Do sales right. This expert article will introduce you to the 10 best sales presentation tips in 2024 to master and make your sales pitch perfect.
Companies need to be able to stand out. Writing an email or LinkedIn InMail doesn’t do the trick anymore. Organizations are losing up to 40% of revenue when presenting sales presentations to clients due to the lack of adoption of best practices.
This article is for all the sellers out there, sales leaders and COOs who want to elevant their sales team to the next level.
You will learn:
- How to make your next sales presentation better
- Why it’s important to adopt best practices in your sales pitch
- How to be relevant following the best sales presentation tips in 2024
Pitch perfect sales presentation tips in 2024
Keep reading to discover 10 sales presentation tips you should adopt today. These tips are applicable for:
- Sales Development Representatives having a discovery calls with new leads
- Account Executives looking to close more deals
- Account Managers and Customer Success Managers trying to upsell
1. 10 Best sales presentation tips to pitch perfect © SlideFill 2024
1. Build rapport and trust
People want to buy from people they know and trust. Before you can sell a product, talk about your service or position a solution; you need to earn the trust of your audience.
The easiest way to gain trust is to showcase you have done your due diligence. Research the contact and company you will be talking to. Find out more details about their business.
Keep the introduction slide simple and start by presenting relevant information for your lead or client.
For leads you will need to rely on public data (LinkedIn, Crunchbase etc.) while for existing clients providing an overview of their results so far is a good conversation starter. You can include these results in your sales presentation.
2. Slide created with SlideFill to showcase client results from your CRM in a presentation © SlideFill 2024
2. Use hard costs instead of soft costs
Senior stakeholders care about hard costs instead of soft costs. In 2024, it’s important to transition from using the latter to the first.
Soft costs are indirect costs impacting profit and loss of an organization. Hard costs are direct costs impacting product and loss.
The majority of companies focus on soft costs in their sales presentation while many clients don’t really care. Focus on hard costs.
As an example: reducing time to perform a task for employees, will not save your client cost. Regardless of them saving time, they will need to pay the employee. This is a typical example of a soft cost.
Soft costs can be turned into hard costs. By reducing time for employees, your client’s have the ability to invest that time in another task that will generate more revenue. This additional revenue is a hard cost. By not adopting your solution, they will lose tangible dollars in profit and loss.
| Soft costs | Hard costs |
|---|---|
| Reduce 40% time | Generate 60% more revenue |
| Produce 20% faster | Save $250K in machinery |
| Get 40% better leads | Make 30% more profit |
| … | … |
3. Sales hard costs and soft costs examples © SlideFill 2024
3. Personalize based on customer data
The next sales presentation tip you need to adopt in 2024 is personalization.
Generative AI and tools like ChatGPT will make it easier than ever before to create content. But there is a risk for your business. All content will be produced based on the same data sets, resulting in your messaging being almost exactly the same as the one of your competitors.
Clients do expect personalization. Personalization will become extremely important to stand out and you need to do it right.
Leveraging data from your clients that’s available in your CRM such as Salesforce and HubSpot will allow you to personalize your content at scale. You should create slides from your CRM data to resonate better with your audience.
More personalization means more relevancy. More relevancy drives more buy-in. More buy-in results in more revenue.
4. Create data-driven personalized sales presentation © SlideFill 2024
4. Focus on return on investment with bold numbers
2024 is all about making it big. People will go bigger and bolder than ever before. You will see this trend everywhere: sunglasses, jewellery, hairstyles, home decor and even in sales.
To capitalize, you need to create slides with bold numbers. Leave out all the details and focus on slides with one key message. Showcase return on investment or benefits while leaving out all the fluff.
When using bold numbers, don’t focus on the investment of your clients. Focus on what they will gain instead.
Use pauses to read the room and understand if your audience agrees and believes the number. Adjust accordingly.
5. Focus on return on investment with bold numbers © SlideFill 2024
5. Showcase customer success stories
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, but advocacy works.
Nothing sells better than social proof. To perfect your sales presentation, add a customer success story. This story should come from a client that has a similar size and industry as the person you are talking to.
Do not make the mistake of using one customer success story for all your clients. When you’re talking to a local client, a success story from a multinational like Coca-Cola will not do the trick and can have the opposite effect.
