For your business to grow, you must always be selling. You have to plant now to harvest later, which means being in front of prospective customers and pitching your goods and services, on an ongoing basis. But not all sales presentations are created equal. There are certain best practices that you should undertake to hit your targets and drive meaningful results.
This blog post will highlight five key components of any sales presentation that will knock the socks off even the most skeptical prospect.
- Be brief
You need to resist the urge to pack every detail into a half hour scheduled sales meeting. You will always run over, and your presentation will be too overwhelming. Focus on what matters most, and speak succinctly and clearly. It is much better to leave the prospect wanting more than to cover everything, and bore them to tears.
- Focus on business benefits
Prospects are going to care little about what is under the hood of the car (so to speak) and more so about how safe it is. In other words – try to address the prospects higher level business challenges and speak about how your product or service will make their life easier and better. If you build websites, for instance, talk about how you will enhance brand, drive web traffic and provide a competitive advantage. Prospects will care much less about how the site will be coded and which SEO widgets you will be using.
- Use a very simple structure and design
If you are using slides for your presentation, you want to make sure they are tight and easy to consume. Start with a brief, 1-slide introduction, followed by body of your presentation (no more than 5-6 slides), a brief 1-page conclusion, and then end with a clear articulation of next steps. The design should be clean, easy to read, graphical and contain few words. Put most of the ‘meat’ into the talk track, not the slides.
- Be conversational
If members of your audience are asking questions, that is a sign of good engagement. You want to encourage that type of back and forth. While you want to make sure the conversation stays on point, and doesn’t deviate too far off course, it is good to strike a tone that encourages participation and interactive discussion
- Create a sense of urgency
Being great or innovative or different from the competition will only take you so far. You need to provide a compelling reason for prospects to act immediately and make a purchase. Otherwise, your sales cycles will become long and expensive. What will your prospect lose if they don’t buy your product or service? Can you translate that into a dollar value? Every sales presentation should include a direct message that builds momentum and creates a sense of urgency.
Include these five components in your sales presentations, and you will be sure to drive better results. If you need help crafting a killer sales presentation, or would like some advice on how to overhaul your sales strategy, contact Miller Bernstein today.
