best sales presentation ever

Effective Sales Presentations: 11 Tips to Win Deals + Templates

What makes a sales presentation truly effective?

Is it that secret-sauce font, the comprehensive case studies, intricate graphs, or your shining personality? Or is it… something else?

It might seem like a simple question, but understanding the answer unlocks a world of opportunities for sales reps.

If your sales presentations are truly effective, they should accomplish these 4 things:

Give prospects confidence in your brand
Develop a deep relationship and mutual understanding of needs and priorities
Convince potential customers of the value of your product
Give clear direction for the next conversation

How many of your recent sales meetings have fallen short of these results?

A study by Forrester of more than 300 C-level buyers found that many reps are lacking key information for a successful sales meeting:

Put simply, most salespeople go into meetings:

Unprepared for questions
Without knowledge of the business or industry they’re selling to
Without understanding the prospect’s situation and problems
Without relevant social proof

Want to avoid falling into the trap of generic, ineffective sales presentations?

While preparing for and delivering a really good sales presentation isn’t an exact science, the following best practices will lead you to better results.

Let’s dive into the top methods sales professionals are using to nail their presentations and deliver killer sales pitches .

How to Prepare the Perfect Sales Pitch Presentation

Think you can get away with giving a great sales presentation on the fly? Think again. A PowerPoint presentation that was thrown together over lunch is not going to impress your decision-makers.

Preparation is a key aspect of every effective sales presentation.

Here are five ways you can prepare for success:

1. Set a Clear Agenda

Your sales presentation is built to guide the conversation and gives you a structure to work with throughout the meeting. But the prospect doesn’t know how your presentation is structured.

Does this situation sound familiar?

Prospect: “This is really interesting, but how does your product solve XYZ?”

You : “Actually, we’ll talk about that in a few slides. Anyway, as I was saying…”

These kinds of interruptions are common, and the popular response of “We’ll get to that” doesn’t normally go over very well with prospects.

Here’s how to avoid this: Set a clear agenda for the conversation, and share that with your prospects.

This could mean sharing an outline of the presentation topics you’ve prepared, or it can mean sharing the whole sales presentation with your prospect.

This way, your prospect can review the information before your meeting, see where you’ll cover certain topics, and save their questions for the right moment.

2. Adapt Your Script and Presentation

Above, we saw that 77% of reps enter meetings without a clear understanding of the issues that their prospect is facing, or areas where they can help.

There are two clear ways to fix this problem:

First, do your homework. The more you know about your potential client's business and current situation, the better. Also, try to understand their industry and target audience, read up on current news in the sector, and get a feel for the particular pain points this person is likely feeling the most.

Second, base your presentation and accompanying sales script on your ideal customer profile. If your sales team has multiple ideal customer profiles to sell to, discover which profile this prospect fits into and base your arguments, questions, and main points on the specific needs of this profile.

3. Pick Three Main Points for Each Prospect

No matter how many crazy statistics and fun features you throw at your prospect, they’re still only human. Shocking, we know.

In other words, they’ll probably forget at least half of what you say.

To create effective sales presentations that your prospects will remember, focus on three main bullet points that you want to highlight.

This isn’t a number we pulled from a hat. It’s based on an experiment performed by Kurt A. Carlson and Suzanne B. Shu. Their study found that, when your audience knows you’re trying to persuade them, the ideal number of positive claims to make is three. After four claims, your audience will start to become more and more skeptical of anything you say.

The title of their paper is a catchy phrase to help you remember this principle: Three Charms but Four Alarms .

So, go through your slides and pick three key points that you want your prospect to remember. Maybe these will be product features or maybe not, but once again, base these points on the real, felt needs of your prospect. You’ll see better results.

During the presentation, draw your audience's attention to these points as you introduce new ideas. Phrases like these draw attention at the right moments:

Here’s the point…
This is crucial…
But this is what matters…
But it gets even better...
This next point is really important...
This is what XYZ could mean for you, Jack…

And make sure these key points lead directly where you want them to—to your call to action. If they aren’t leading you to that, what’s the point?

For more, check out this video, where I talked in-depth about captivating and directing your prospect's attention during a sales conversation. Remember: whether you're delivering in-person or via video conferencing, maintaining eye contact and using body language to draw attention to main points works.

4. Use Visuals to Show, Not Tell

A sales deck can have several different functions. For example, if your sales deck is going to be read and discussed among stakeholders at your prospect’s company, it will need to include text that explains the visuals presented.

However, if you’re giving a sales presentation with that deck, it doesn’t need all that text.

To prepare a sales presentation for a product or service, make sure you include infographics and visuals that complement what you’re saying. You can use Canva or even a responsive whiteboard to do this.

Think of your slides as visual aids that give more meaning and context to your words.

These visuals can help to:

Simplify complex processes
Provide a clearer understanding of data/metrics
Add credence to your words
Keep your audience engaged
Help your audience remember main points (this one is backed by science )

In short, for an effective sales presentation, keep your script and your slides separate. Use your words to add meaning to the visuals, and use your visuals to maximize the power of your words. With this approach, you will elevate your value proposition —and increase your close rate.

5. Show Them You Know Their Pain

Using a narrative in your presentation shows that you’re sympathetic to the problems your prospects are facing and that you know how to solve them.

