How do you create a compelling Sales Presentation?

I make presentations for a living and I have worked on sales presentations of lots of companies; from a technology startup to a large media house. Here are my thoughts on how to go about creating a compelling sales presentation which gets you the next meeting with the client.

• Never start your sales presentation with ‘About Us’. Most sales presentations focus too much on the seller and not enough on the prospect. Start with a ‘consumer story’ or 'name a big change in your prospect's industry’ or start with a problem which affects your prospect and then share how you are going to solve it.

You face various challenges while delivering a sales presentation. Prepare well to overcome these four specific challenges.

• You will not have 100% attention of your prospect throughout the meeting. You have to earn the interest by talking something they care about. Make your sales presentation interesting, insightful, and useful.
• Your client will not understand everything you say in your presentation. Show your presentation to a layman and ensure that he/she understands it well. Enhance understanding by using analogies, examples, videos, and diagrams.
• Your client will surely not believe everything you say in your presentation. You have to make your pitch credible. If you are quoting a number, mention its source. Providing client testimonials along with images add to your credibility.
• Your client will definitely not remember everything you say in your sales presentation. Ensure he/she remembers at least three main things that matter.

How to earn and retain the attention of your prospect during your sales presentation?

• Keep it short. Long presentations bore people. Your prospect will switch off.
• Finish before time. Do you not love the feeling when a meeting gets over before time? Your client loves that feeling too. No one wants a long presentation :)
• Ask yourself these two questions while building your content. 1) What does my client want to hear? and 2) How will my client decide on a seller/service provider? Does your existing sales presentation address these areas?
• Answer client questions as and when they arise. Prepare for all kinds of questions beforehand. Open your sales presentation now and ask yourself this one question on each slide, "What can the prospect ask on this slide?"
• Customize the deck to suit the prospect. Suppose you are a digital marketing agency and you are pitching to a laptop brand. Their digital marketing needs will be different from another laptop brand and different from a car brand. Customize as much as possible.
• Spend a lot of time and prepare your content. You must interview the prospect before the meeting. Find out what are their expectations from the meeting and from you.

How to gain credibility in a sales presentation?

• Do not boast too much about your credentials. It puts people off.
• Show case studies of clients along with photos and videos. If you have worked for another client in the same industry, you must showcase that. Domain experience is always valuable.

How to ensure your audience remembers what you tell them?

• If your audience will remember only three things from your sales presentation, what would those three things be? Take a good hard look at your existing sales presentation. How many things stand out? How many messages are sticking in the minds? Are those the messages you want the prospect to remember?

How do you generate impact?

• A compelling sales pitch is crystal clear to the salesman and the prospect. What is your sales pitch? Write it down in three sentences. This is the gist. You will expand it during the presentation. You will end with this too. It answers what do you sell, why do you sell it, what are the benefits and why should the prospect buy from you?
• Lots of new-age technology companies worry too much about the competition and about features/benefits. They forget that the prospect has never bought this solution before. If you are selling someone a new technology that they have never tried before, sell the need for the technology first. Suppose you are selling me coconut oil and I have never used coconut oil before. What should you sell first? Coconut oil or your brand of coconut oil? I need to realize that I need coconut oil. Only then will I worry about whose coconut oil should I buy. Read more on this: This is the BEST way to Pitch a NEW product to your Customer

Objective of your sales presentation

• The only objective of your first sales presentation is to excite the audience and secure the next meeting. You cannot make the sale in your first sales pitch. Your client has options. They have called multiple service providers to pitch for their business. The chances are high that your client will not call you again. Deliver a compelling pitch. Your client needs to understand you, remember you, believe you and call you for the second meeting.