What should go in my sales presentation?

Introduction

There’s lots of tips out there on how to give a great sales presentation. We even have a good article on this ourselves!

But we often get asked, what should actually go in my presentation?

We’ve seen lots of sales presentations now, so here is our take on what should go inside and how it should be structured.

This article is written with three big caveats:

  1. Every product or service is different – you need to customize your pitch.
  2. There are many ways to pitch the same product – you should try out variations to find the best.
  3. You should customize your presentation for each client. Address their most important pains and needs.

With all that said, this should be a useful starting point for a new sales presentation or help when refreshing an old one.

Before you start

Before you put together a sales presentation, make sure you have answers to these questions:

  • Who are your customers?
  • What are their pains?
  • How do they solve that pain today?
  • Why is this not sufficient?
  • Why is it important they solve these pains?
  • How does your product or service solve their pain & why is this better?
  • Who are your competition?
  • What are your product strengths (vs the competition)?
  • Where are you weaker than the competition, how do you address these weaknesses?
  • What are the common questions you get asked, how do you answer these?
  • Who are your most loyal customers today? 
  • What do they most value about your product or service?

Not all of these will appear as slides in the presentation, but they will help your thinking as you flesh out the content of the slides. You also want to be ready to answer them if questions come up in your meetings!

Here it is: a great starting point for your sales presentation

The following list contains the key points to address in a good sales presentation. The order of these points is also important.

Each point on this list should be a slide in your sales presentation. If you need extra detail on any of the points, create an appendix and put the rest in there.

  • Introduction and agenda
  • Challenges the client faces
  • Why existing solutions don’t work
  • Why it’s important to solve this challenge
  • Synthesis of the problems (3 – 5 problems)
  • Overview of your product or service
  • How you solve each of the 3-5 problems
  • ‍Product demo (do this live – i.e. not a slide)
  • Close / summary – graphical slide
  • Clear next steps and timeline
jroberts

jroberts

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Related reading

What we learned from designing 200 pitch decks
Five tips for a great sales meeting
The sales presentation: guest blog by Jan Schultink
5 things to avoid when presenting to a large audience
3 strategies to 3x your B2B webinar presentations
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