So, what’s the narrative for your product?

Generally, the story you tell with your presentation will follow this pattern:

There is a problem caused by a shift in the market, a change in the company’s circumstances, or the world situation
That problem is solved, the business is saved, and your product is the hero

A compelling narrative that captures the feelings and frustrations of your prospect shows them that you understand them, you’re on the same page, and you’re here to help.

Maybe this is the story of how your product was born, to solve a problem internally at your own company. Maybe it’s the story of one of your successful customers. Or maybe it’s just a narrative that they can relate to and see themselves in.

In any case, using stories instead of just facts makes your presentation more memorable. According to one study, people only retain about 5-10 percent of the statistical information they hear. But they’ll remember 65-70 percent of the information they hear as stories.

Take advantage of this fact: Turn your data into a narrative.

Once you’ve prepared your sales deck and accompanying script, you’re ready to nail your next sales presentation.

Or are you?

Day-Of Sales Presentation Tips: Nail Your Next Sales Presentation

Ready for the big day? Here are six more tips you can use while actively presenting to your prospect, to give a truly effective sales presentation.

6. Open With Your Biggest Selling Point (Don’t Save it for the End)

Many sales reps like to save their product’s biggest selling point for the very end of their presentation as if they’re coming to some grand crescendo.

But your prospect didn’t come to this meeting hoping to hear the Philharmonic Orchestra play Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. So, don’t play this pitch deck like another day at the theater.

Instead, open with your big selling points. Dazzle your prospects from the get-go, and you’ll have them hooked to the end.

To be counted among the Sales Success Stories and Stars of your organization… just go for it. Get the show on the road with a big opening. Leave them in (happy) tears.

7. Ask Open-Ended Questions

To understand your prospect and to keep them engaged with your presentation, questions are essential.

But wait, if you’re giving a sales presentation, aren’t you the one that’s supposed to be doing the talking? You answer the questions, right?

True. But, how do you know if your prospect is paying attention? How can you highlight the relevant points in your presentation if you don’t know what interests them?

To engage your prospect and draw them into your presentation, ask questions like:

Can you walk me through how your team handles [problem]?
Have you found any clever workarounds for when [issue] happens?
What would your ideal solution to this problem look like?
How would you expect a solution to this problem to affect your team?

It’s true, you’ve probably asked a lot of similar questions during the qualifying stage . But with these questions, you can lead the conversation and keep your prospect engaged with what you’re saying.

Open-ended questions will also help you with the next tip:

8. Build Context Around Your Biggest Value Points and Differentiators

The same questions we shared above can help add context to what you’re saying.

Don’t just tell the prospect: “ Our product helps you solve X problem. ”

Add meaning to that value point by asking questions:

How often do you face X problem?
How much time/money do you lose when this happens?
How does X problem affect the morale/productivity of your team?

When you have the numbers clear, reiterate the problem: “ So, you lose $X every week because of this problem. That’s more than $Y per year that’s going down the drain until you solve this issue. ”

Then, bring in your value point: “With our product, you could save $Z every year by eliminating this problem for your team.”

The same method works for highlighting your key differentiators.

Instead of telling prospects that your product is the best because it’s the only one that does X, lead prospects to the features and benefits that set your product apart with open-ended questions.

This creates value and context around a problem that only your product can solve.

9. Make Social Proof Engaging: Mirror the Prospect’s Situation

This data blew our minds, and will probably blow yours, too: According to studies from our friends at Gong , sellers who use social proof in their sales calls have a 22% lower close rate .

Have you noticed a similar pattern with social proof in your sales presentations?

We all know that social proof is a powerful tool in the hands of sales reps and marketers. No need to throw out all your social media customer quotes, or company testimonials. But, it must be used correctly to work effectively.

Otherwise, you could actually hurt your chances of closing.

So, what’s the correct way to use social proof in your presentations?

Favor customers that are part of this prospect’s tribe .

For example, imagine you’re selling to an SMB, and you tell them that Facebook is your customer. They’ll be impressed, sure… but they’ll also start to wonder if your product is really a good fit for their small business.

Instead, when selling to SMBs, talk about your other SMB customers. Use examples of happy customers who are in the same field or industry. Or, find customer stories that mirror this prospect—with similar pain points.

With tribal social proof, you’ll gain the respect of prospects while demonstrating that you truly “get” them.

10. Never Talk Price Before Value

Chances are, you’re talking price somewhere in this sales presentation. At this stage in the sales pipeline , it’s normal that your prospect is ready to hear what your solution will cost.

But don’t open the conversation like this.

Sometimes you get into a room (whether in-person or virtual) with your main point of contact and important stakeholders, and the first thing they want to know is: “How much will this cost us?”

One of the golden rules of sales is this: Never talk price before value .

If you fold to the pressure and start off by talking about the price of your solution, your audience will view your product as a commodity, not as a valuable solution to their problem.

When stakeholders push you for a number, don’t be afraid to push back. If they’re insistent, turn the question back around on them:

“Before we talk about price, let me ask you this: How much will it cost your company if you don’t get these issues solved by next quarter?”

By focusing on the real monetary value that your product provides, you’ll help position your product as a premium solution, not a wholesale band-aid.