Choose customer success stories that resonate with your audience and emphasize similarities between the businesses to put more weight on the fact the person you’re talking to can expect similar results.
You can use our success story template to start creating customer success stories.
6. Showcase customer success stories (Fake Example) © SlideFill 2024
6. Ask discovery and in-depth questions
The most important skill of any salesperson is the ability to ask relevant questions.
Whether you are doing sales for small or enterprise businesses, you need to ask questions and use pause during your pitch to understand what is top of mind for your prospect or client.
The right discovery questions and depth questions can make you uncover the true needs of your clients and help you to position your solution. Don’t just ramble your narrative. Build in moments in your sales presentation or sales pitch where you want to stop to ask questions.
The most effective salespeople are those who master the power of questioning and silence.
| Discovery Questions | Depth Questions |
|---|---|
| Broad | Narrow |
| Open in nature | Open in nature |
| Understand needs | Understand underlying drivers |
| Example: How would success look like in 2024? | Example: Why are you focusing on this? |
7. Different sales questions: Discovery Questions and Depth Questions © SlideFill 2024
7. Simplify business jargon
Avoiding or simplifying business jargon will help to make your sales presentation more clear. It’s up to you to understand how advanced your audience is, if unsure, always avoid jargon.
You should master your narrative for different audience levels and enable yourself to go in-depth without overcomplexification. A good rule of thumb is the ‘ELI5’-Test:
Can you explain the concept to a five-year old child?
If so, you master the concepts within your presentation.
Try to minimize or simplify jargon in your slides. When you notice during your pitch that your audience has difficulties, explain terms simplified and adapt slides before sharing them out.
8. Avoid or simplify business jargon ELI5 Test © SlideFill 2024
8. Tell a story with visuals
Every human recognizes a good story. Even the earliest forms of communication were used to tell a story. Storytelling is a key skill to have when doing a sales pitch presentation.
Your slides should follow a story arc with a clear beginning (introduction), middle (challenge and resolutions) and ending (conclusion and call-to-action).
Using a story arc will help your audience to understand and follow why they need your product or service. It provides cohesion and engagement that will keep the audience interested.
A good story is focused, it doesn’t deviate too much from the core narrative. The GET-TO-BY framework is a perfect principle to stick to when creating a sales presentation:
- GET – Your Target Customer
- TO – The Desired Action
- BY – One Message/Action
Whenever you are creating slides, ask yourself if the slide is contributing and aligned to the GET-TO-BY principle. If not, you most likely can remove the slide from the core narrative.
Use visuals to support your messaging. Don’t add random visuals for the sake of it. A good sales presentation is light and doesn’t contain too much text. It uses visuals to put a picture to the words being shared.
Example: SlideFill’s GET-TO-BY Framework
| Framework | Example |
|---|---|
| GET | Sales, marketing and customer support teams |
| TO | Save 40% of their time to invest in revenue generating activities |
| BY | Utilizing SlideFill to create presentations at scale from CRM data |
9. Example of the sales GET-TO-BY framework © SlideFill 2024
9. Practice until perfection
A no-brainer sales presentation tip: practice, practice and practice.
Practice does make perfect. It will help you to understand when to pause, ask questions and where to put additional emphasis. It’s highly recommended that you practice in a mock sales call setting where someone acts like they are the client coming up with real objections.
Over time, you will understand the most common objections or questions which will enable you to diffuse them before they come up. You will also be able to reiterate during your sales pitch when you notice you are losing interest.
10. Provide next steps and stakeholders
End your sales presentation with a clear call to action. Include next steps in your last slide and divide roles and responsibilities across the people present in the call.
Make sure to ask if any other stakeholders need to be included in a follow-up email or meeting. You can do the best sales pitch without getting the desired result when you are not talking to the decision maker.
Finalizing your sales presentations with next steps will enable you to get agreement and drive accountability.
Frequently Asked Questions
Before you head to the conclusion of this article, you can find answers on frequently asked questions related to creating sales presentations on SlideFill:
Conclusion
What’s next for you
Now you know what it takes to build a successful sales presentation, you’re guaranteed to get better results. As a sales leader, support your team by sharing these ten best practices to generate more revenue in 2024.
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This article does not contain any promotional or paid placements.
Views are personal and not affiliated to employers.
No generative AI was used to write the article.
All examples are illustrative and fictional.
