Want to know how to improve a tired sales presentation? A lot of companies have a sales presentation that seems to be saying some of the right things, but without getting great results. What steps should a sales or marketing team take to go from average to great at sales presenting? What is involved in improving your sales presentation?

Sales presentation Tip 1: Cut down on the company overview

Most sales presentations talk in great detail about the company’s history, locations, values, mission, and even diversity policy. Most of the time, for most of this content, nobody cares. Say enough to build credibility and establish empathy in your sales presentation, but no more.

Sales presentation Tip 2: Decide which benefits are most powerful, and relegate the others

Have trouble deciding which of the dozen or more benefits you offer is the most important? The common approach is to just list all of them and hope that some of them resonate with your sales presentation audience. The problem, of course, is that by saying too much you overload your audience and your sales presentation and most of your message is forgotten. Which parts are forgotten? That depends – each audience member may remember your value proposition as something different. This is great for causing confusion but awful for sales.

Sales presentation Tip 3: Move the ‘Summary of Benefits’ slide from the end to near the start

A common mistake is to only introduce benefits at the end of the presentation when the audience are already bored. Optimum attention levels often occur after about three or four minutes – so start talking about benefits then in your sales slides.

Create a sales slide that summarises the key benefits of your product or service, and it can be used to create a structure to your slides that will help you to deliver a compelling sales presentation.

Sales presentation Tip 4: Sixty slides of text is too much detail

If your sales presentation usually lasts more than an hour, your prospects might wish they never met you. Often, information can be cut from your sales presentation slides without being missed. When presenting a particularly complex product, or if you are expected to present for a long time, consider using multiple sales presentations, slides and presenters, or hyperlinks to present in a non-linear way. This keeps the audience focused, and allows your prospects to set some of the agenda.

Sales presentation Tip 5: Let the audience know where you are in the sales presentation

Ever been reading a book and flicked to the back to see how many pages you have left? How would you feel if once you started reading you had no way of finding out how long was left? Without an agenda slide, and reference to the agenda during the sales presentation, that’s what being an audience member is like.

Sales presentation Tip 6: Reconsider slides full of technical specifications

Technical details are often important when selling. But don’t fall into the trap of including every technical detail in your sales presentation slides. Eliminate the details that are no different from competitors (unless you need to persuade the audience that you have finally managed to catch up). Instead, produce a product specification sheet, and hand this out. Then, try to bring the remaining specifications to life in your sales presentation. If you have an important technical advantage, what does this mean in practice? Compare directly to competitors (named or ghosted), and illustrate the benefits in real-life settings. Make something that’s hard to destroy? Take a video showing it working after being run-over by a truck. Think Steve Jobs, the MacBookAir, and an office envelope.

Sales presentation Tip 7: Listing all your products on a slide is not the same as selling solutions

Don’t just present a few slides on each product you offer. If you want to sell solutions, understand the problem that you can solve, and then present one integrated view of the solution you offer. Finding slides from five different product presentations and putting them into one jumble of a sales presentation isn’t the same as presenting a solution.

Sales presentation Tip 8: Eliminate bullet points

Bullet points don’t work. The audience read the text, and ignore the presenter. They can’t listen and read at the same time. It’s the reason why we stop and look up when somebody disturbs us reading a good book. Six bullet points per slide on your current sales presentation? Find the visuals that help you explain the same points. Otherwise your audience will just read your slides but ignore you presenting.

Sales presentation Tip 9: Think about when to open the laptop

Some sales people “show up and throw up”. That’s to say they get face-to-face with a prospect, open the laptop, and present everything that they have to say in a billion slides without stopping to find out anything about the specific needs or interests of the audience. Psychologically this may be easy to do but it isn’t effective. Instead, think of your sales presentation as just one part of a broader conversation, and consider making the sales presentation interactive to ensure that you address the interests and concerns of each audience.

Sales presentation Tip 10: Be Proactive. There’s another way.

Sales presentations don’t have to consist of six bullet points to a slide for thirty slides. Just because everybody else reads from their slides, it doesn’t mean that you have to. Delivering a sales presentation can be fun for the audience, and the presenter.

Sales presentation Tip 11: Be proactive about becoming a better presenter.

Sales presentation skills are essential in today’s business world. Set out to become a better presenter by reading about effective sales presentations, watching and copying interesting presenters, and identifying and replacing bad habits. It will help your career, and it will help those who have to watch you present.

Sales presentation Tip 12: Begin with Objectives in Mind

Highly effective sales presentations are those that have a clear message. Why are you delivering a sales presentation? If you are only presenting because it’s what usually happens, or if you could just as well send a Word document, then save everybody’s time and don’t present.

Sales presentation Tip 13: Start developing each sales presentation by setting clear objectives:

What do you want your audience to do as a result of your sales presentation, and when by? What do you want your audience to think following your sales presentation? How will you measure whether your sales presentation has achieved its objectives?

Effective presentations are those that help the presenter achieve their objectives. Without objectives, what is a presentation for?

Sales presentation Tip 14: Put Essential Things First

In a highly effective sales presentation, the audience will quickly understand what the point of the sales presentation is, what any jargon means, and why the presenter is worth listening to.

If the audience aren’t sure why they should bother listening, or can’t follow what is being said, they will disengage. Instead, set out your credibility early ensure you define your terms, and state benefits up-front.

In practical terms, this can mean delivering a sales presentation that seems somewhat back-to-front. Establish credibility, and then state your conclusions in your slides, before spending the rest of the sales presentation justifying your conclusions. For the audience this structure is far easier to follow.

Sales presentation Tip 15: Think “What’s in it for Them?”

Most presenters talk about themselves, the features of their products, and give details that few other people would care for.

Why should your audience listen? What will they learn? How might they benefit? An effective sales presentation is written for the audience, not the presenter. Effective presenters talk about their audience, the benefits their audience will receive, and edit ruthlessly to ensure detail that will be considered boring is excluded.

Sales presentation Tip 16: Seek First to Understand, then to Present

Don’t “show up and throw up” when delivering a sales presentation or seeking investment. Sure, if you are launching a product or delivering a conference keynote presentation you might want to launch straight into your sales presentation, but even then, find out as much as you can about your audience in advance.

If you manage to get a meeting with a potential client or investor, do your homework. Utilise contacts, social media, and company websites to identify interests and “hot buttons”. Tailor your sales presentation slides to take advantage of your research.

Sales presentations should be part of a two-way dialogue. The best presenters are always looking to see how their audience responds, in order to identify objections, shape needs, and advance discussion.

Sales presentation Tip 17: Create Synergy

Interactive presentations are often more effective. Why? Because the audience is engaged, because the audience’s interests can be more directly addressed, and – quite frankly – because they stand out as a bit different. Interactive sales presentations involve the audience by:

• Setting puzzles to get the audience thinking
• Allowing the audience to set the agenda
• Listening to what the audience has to say
• Effective sales presentations often include elements of interactivity to benefit from the synergy produced by involving the audience.

Sales presentation Tip 18: Sharpen Sales Presentation Skills

Highly effective sales presentations take hours to prepare. But sales presentations can’t deliver themselves. Effective presenters spend days practising. Become a great presenter doesn’t happen overnight. So, go on a sales presentation skills training course. Record yourself presenting. Ask for feedback. Organise coaching. But most importantly, keep trying to become a more effective presenter.