11. Keep It Less Than 10 Minutes

Did you know that every presenter at Apple’s product launches speaks for just 10 minutes or less?

This is because science tells us that the brain gets bored easily—our attention spans just can’t expand beyond a certain point. However, you can reengage your audience by introducing a change every 10 minutes.

Apply this principle to your keynote sales presentations: If you’re presenting longer than 10 minutes, the prospect’s interest will steadily decline. Wrap it up.

Our friends at Gong found that there’s a sweet spot for winning sales presentations: 9.1 minutes. It’s like the ideal elevator pitch for sales presentations.

Sales Presentation Timing Study from Gong

So, stick to this rule of thumb: Keep your presentations under 10 minutes.

Sales Presentation Templates: Use These Sales Pitch Decks to Win More Deals

Want to build a stellar sales pitch presentation? Steal these presentation templates and customize them to your business—including stunning visuals, striking text, and a presentation process that wins deals.

Get the Powerpoint or Keynote version of these templates, and start creating your own effective sales presentations!

Ready to Give the Best Sales Presentation Ever?

You’ve got all the pro tips you need to nail your next presentation.

In the end, you want to demonstrate that you understand your prospect’s needs and concerns. Show you “get” them by adding a compelling narrative and including customer stories that mirror their own situation.

An effective presentation must also be engaging, which is why it’s essential to highlight three main points and add context with open-ended questions.

With this info, you’re ready to deliver a winning sales presentation. ( Psst... don't forget to use our sales presentation templates to get started!)

But what happens next? There are still some unaccounted-for areas of the sales process. If you want to really crush the follow-up and close more deals, you need a CRM to help you do it.

Close CRM does all this—and so much more. Watch our demo or try Close free for 14 days.

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How to Create the Best Sales Deck in 2023 (Free Template) & Sales Pitch Deck Examples

You’ve been working hard to sell this prospect. You’ve moved them down the pipeline, and now it’s time to clinch the deal with a sales pitch deck that blows their mind.

You’re going into that sales meeting . The bases are loaded. Are you prepared to hit a home run?

The best sales pitch deck is a tool that knocks your sales presentations out of the park every time. But how can you create a sales pitch deck that sells?

Keep reading.

What is a Sales Pitch Deck? (+ When & Why Do You Need One?)

A sales pitch deck is a presentation that salespeople in various industries use to answer two essential questions for their prospects:

What are we offering?
Why should our leads care?

When done correctly, your sales pitch deck can help prospects see the real value of your product and convince them of the ROI of the purchase. It’s a gateway to a productive sales conversation that leads to a closed deal.

It's important to note the differences between a pitch deck and a sales deck:

A sales deck, as we just described, is a presentation designed to convince prospects to make purchases. On the other hand, a pitch deck is typically shown to investors. The goal? To convince them to support a company with additional funds.

(Note: we share a few sales deck examples in a later section of this article. Stay tuned!)

So, when can you use a sales pitch deck?

There are plenty of different situations where a deck can amplify your message and bring context to your product's value.

You can use sales pitch decks at almost any stage of your sales pipeline , like:

Prospecting and lead generation : At the early stages, a simple presentation that sparks curiosity can arouse the interest of new leads. For example, you can post a short, concise presentation on social media.
Discovery and qualification : A sales deck can help you guide the conversation and add more meaning to your statements in a discovery meeting.
Sales meetings : At this stage, a sales pitch deck should present features and benefits that will impact your prospect most, convincing them to move towards a close. Because of this, many sales reps use case studies at this stage.

Decks are also essential to a startup investor pitch , and can even be created as an internal sales enablement presentation to help keep your sales messaging on track across the team.

Creating these different types of sales pitch decks will empower your sales team to reach their potential and tailor their sales strategy to each situation.

Want to get a head start on creating the best decks for your team? Download 6 high-performing sales deck templates and adapt them to your own team and process:

So, what does it take to build a high-performing sales deck? Learn how to do it in 6 easy steps:

Creating a Sales Pitch Deck in 6 Easy Steps

Every effective sales strategy needs a rock-solid sales pitch deck. Building your deck from the ground up? Here are 6 steps to help you build the best one ever.

Step 1: Use Real Customer Research to Find a Key Pain Point

When you know who you’re selling to, you can tailor your pitch to their needs and circumstances, from the first slide to the last.

That’s why you must do customer research before you start building your sales pitch deck.

Who are your customers? What kind of businesses do they run? What team does your main point of contact work on? What are the team or the company’s main challenges? Which competitors are they considering? How does your product integrate with their current workflow?

To answer these questions, run customer interviews or send out a quick survey to your most successful customers. Here’s an example of what that might look like from SurveyMonkey :

The more intimate knowledge you have of your customers, the better prepared you'll be to develop a sales pitch deck that resonates with your target audience.

Specifically, try to get constructive answers to these two questions:

What are their main needs/wants/challenges ?
How does your product solve those needs?

Step 2: Develop a Narrative Around Your Product

Now that you understand the problems your audience is facing, it’s time to build a narrative around that problem.

In most cases, a sales pitch deck will start with slides that focus on the problem and provide a solution.

So, what’s the story of your product?

Your customer research is a great place to start with this narrative. What was life like before they started using your product? What were the day-to-day challenges that just couldn’t be solved? Was there a shift in the industry that caused new issues for businesses?

