If you wish to make a sale, you want a gross sales deck. The demo-only strategy doesn’t work anymore. With a mean of 6.8 folks concerned in every B2B deal, you want gross sales decks if you need your message to journey from the champion you met to the client you didn’t.
If you happen to depend on your one champion to hold the message, you’ve basically turned your gross sales course of right into a sport of phone.
Desk of Contents
What’s a Gross sales Deck?
A gross sales deck is a slide presentation which is produced in PowerPoint or Slides, which is proven in conferences with prospects to assist clarify your organization’s product and why they should purchase. It’s used to complement a gross sales pitch and a demo.
What Ought to A Gross sales Deck Embrace?
A gross sales deck must say who you’re and what drawback you are attempting to unravel. It wants to stipulate the “earlier than” state when the prospect has an issue, and the “after” state when that drawback is solved. The presentation wants to point out how you’re going to get the prospect from one state to the opposite.
We’ll look in additional element at how that’s achieved, beneath.
What Are the Key Components of Nice Gross sales Decks?
Gross sales decks are vital to accelerating your gross sales course of, and but most find yourself in vital situation.
Right here’s how we get them improper:
(1) Itemizing out product options relatively than telling a narrative
(2) Overloading slides with an excessive amount of data
(3) Presenting a doc stay that was meant to be learn, or vice versa.
That’s why we constructed this information — that can assist you construct and current a extra compelling gross sales deck in three key steps:
(1) Constructing out your Storyline,
(2) Customizing and Visualizing Content material
(3) Flexing the Format based mostly in your Supply Technique.
We’ll illustrate this recommendation from trade consultants with tactical examples, so you may put it into follow instantly.
Half 1. Learn how to Construct Out Your Storyline
“While you’re constructing your subsequent gross sales deck, maintain one factor in thoughts: Prospects don’t care about your product.” – Courtney Chuang, DocSend
“Story” is a buzzword in gross sales at the moment, however for good purpose. Whereas prospects bear in mind 5-10% of statistics and 25% of photos, retention will increase to 60-70% when tales are used to convey the knowledge. On this age of data overload, tales – not function lists – are the easiest way to make your message stick.
To show it, DocSend lately overhauled their gross sales deck: “As soon as we overhauled the DocSend discovery deck, we noticed our completion charge triple. This meant prospects had been really discovering our story compelling sufficient to finish your entire deck. This was essential as a result of it meant prospects had been able to convert to the subsequent stage of the gross sales course of.”
C-level govt: Inform a high-level strategic story just like the now-famous Zuora deck and use Andy Raskin’s framework as your information.
Funds Holder (VP/Director stage): Make your case with the pragmatic framework laid out by Pete Kazanjy in Founding Gross sales.
Practitioners (or a technical purchaser): Depend on defining your class and executing a well-framed demo.
You’ll be able to flex this relying on the dimensions of your prospect, as nicely:
1A. The CXO Deck
Your aim right here is to get high-level buy-in in order that an govt believes not solely in your product but in addition in your imaginative and prescient. As soon as they share this perception, they’ll supply tops-down stress to speed up your deal.
What goes into the CXO deck? Andy Raskin popularized this narrative framework in his now-famous publish about Zuora’s deck entitled “The Biggest Gross sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen” (a staple for any enterprise gross sales crew). To present a fast overview of his work, listed below are the core components you’ll want:
A very powerful piece of this narrative is your opening: What’s the large change on the planet that made your organization not solely good, however crucial?
How are you aware what that large change is? The very best assets are your happiest prospects. Decide 4-6 prospects most keen about your product and ask them:
- What has basically modified in your enterprise prior to now 12 months?
- If your enterprise fails, what would be the trigger?
- What firms do you align your self with, and why?
- Lastly, how has [Product X] impacted your organization?
From right here, you’ll begin to see patterns to point out you the best way to current your story from the attitude of the client, not the vendor.
1B. The Funds Holder Proposal
That is the “brass tacks” gross sales deck for the funds holder who really makes the acquisition. Your aim right here is to offer this individual confidence within the ROI of your answer by de-risking the choice to speed up the acquisition.
A strong useful resource right here is Peter Kazanjy’s Founding Gross sales work outlined in First Spherical Assessment. To share the highlights, listed below are the core components of this kind of gross sales narrative:
On this logical promote, you could nail your ROI argument. Whereas the CXO deck is propped up on a “Huge Change” in setting or tradition, this narrative is based on value of the issue at the moment:
Beginning with the price of the issue tees you as much as place your answer as a real creator of worth, enabling your purchaser to make the worth of your answer a no brainer.
1C. The Practitioner’s Demo
Your aim is to drive adoption from the day-to-day future customers of your product. Diving straight right into a demo misses a chance to construct rapport and let these customers know that you simply perceive their daily. By framing a story-driven demo nicely, you bounce begin bottoms-up adoption of your product within the group. Right here’s what it appears like:
Begin by framing your demo with the issue they want to remedy because the query, and your answer as the reply. Then, prioritize the demo accordingly.
