How to Create Presentations that Sells

Tools and plans for creating presentations that sell

Introduction

A Sales Presentation is used to sell your product or service. it is a visual aid used to accompany a talk. It differs from Informational presentations in that a Sales presentation must have a call to action.

Your presentation should not dominate the speaker's message, nor should it detract from what the speaker is saying. In other words, the audience should remember the call-to-action and not the presentation.

A presentation is also known as a slide show, slide presentation, or Powerpoint presentation. A professional presentation can make or break your pitch, so its important to know how to properly create an effective  presentation. If you do not, seek a presentation production service or get professional presentation help.
 

Effective Presentation Criteria

An effective presentation:

  • Is tailored for its intended audience.
  • Uses charts and graphs for people who like figures; else
  • Uses words and pictures when addressing a general audience.
  • Is as brief as possible. An ideal presentation takes less than 15 minutes.
  • Has slides with 3-5 keywords or 3-5 short sentences each.
  • Uses fonts, font sizes, and colours that make the slides readable at 30-40 feet (10-15 meters). You should also be sensitive to colour blindness issues.
  • Has notes containing the basis of the talk.

Format

The format of a good presentation contains:

  • The first slide giving the name of the presentation, who you are, your company, how to contact you, and a copyright
  • The second slide outlines what you are going to be telling your audience
  • Next is the body of the presentation. It is made up of slides, each containing just keywords and/or phrases that are:
    • Prompts for you
    • Simple and short
    • Information you want your audience to remember
  • Usually, your third last slide repeats the outline you just told your audience
  • If relevant, your second last slide should contain references, resources
  • Lastly, there is a summary slide at the end that shows contains the call-to-action and possibly your contact information
  • Slides should each be numbered

Things to Avoid

A presentation should not be:

  • Too long -- that is, it should not be longer than 15 minutes for a sales presentation
  • Too busy with too much information on a slide -- if your audience have to "squint", then there is too much information
  • Use colors, transitions, or sound that detracts from your message.

As a speaker, you should not:

  • Read from the slides
  • Face away from your audience while speaking
  • Expect your audience to remember more than 3 things from the whole presentation.

Review Criteria

Some of the criteria that a reviewer uses are:

  • Did the presentation have useful information, i.e. was it worth your audience's time
  • Was the presentation of the appropriate length
  • Was it easy to remember the main points of the presentation
  • Was contact information present
  • Were the slides easy to read, even at a distance
  • Was there a logical progression to your presentation

This How-To and its associated template assume that the presentation has already been created.

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