Then, paint a picture of the solution. What could life be like after solving these issues? How would the prospect’s day-to-day work life be affected? How would the team or company benefit?

After that, your story introduces its hero: your product.

By creating a narrative that explains the problems your prospects are facing better than they can, you’ll prove your deep understanding of their needs. This builds trust and lays the groundwork for a relationship that will last.

Step 3: Decide on 3 Key Benefits to Highlight

Three is a powerful number.

Of course, your offerings may include an entire tool shed of amazing product features, which your customers will be able to use to improve their lives and businesses. But remember: your sales pitch deck isn’t here to teach them the A to Z of your product.

It’s here to make an impression and convince them to move forward in the sales process.

That’s why choosing 3 main benefits is essential.

As Brian Clark of Copyblogger said :

If you want something stuck in someone's head, put it in a sequence of three. - Brian Clark

To help you narrow this down, pick the three features that your customers regularly rave about. Then turn those features into benefits and add them to your presentation.

Step 4: Choose Your Most Powerful Proof

Everyone loves using social proof . It’s spattered across SaaS homepages, wandering across our daily blog reading, and practically taking over our Instagram feeds.

In other words, what was once a powerful tool for trust has become a bunch of background noise to your customers.

So, how can you include social proof that stands out and makes a clear point?

The best sales pitch deck uses social proof that is relatable .

For example, if you’re pitching to a small business owner, featuring a customer quote from P&G may actually turn them off. While it’s cool that you have P&G as a customer, they’re instantly doubting whether your product is ideal for a small business like theirs.

So, if you’re pitching to a startup founder, feature a use case and testimonial from another startup founder. If you’re pitching to a restaurant owner, feature a quote from another restaurant owner who really loves your product.

SEO software Ahrefs does a fantastic job of this on the product homepage, featuring different testimonials divided by the type of customer:

Whenever possible, feature social proof from customers that are part of your prospect’s tribe. They’ll automatically feel better understood and more confident about your product for their company. This is one of the keys to creating a winning sales deck.

Step 5: Use a Sales Pitch Deck Template That’s Tailored to You

No, it’s not cheating.

An effective sales pitch deck template is a great way to get a head start on your deck and make it truly appealing to your prospects.

But just remember these two essential keys to achieve success:

First, personalize the template as much as possible . Any self-respecting sales pitch deck template should be customizable. So change the fonts and colors and replace any stock pictures with your own. Otherwise, your prospects might notice that your sales pitch deck is awfully similar to the competition’s deck.
Second, use an industry-specific template . How you present your product as a B2B company may be completely different from how a SaaS company pitches. Also, different types of sales pitch decks work better for different situations. Make sure you use the right one at the right time.

This is why we built Pitch: High Performing Sales Deck Templates.

Step 6: Make it Visually Relevant to Their Brand

This last step can turn your sales pitch deck into something even more desirable...

Your customers have probably seen decks with their logo in the corner. Want to make your sales pitch deck stand out? Build it in the colors of the brand you’re selling to.

This frames your message as if it’s coming from the inside, not from an external source. And, it helps you present the message in the voice of your customer.

With the sales pitch deck templates we mentioned above, it’s super easy to adjust the colors. (We even include simple instructions within the decks to help you customize them to your style and needs!)

While we're talking visual design, we should say: make proper use of white space, don't load up your slides with tons of text, and use bullet points when appropriate.

The way you present information is just as important as the information you present. If your sales pitch deck is hard to read, you won't grab your audience's attention. So, do your best to simplify the viewing experience for your prospects.

(Don’t forget to download your free pitch deck templates here .)

Bringing it All Together…

Now that we've given you six steps to create a killer sales pitch deck, let's take a quick moment to outline the elements every deck should have:

A brief explanation of your company
A statement of the problem your product solves
Why your solution is better than the competition's solution
Social proof in the form of testimonials and/or case studies
A call to action (CTA) that tells prospects what to do after your deck ends
An appendix that gives and/or refers prospects to more information

Most successful sales decks include each of these six elements. Speaking of, want to see a few real-world examples of stellar decks? Let's take a look!

6 Sales Pitch Deck Examples to Model Your Pitches After

Sometimes, the best way to learn is to check out a few examples.

See what top B2B and SaaS companies are doing with their sales pitch decks and the key elements they incorporate. Then swipe the best ideas for your next sales presentation, delivered via PowerPoint, Keynote, or whatever other platform you use:

1. Shift in the Market from Zuora

Industry Focus : B2B

In this deck, Zuora highlights a drastic shift in the market, shows the impact for companies who adapt, and then uses real customer testimonials to show why their product is the solution. By telling a story, this deck captures and holds attention.

2. Finding Waldo with LeadCrunchAI

Industry Focus : SaaS

Again, storytelling is essential here. This deck presentation also starts by describing a market change and leans into the opportunities available. Then, in 6 simple slides, it explains a complicated product in simple terms, while the use of Waldo, a beloved literary character we all remember from grade school, makes it uber-relatable.

3. Problem, Solution from ReCheck

This deck doesn't mince words: it gets right into the meat by explaining the problem and providing a clear solution. For a simple product, this kind of simple sales deck is perfect.

