand and evangelize it.

Get the most out of your sales presentations

Presentations with great messages and equally compelling visuals take a lot of work to construct.
 With 78% of salespeople reporting that they usually 
put together their own presentations instead of using materials constructed by marketing, businesses may
 feel that salespeople spend too much time building slide decks and not enough time selling. A more effective
 and efficient approach can emerge from sales and marketing working together to construct a modular presentation framework that satisfies everyone’s needs. It might contain a core story that provides context on
 the business and its central value proposition, modules for different product lines or vertical industries, and a library of visuals and story assets tailored for different audiences and situations. The result is a presentation that stays consistent with brand and marketing guidelines while giving sales enough flexibility for a myriad of uses.

Just creating this modular presentation system isn’t enough. To ensure consistent usage, the business
 should create a training process to roll it out to its sales organization and help them internalize its key messages. This may include hands-on usage training, sales situation role-playing, and reference tools like a presenter’s guide with talking points and delivery tips. The easier the presentation is to use, the more likely it will deliver consistent results.

Conclusion

There’s no universal solution for crafting a great sales presentation. Each salesperson delivers their pitch a little differently, and nuances can help make any message resonate better with a specific audience. But by putting thought and energy into crafting and practicing your modular presentation in advance, businesses can make presentations a more powerful asset in the sales process.

/Key Insights

Tailor to audience and context

Choose your medium and your message based on the audience and the context of the presentation.

Adapt with modular systems

Instead of building a one-size- fits-all presentation, build a modular system that allows you to adapt to the customer’s needs.

Resonate with great visuals

Combining storytelling with great visuals will help your message resonate.

Hone your sales team delivery

Put thought and energy into rolling out a new presentation to your sales team and helping them hone their delivery.

The first step in this process is to learn the different types of sales presentations that are available.

By understanding each format you will be able to tailor your approach to suit the audience, location, and items that you are selling.

The Purpose of a Sales Presentation

The main goal of a sales presentation is to present a product, service, or business opportunity and persuade the audience to purchase it.

The most basic sales presentations are an introduction to your offering, where you explain who you are and what you are selling.

More advanced presentations will share detailed information about the items you are selling and can be tailored to a specific audience.

To convince someone to commit to making a purchase, your sales presentation must:

• Successfully introduce your business, the industry, and what is being sold
• Build rapport and trust between you and the prospect
• Explain the unique advantages that purchasing your product or service will provide
• Motivate the prospect to take action

A good sales presentation will focus on the needs of the prospect while informing, educating, and inspiring them to learn more about your offering.

It should connect with the prospect on both an emotional and logical level, motivating them to take action. Finally, it should alleviate any concerns that the prospect has about your offering and make it look like it is the best option available.

Common Types of Sales Presentations

The Elevator Pitch

The elevator pitch is the shortest sales presentation that you can make, but it can also be the most difficult to master. It involves presenting your product, service, or business to a new prospect in less than 2 minutes. Your goal is simple — to introduce your offering in a compelling way that makes the prospect interested in learning more.

The challenge of making an elevator pitch is to take all of the important information about your offering and convey it into a very short amount of time. This is made harder by the fact that you will usually be talking to a new prospect — with whom you have limited rapport.

A good elevator pitch will leave the prospect wanting to know more. Once the prospect has confirmed they are interested in your offering, you can arrange to meet with them again to provide more information.

The advantage of mastering the elevator pitch is that you will always be ready to present your offering wherever you are, without the need for props or handouts. You will be able to use your elevator pitch when meeting prospects at conferences, social events, and business seminars.

The Cold Call Sales Pitch

A cold call sales pitch involves talking to a prospect for the first time over the telephone or via Internet. While many salespeople will use a pre-determined script during cold calls, it is also possible to tailor a pitch to meet the circumstances of the prospect. This type of sales presentation needs to be short and to the point initially, but can go in any direction once rapport has been established with the prospect.

Written Sales Presentations

There will be many situations where you cannot meet with a prospect face-to-face. In these cases, you may need to use a written sales presentation. You can use a number of different formats to convey your written sales pitch, ranging from website landing pages and emails through to brochures and information packages.

The key challenge to creating a written sales presentation is to keep the reader interested. That is why most written presentations are short and to the point. For example, take a look at the landing page for Transfer Wise.

It is a one page, 250-word sales presentation in webpage format. It clearly tells the prospect the value of the service, explains how it works, offers social proof, shares positive media reviews, and displays how much money users are saving.

Traditional sales presentations written as a document often include much more information, but the concept is the same — describe the offering, explain the benefits, offer proof, and provide the opportunity to learn more.

Business Presentations

If you are selling a product or service to another business or an investor, the presentation might involve a small number of participants and take place in a meeting room. These kinds of sales presentations are usually planned presentations that are targeted towards the requirements of the prospect.

Full Sales Presentations

A full sales presentation is a long-form presentation that lets you go into much more detail about the offering. Most full sales presentations involve an in-person presentation, however, they can also be performed online or over the phone. It is common for full sales presentations to incorporate audio-visual aspects like charts, photos, music, and videos. Formats for full sales presentations include:

• Canned presentations
  These are fully prepared presentations where every word and prop is organized in advance. The sales person simply memorizes their speech and delivers it to the audience.  This type of sales presentation is often used by telemarketers, door-to-door salespeople, and pharmaceutical representatives.
• Planned presentations
  A planned presentation is also carefully prepared, but it has more scope for interaction between the salesperson and the audience. The salesperson introduces the business and its offering before running through a set of key points.  It is a more conversational approach and audience has the opportunity to ask questions during or after the presentation.  A planned presentation is often tweaked to suit the audience receiving the sales pitch.  This format is often used for business meetings, seminars, and webinars.

These two formats can be used in a number of ways, including:

Problem Solving Presentations

Presenting a problem then offering a product or service as a solution is a very effective sales presentation technique. This kind of technique is often used to sell products like life insurance. The salesperson simply describes the dangers of not having insurance followed by the solution that insurance provides. The prospect sees the risk and reward components and can make an informed decision.

Webinars

A webinar is a sales presentation conduction over the Internet. An interested prospect can connect to an audio-visual presentation to watch the salesperson discuss their product or service. Throughout the presentation, the salesperson can answer questions submitted from viewers via a chat system. This type of sales presentation is very useful as it allows salespeople to talk directly to hundreds of prospects located all around the world.

Teleconference and Videoconference sales presentations are performed in a similar way, however, there is usually less opportunity for interaction between the salesperson and the prospects.

Seminars

A seminar is a very large scale sales presentation which can involve hundreds of prospects. Most seminars are canned presentations with Q&A sessions afterwards. Sales presentations performed at seminars are fairly generalized due to the large number of attendees.

The sales presentation techniques listed here form an important part of your arsenal. Think about the kind of audience you are interested in selling to before deciding on the right approach for your sales presentation.