The Sales Demo Slide Deck: How to Make it Your Own
Salespeople spend a lot of time giving presentations and demo-ing their solutions to prospects. These conversations are crucial components of the sales process and have a dramatic impact on the prospect’s final decision-making. For these reasons, sales teams should consider how to maximize the impact and effectiveness of their presentations and demos.
It’s not all that uncommon for salespeople to be armed with a presentation or demo slide deck that was put together by the marketing department. The purpose of a “single source of truth” like the corporate-approved slide deck is to ensure that all salespeople have the same talking points and are communicating a consistent narrative in the marketplace. This is a noble goal, but one of the unintended consequences of a company-wide narrative in the form of a slide deck is that it can become stale and devoid of any kind of personal, authentic touch.
Presentations are most effective when the speaker is able to build a human connection with their audience. This means that beyond a clear message, the speaker should reveal personal details about herself, create an emotional journey for the audience, and engage their intellectual curiosity along the way. When we work with leaders to develop presentations, one of our strongest recommendations is that the slide deck should be the last step of the development process. This ensures that we’ve mastered the message and crafted the journey long before we worry about the visual aids. When a marketing team hands the sales team a baked slide deck, each salesperson now has to work backwards to put together a presentation that has power, punch, and a touch of authenticity… and that’s hard!
That said, if you’re a salesperson in this position, there are several ways you can make the corporate slide deck your own. Here are a few tips to consider:
Understand the narrative of the deck. Make sure you can connect the dots from one slide to the next, and get the flow memorized into your bones. If you understand the information flow you will take the audience through, you’ll be able to ad lib on top of that to create the emotional experience and human connection that will make your presentation compelling.
Prepare a script that gives you flexibility to improvise. Above all, make sure it’s in your voice. If you have to, write it out in long-form prose to get clear on what you want to say, and how you want to say it.
Know your audience. Consider how to engage them in a way that’s unique or specific to them. Pausing your presentation to ask a question and check for understanding can be a great strategy, but avoid asking the same questions on the same slide to every prospect. Or worse, waiting until the end to open the floor with “Do you have any questions?”
Open your presentation with a personal story. This helps you show up as authentic right off the bat, and opens up your audience to listen to what you have to say.
Intersperse stories throughout the main narrative of the deck. Consider the most common questions you hear from prospects, or some of the tougher points to communicate. Those are ripe storytelling opportunities that are best addressed with a 90-second personal story that illustrates your point. Source your stories from past experiences, case studies, and other sales people on your team.
Activate the intellectual curiosity of your audience. Some ways to do that is to drop hints about what’s to come, ask rhetorical (or non-rhetorical) questions, or present several options before indicating the ultimate choice that was made.
Don’t be afraid to turn it off. Whenever you can, minimize the slide deck so your audience engages directly with you. This is even more important in the virtual setting where screen sharing can cause video feeds to shrink to impossible-to-see sizes or disappear altogether. As a salesperson, you are your best weapon… not your deck. Let yourself shine as much as you can.
The next time the marketing team hands you a slide deck, say “thank you” and then get to work. Don’t accept the standard talk track they’ve provided to you, and find a way to showcase who you are in the course of your presentation or demo in addition to the product or service that you’re selling.
How do you make your sales deck your own?