4. Proof in the Data from Snapchat

Industry Focus : B2B

Snapchat shows the power of its ads with this easy-to-digest deck. It includes powerful graphs and metrics, bright colors, and excellent testimonials.

5. Totally Relatable from ProdPad

This deck gets the prospect to say, "Wow, that's me!" By telling a story the prospect can relate to, this deck does an excellent job of getting on the same side as the prospect and showing them what's possible if they use the ProdPad product.

6. In the Mind of the Prospect With Immediately

Instead of using hard data to prove the value of their product, Immediately takes that data and turns it into the thoughts of their audience (sales reps). This adds a bit of humor to their very relatable deck, and shows the real-world impact their product can have for any rep that uses Google, Outlook, and/or Salesforce.

9 Pro Sales Pitch Presentation Tips

Now your best sales pitch deck is ready to unleash its power on your prospect. But how can you present your deck successfully? Here are nine pro tips you need to follow :

1. Create Conversation

Your sales pitch deck isn’t here to replace the conversation. It’s here to help guide the conversation and add context and meaning to what you’re saying.

So, use your presentation as a conversation, not a monologue.

While you will probably do most of the talking in this meeting, remember to ask questions throughout. Build context around your value points by talking about the specific pains your prospects face, then digging into the ways your product solves them.

By asking questions, you can keep your prospects engaged throughout the presentation. This is especially important when you’re giving a remote sales presentation since it’s easier for the prospect to be distracted.

Pro Tip: Your body language is important when giving a sales presentation—even if you have a great sales deck to back you up. Work hard to make eye contact with your prospects and assume a confident posture to put your audience at ease.

2. Send Your Sales Pitch Deck Before the Meeting

But wait, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of actually giving your sales presentation?

Not necessarily.

In fact, sending your sales pitch deck before you go into your meeting can accomplish a few different things. For example, it can:

Whet the appetite of your audience by giving them a sample of what you’ll discuss in your meeting (but saving the best parts for your actual meeting)
Give your prospect the ability to see what topics you'll cover during the presentation, and prepare any questions they might want to ask
Help everyone understand the agenda for this meeting and keep it in mind

So, while it may seem a bit backward, sending your presentation beforehand can actually help your prospects stay focused and keep your sales meeting on-schedule.

3. Create a Deck for Stakeholders to Read Later

While it’s true that it’s best to sell to decision-makers , that’s not always the first person you talk to at a company. Especially when selling to enterprise companies. Getting all the stakeholders and decision-makers involved in your sales pitch meeting is hard.

So, create a sales pitch deck that stakeholders and decision-makers can check out later. This deck may include more text than a deck you’re presenting in-person (or online) since the goal is for stakeholders to read it on their own and understand it easily.

Also, if an internal champion is presenting this information to higher-ups, they can use this deck to present ideas succinctly and with the right messaging.

4. Adapt Your Script and Presentation to the Prospect

According to Forrester, 77% of salespeople do not understand their prospects' issues. If you don't know your audience, you'll have a hard time selling to them.

Take time to study your prospects before you meet with them. Learn about their industry, the specific business they work for, and the potential problems they deal with on a daily basis. (LinkedIn can be a gold mine for this kind of information.)

Then take what you learn and use it to personalize your slide presentation. Doing so will help you connect with prospects on a deeper level and increase your sales.

5. Open with Your Biggest Selling Point Instead of Saving it for the End

If you were to write a book, or a movie, or a fictional story of any kind, you'd probably save your best scene for last, right? End with a bang, as the saying goes.

Guess what: you're not an author or a screenwriter. You're in sales. As such, open your sales deck presentation with your biggest value proposition. Lead with the most impressive stats. Share a particularly powerful testimonial or case study.

Hit your prospect hard and fast.

If you can dazzle the audience of your sales deck from the get-go, you'll keep them engaged the whole way through. It's pretty much guaranteed. So don't wait.

6. Ask Open-Ended Questions

Just because you're the one giving a sales presentation doesn't mean you have to talk the entire time. By asking your prospects questions, you'll better understand their needs. You can then personalize your approach to keep them engaged.

Just remember to ask open-ended questions , i.e., questions that your prospects can't answer with a simple yes or no. Here are a few you can use:

Can you walk me through how your team handles [problem]?
Have you found any workarounds for when [issue] happens?
What would your ideal solution to this problem look like?
How would you expect a solution to this problem to affect your team?

7. Build Context Around Your Biggest Selling Points and Value Differentiators

Which statement is more powerful:

" We help sales teams be more productive ," or " We help sales teams cut back on data entry tasks, so they can boost productivity and spend more time closing deals ."

The second one, right? The reason is that the second statement builds context. Being more productive is great. Being more productive, while minimizing data entry tasks (which all sales reps hate) and closing more deals is a game changer.

Don't just tell your prospects what your products and/or services can do in your sales pitch decks. Tell them how these things are done and why they matter.

8. Never Talk Price Before Value

This is one of the golden rules of sales—with good reason.

If you dive into the price of your products before you discuss the value they create, you turn them into commodities. People don't spend top dollar on commodities.

But what if prospects push for pricing information at the beginning of your sales presentation? Simple: push back. If they push harder, turn the question around and ask them something like, "Before we talk about the price, let me ask you: How much will it cost your company if you don’t get these issues solved by next quarter?”