Orchestrate your demo as a collection of moments that immediately deal with the issues they’ve highlighted. In case your product has 6 options you need to present, as a substitute select the three that the majority immediately deal with the issue they want to remedy.
Half 2. Learn how to Customise and Visualize Content material
Even if you happen to haven’t seen the newest MarTech 5000 slide, you’ve undoubtedly felt the overload first hand. With extra firms than ever competing in your buyer’s consideration, that is what you’re up towards:
How do you break via?
Customization
Personalised emails earn 26% greater click-through charges, and ship as much as 6X greater transaction charges per e-mail. Think about the influence of personalizing your gross sales decks, too.
Visuals
Over 65% of individuals study finest visually, and visible shows are 43% extra persuasive than bullet-point ones. If you happen to don’t consider the statistics, take a look at the habits of your coworkers: Moments earlier than a gathering, they’re scrolling via Instagram, Slacking GIFs, and texting Emojis. Afterward, they’re checking Snap tales, liking Fb photographs, and commenting on LinkedIn movies.
How do you count on your bullet level slides to compete?
They will’t.
2A. Customise your content material
No matter which storyline you’re utilizing, you’ve alternatives to customise your deck periodically all through. A very powerful slide to do that is your opening.
“Your first slide must be about what you’ve discovered from YOUR CUSTOMERS. Use the voice of your prospects to offer you credibility.” – Doug Landis
To essentially stand out, you may customise your deck to your prospect’s model as nicely. Customary follow is dragging and dropping in logos, however you may take it a step additional and use your prospect’s model colours as a theme all through.
2B. Visualize your Content material
By turning your product and firm concepts into easy visuals, your dialog turns into extra partaking and your message really sticks along with your viewers.
Utilizing Visible Metaphors. Earlier than prospects purchase something, they’ve to know what it’s. Sounds easy, however so many firms (notably extremely technical merchandise) mess this up. Metaphors allow your prospect to immediately grasp what you’re attempting to do.
Drift’s CEO David Cancel does this nicely when he describes Drift because the gross sales attendant in your retailer (your web site). This metaphor – and the visible to go together with it – elicits an emotional response that sticks with you far longer than a function listing may.
Use easy visible diagrams
As salespeople, we aren’t educated in artwork, as a result of artwork isn’t our job. Nonetheless, communication is our job. Visuals are probably the most environment friendly method to do this job as a result of our brains course of visible data 60,000x sooner than textual content, and retain 4X extra data they see vs. learn.
Even with none artwork coaching, listed below are some examples of easy visible layouts that work notably nicely for gross sales slides:
Visualizing your case research
The aim of case research is to supply credibility and proof your answer works. Nothing accomplishes this higher than a visible case examine:
In different elements of your presentation, iconography could be highly effective instruments to construct a shared story. As a result of icons are conceptual, your buyer has to do among the “work” to think about the brand new future along with your product.
In relation to the case examine, although, you need to make the examples as concrete – and credible – as attainable.
Use pictures and videography to display that these different prospects aren’t simply concepts, however they’re actual, relatable folks, too.
Half 3. Learn how to Flex Format based mostly on Supply Technique
“Perhaps your advertising crew made you a stunning one however they’re ONLY meant for explaining stay, not displaying to a call maker offline.” – Cole Fox, LeadIQ
You simply gave a compelling presentation to the end-users of your product, utilizing your new Practitioner’s framework. As you’re wrapping up the decision, your prospect asks, “Are you able to ship me one thing I can ship my boss?”
If you happen to ahead the doc you simply offered, your prospect’s boss (your purchaser) goes to be utterly confused. If you happen to ship them a textual content doc, they received’t learn it.
What do you do?
One Deck, Two Variations
Your aim is to restrict your textual content to twenty phrases per slide for a deck to current, and 60 phrases per slide for a deck to learn. If a prospect spends 5 minutes flipping via your 10-page deck, that’s solely 30 seconds a slide. Given common studying speeds, that’s time for 60-100 phrases, max.
Additional, the much less information you kind on the slide, the extra you because the presenter can set up your experience and captivate your viewers.
Right here’s what this appears like in follow. Cut up your content material into two textual content bins within the authentic deck design in your 60-word model:
Then, when it’s time to current, simply take away the physique textual content bins in your 20-word model:
Lastly, increasingly more consumers are viewing content material on cell gadgets (as much as 42% are utilizing cell gadgets throughout the buy course of), which ought to additional restrict the textual content density of your content material. If so, your targets needs to be at the least half the aforementioned limits (30 phrases as a substitute of 60 for a read-ahead), as studying speeds gradual considerably when transferring from a full display screen to a cell system.
Gross sales Deck Examples
We’ve drawn our inspiration from three examples particularly:
DocSend Gross sales Deck Instance
Zuora Gross sales Presentation Instance
Gross sales Deck Examples for Founders
Gross sales shows for founders
Lastly, listed below are some extra nice gross sales presentation examples.
Verify Out The Full SlideShare Model on Our Gross sales Decks!
Additionally printed on Medium.
