Buyer-Centric Sales Presentations That Win

We’ve all seen it. The mammoth corporate sales presentation crammed with everything there is to know about the company and the products. It’s too much information and unwieldy for sales to use. As a result, reps often reject this corporate tome in favor of creating their own decks. The unfortunate outcome is the proliferation of disparate sales presentations with inconsistent messaging and questionable effectiveness. Worse, reps waste a huge amount of time they could be spending in front of their customers.

The remedy is for portfolio marketers to take a strategic approach to the messaging and information that goes into sales presentations.

According to the SiriusDecisions Buying Study, b-to-b buyers rank the sales presentation as one of the most meaningful and impactful content asset types throughout all phases of the buying decision process. Effective sales presentations have content that satisfies the buyer knowledge requirements at each phase of the buying cycle. Moreover, they’re designed to align to the sales process phases so that reps have an explicit understanding of when to introduce particular content components based on buyer preference.

• Education phase. In the first buying phase, reps are introducing and qualifying buyers. Equip them with sales presentation content that will help them convince buyers that change is necessary by illuminating the problem or opportunity that exists in their organization. Include insights and data points in the sales presentation to help buyers to refine and validate the initiative.

• Solution phase. In this phase, buyers are investigating alternative ways to solve the problem. The sales stages within this phase are identifying the solution and proposing a solution. Make sure that sales presentation content helps reps  show buyers that the solution approach from the vendor is the best approach to satisfy their needs. Convince the buyer of the vendor solution fit by offering differentiators and buyer/user scenario context.

• Selection phase. In the final buying phase, the sales stages are justifying and closing. Buyers need reps’ help to support the final decision to make the purchase. Include content in the sales presentation that helps the buyer to justify the purchase with internal stakeholders – such as investment validation, financial viability and implementation roadmaps.

Astute portfolio marketers know that equipping reps with the right content and tools can enable sales to have a stronger impact with buyers and accelerate the sales process. Create sales presentations that win by focusing on buyer knowledge requirements throughout the entire buying decision process and mapping content to sales phases.

Download an overview of the SiriusDecisions Sales Adoption Model and the SiriusDecisions Messaging Nautilus for Sales Content for more insight on b-to-b sales enablement best practices. For our SiriusDecisions Portfolio Marketing clients, please contact your account team to access the “Designing Buyer-Centric Sales Presentations That Win” research brief. If you’re not a client, contact us for more information.