Your sales decks will be more effective when value is established before price. Always.

9. Spend Less Than 10 Minutes Presenting

Have you ever watched an Apple product launch event? Every presenter speaks for less than 10 minutes. Why? Because audiences get bored with longer presentations.

The same goes for your sales pitch decks. If they take 20, 30, or (God forbid!) 60 minutes to get through, most of your prospects will check out before the end.

The goal of your sales deck should be to connect with potential customers; not to explain your products in excruciating detail. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Build Your Best Sales Pitch Deck

Giving a sales presentation may get your heart pumping. But when you have the best sales deck at your disposal—one that’s high-powered and follows a proven formula—you’ll be well-equipped to knock your presentation out of the park.

Throughout this guide, we’ve given you clear examples and free templates to learn from and imitate. That way you can build your own sales deck and crush the competition.

But we aren't done yet! Want more slide deck tips and expert sales advice? Check out our article on undeniably good sales pitch examples to close deals fast .

And, as always, we can offer you our assistance when it comes to baller CRM software, too. Our solution is used by tons of high-growth companies because it works . End of story. You already have to create amazing sales pitch decks. Don't complicate the sales process even more by using lame-duck tools. Try Close instead, free for 14 days .

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7 Amazing Sales Presentation Examples (And How to Make Them Your Own)

7 Types of Slides to Include In Your Sales Presentation

Inside the mind of your prospect: change is hard, before-after-bridge: the only formula you need to create a persuasive sales presentation, facebook — how smiles and simplicity make you more memorable, contently — how to build a strong bridge, brick by brick, yesware — how to go above and beyond with your benefits, uber — how to cater your content for readers quick to scan, dealtap — how to use leading questions to your advantage, zuora — how to win over your prospects by feeding them dots, linkedin sales navigator — how to create excitement with color, how to make a sales pitch in 4 straightforward steps, 7 embarrassing pitfalls to avoid in your presentation, over to you.

A brilliant sales presentation has a number of things going for it.

Being product-centered isn’t one of them. Or simply focusing on your sales pitch won’t do the trick.

So what can you do to make your offer compelling?

From different types of slides to persuasive techniques and visuals, we’ve got you covered.

Below, we look at data-backed strategies, examples, and easy steps to build your own sales presentations in minutes.

Title slide: Company name, topic, tagline
The “Before” picture: No more than three slides with relevant statistics and graphics.
The “After” picture: How life looks with your product. Use happy faces.
Company introduction: Who you are and what you do (as it applies to them).
The “Bridge” slide: Short outcome statements with icons in circles.
Social proof slides: Customer logos with the mission statement on one slide. Pull quote on another.
“We’re here for you” slide: Include a call-to-action and contact information.

Many sales presentations fall flat because they ignore this universal psychological bias: People overvalue the benefits of what they have over what they’re missing.

Harvard Business School professor John T. Gourville calls this the “ 9x Effect .” Left unchecked, it can be disastrous for your business.

the psychology behind a sales presentation

According to Gourville, “It’s not enough for a new product simply to be better. Unless the gains far outweigh the losses, customers will not adopt it.”

The good news: You can influence how prospects perceive these gains and losses. One of the best ways to prove value is to contrast life before and after your product.

Luckily, there’s a three-step formula for that.

Before → Here’s your world…
After → Imagine what it would be like if…
Bridge → Here’s how to get there.

Start with a vivid description of the pain, present an enviable world where that problem doesn’t exist, then explain how to get there using your tool.

It’s super simple, and it works for cold emails , drip campaigns , and sales discovery decks. Basically anywhere you need to get people excited about what you have to say.

In fact, a lot of companies are already using this formula to great success. The methods used in the sales presentation examples below will help you do the same.

We’re all drawn to happiness. A study at Harvard tells us that emotion is contagious .

You’ll notice that the “Before” (pre-Digital Age) pictures in Facebook’s slides all display neutral faces. But the cover slide that introduces Facebook and the “After” slides have smiling faces on them.

This is important. The placement of those graphics is an intentional persuasion technique.

Studies by psychologists show that we register smiles faster than any other expression. All it takes is 500 milliseconds (1/20th of a second). And when participants in a study were asked to recall expressions, they consistently remembered happy faces over neutral ones.

What to do about it : Add a happy stock photo to your intro and “After” slides, and keep people in “Before” slides to neutral expressions.

Here are some further techniques used during the sales presentation:

Tactic #1: Use Simple Graphics

Use simple graphics to convey meaning without text.

Example: Slide 2 is a picture of a consumer’s hand holding an iPhone — something we can all relate to.

Why It Works: Pictures are more effective than words — it’s called Picture Superiority . In presentations, pictures help you create connections with your audience. Instead of spoon-feeding them everything word for word, you let them interpret. This builds trust.

Tactic #2: Use Icons

Use icons to show statistics you’re comparing instead of listing them out.

Example: Slide 18 uses people icons to emphasize how small 38 out of 100 people is compared to 89 out of 100.

Why It Works: We process visuals 60,000 times faster than text.

Tactic #3: Include Statistics

Include statistics that tie real success to the benefits you mention.

Example: “71% lift driving visits to retailer title pages” (Slide 26).

Why It Works: Precise details prove that you are telling the truth.

Just like how you can’t drive from Marin County to San Francisco without the Golden Gate, you can’t connect a “Before” to an “After” without a bridge.

Add the mission statement of your company — something Contently does from Slide 1 of their deck. Having a logo-filled Customers slide isn’t unusual for sales presentations, but Contently goes one step further by showing you exactly what they do for these companies.

They then drive home the Before-After-Bridge Formula further with case studies:

Before : Customer’s needs when they came on

After: What your company accomplished for them

Bridge : How they got there (specific actions and outcomes)

Here are some other tactics we pulled from the sales presentation:

Tactic #1: Use Graphics/Diagrams

Use graphics, Venn diagrams, and/or equations to drive home your “Before” picture.

Why It Works: According to a Cornell study , graphs and equations have persuasive power. They “signal a scientific basis for claims, which grants them greater credibility.”

Tactic #2: Keep Slides That Have Bullets to a Minimum

Keep slides that have bullets to a minimum. No more than one in every five slides.

Why It Works: According to an experiment by the International Journal of Business Communication , “Subjects exposed to a graphic representation paid significantly more attention to , agreed more with, and better recalled the strategy than did subjects who saw a (textually identical) bulleted list.”

Tactic #3: Use Visual Examples

Follow up your descriptions with visual examples.

Example: After stating “15000+ vetted, ready to work journalists searchable by location, topical experience, and social media influence” on Slide 8, Contently shows what this looks like firsthand on slides 9 and 10.

Why It Works: The same reason why prospects clamor for demos and car buyers ask for test drives. You’re never truly convinced until you see something for yourself.

Which is more effective for you?

This statement — “On average, Yesware customers save ten hours per week” — or this image:

The graphic shows you what that 10 hours looks like for prospects vs. customers. It also calls out a pain that the product removes: data entry.

Visuals are more effective every time. They fuel retention of a presentation from 10% to 65% .

But it’s not as easy as just including a graphic. You need to keep the design clean.

Can you feel it?

Clutter provokes anxiety and stress because it bombards our minds with excessive visual stimuli, causing our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren’t important.

Here’s a tip from Yesware’s Graphic Designer, Ginelle DeAntonis:

“Customer logos won’t all necessarily have the same dimensions, but keep them the same size visually so that they all have the same importance. You should also disperse colors throughout, so that you don’t for example end up with a bunch of blue logos next to each other. Organize them in a way that’s easy for the eye, because in the end it’s a lot of information at once.”

Here are more tactics to inspire sales presentation ideas:

Tactic #1: Personalize Your Final Slide

Personalize your final slide with your contact information and a headline that drives emotion.

Example: Our Mid-Market Team Lead Kyle includes his phone number and email address with “We’re Here For You”

Why It Works: These small details show your audience that:

This is about giving them the end picture, not making a sale
The end of the presentation doesn’t mean the end of the conversation
Questions are welcomed

Tactic #2: Pair Outcome Statements With Icons in Circles

Example: Slide 4 does this with seven different “After” outcomes.

Why It Works: We already know why pictures work, but circles have power , too. They imply completeness, infiniteness, and harmony.

Tactic #3: Include Specific Success Metrics

Don’t just list who you work with; include specific success metrics that hit home what you’ve done for them.

Example: 35% New Business Growth for Boomtrain; 30% Higher Reply Rates for Dyn.

Why It Works: Social proof drives action. It’s why we wait in lines at restaurants and put ourselves on waitlists for sold-out items.

People can only focus for eight seconds at a time. (Sadly, goldfish have one second on us.)

This means you need to cut to the chase fast.

Uber’s headlines in Slides 2-9 tailor the “After” picture to specific pain points. As a result, there’s no need to explicitly state a “Before.”

Slides 11-13 then continue touching on “Before” problems tangentially with customer quotes:

So instead of self-touting benefits, the brand steps aside to let consumers hear from their peers — something that sways 92% of consumers .

Leading questions may be banned from the courtroom, but they aren’t in the boardroom.

DealTap’s slides ask viewers to choose between two scenarios over and over. Each has an obvious winner:

Ever heard of the Focusing Effect?

It’s part of what makes us tick as humans and what makes this design move effective. We focus on one thing and then ignore the rest. Here, DealTap puts the magnifying glass on paperwork vs. automated transactions.

Easy choice.

Sure, DealTap’s platform might have complexities that rival paperwork, but we don’t think about that. We’re looking at the pile of work one the left and the simpler, single interface on the right.

Here are some other tactics to use in your own sales presentation:

Tactic #1: Tell a Story

Tell a story that flows from one slide to the next.

Example: Here’s the story DealTap tells from slides 4 to 8: “Transactions are complicated” → “Expectations on all sides” → “Too many disconnected tools” → “Slow and error prone process” → “However, there’s an opportunity.

Why It Works: Storytelling in sales with a clear beginning and end (or in this case, a “Before” and “After”) trigger a trust hormone called Oxytocin.

Tactic #2: This vs. That

If it’s hard to separate out one “Before” and “After” vision with your product or service because you offer many dissimilar benefits, consider a “This vs. That” theme for each.

Why It Works: It breaks up your points into simple decisions and sets you up to win emotional reactions from your audience with stock photos.

Remember how satisfying it was to play connect the dots? Forming a bigger picture out of disconnected circles.

That’s what you need to make your audience do.

Zuora tells a story by:

Laying out the reality (the “Before” part of the Before-After-Bridge formula).
Asking you a question that you want to answer (the “After”)
Giving you hints to help you connect the dots
Showing you the common thread (the “Bridge”)

You can achieve this by founding your sales presentation on your audience’s intuitions. Set them up with the closely-set “dots,” then let them make the connection.

Here are more tactical sales presentation ideas to steal for your own use:

Tactic #1: Use Logos and Testimonials

Use logos and testimonial pull-quotes for your highest-profile customers to strengthen your sales presentation.

Example: Slides 21 to 23 include customer quotes from Schneider Electric, Financial Times, and Box.

Why It Works: It’s called social proof . Prospects value other people’s opinions and trust reputable sources more than you.

Tactic #2: Include White Space

Pad your images with white space.

Example: Slide 17 includes two simple graphics on a white background to drive home an important concept.

Why It Works: White space creates separation, balance, and attracts the audience’s eyes to the main focus: your image.

Tactic #3: Incorporate Hard Data

Incorporate hard data with a memorable background to make your data stand out.

Example: Slide 5 includes statistics with a backdrop that stands out. The number and exciting title (‘A Global Phenomenon’) are the main focuses of the slide.

Why It Works: Vivid backdrops are proven to be memorable and help your audience take away important numbers or data.

Psychology tells us that seeing colors can set our mood .

The color red is proven to increase the pulse and heart rate. Beyond that, it’s associated with being active, aggressive, and outspoken. LinkedIn Sales Navigator uses red on slides to draw attention to main points:

You can use hues in your own slides to guide your audience’s emotions. Green gives peace; grey adds a sense of calm; blue breeds trust. See more here .

Tip: You can grab free photos from Creative Commons and then set them to black & white and add a colored filter on top using a (also free) tool like Canva . Here’s the sizing for your image:

Caveat: Check with your marketing team first to see if you have a specific color palette or brand guidelines to follow.

Here are some other takeaways from LinkedIn’s sales presentation:

Tactic #1: Include a CTA on Final Slide

Include one clear call-to-action on your final slide.

Example: Slide 9 has a “Learn More” CTA button.

Why It Works: According to the Paradox of Choice , the more options you give, the less likely they are to act.

Step One : Ask marketing for your company’s style guide (color, logo, and font style).

Step Two: Answer these questions to outline the “Before → After → Bridge” formula for your sales pitch :

What are your ICP’s pain points?
What end picture resonates with them?
How does your company come into play?

Step Three: Ask account management/marketing which customers you can mention in your slides (plus where to access any case studies for pull quotes).

Step Four: Download photos from Creative Commons . Remember: Graphics > Text. Use Canva to edit on your own — free and fast.

What are the sales presentation strategies that work best for your industry and customers? Tweet us: @Yesware .

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15 Sales Presentation Techniques That Will Help You Close More Deals Today

Updated: June 01, 2022

Published: May 31, 2022

Hate the thought of doing sales presentations ? You’re not alone. But the best reps have sales presentations down pat, even if it’s not their favorite activity.

The best sales reps know that, when done right , sales presentations are a high-earning skill.

So, let’s hone that skill with simple sales presentation techniques that communicate an irresistible narrative and get buyers to close.

Sales Presentation

An effective sales presentation tells a compelling story, highlights your value proposition, and aligns with your audience's needs and desires. It ends with a strong call-to-action and leads prospects to your differentiators instead of leading with them.

As it can sometimes mean the difference between closing a deal or losing a customer, you definitely want to get your sales presentation right. There are strategies and tips you can follow to ensure your sales presentations are effective, memorable, and engaging. Let’s go over them below.

Sales Presentation Methods

1. structure your presentation. .

Guiding your prospects down a clear path is key to a successful sales presentation. You’ll follow a logical structure, and listeners will understand how each element of your presentation relates to one another, rather than them having to piece together disjointed information on their own.

There are times when flipping the structure can add unique elements to your presentation, though, and we’ll discuss this further below.

2. Use data visualizations.

Using visuals, like charts and graphics, to supplement your message is a valuable way to showcase your content in an easy-to-understand format as they make your words more impactful.

For example, if you’re selling SaaS that helps users organize their sales process for a shorter cycle, you can create a visual that displays the average length of your clients’ sales cycle vs. those using other tools.

By doing this, you’re adding extra emphasis to your words with a visual picture, and a bonus is that visuals are more likely to stick with your audience and get them thinking versus just hearing you talk.

3. Rely on spoken words — not text.

If your presentation slides are text-heavy, prospects may get caught up reading the words you’ve written instead of listening, causing them to miss out on the value you’re sharing. Aim to include less text by calling attention to the most significant elements with short bursts of text that you supplement with your words.

In addition, when you have less text on your slides, you may be less inclined to just read from them, which can be a bad part of presentations. You’ll have to speak instead of relying on written content.

Let’s go over some sales presentation techniques that, when paired with the three methods above, will help you nail it every time.

Sales Presentation Techniques

1. send your buyer the presentation deck before your call..

You might assume that sending a buyer a deck before a call is like revealing whodunnit on the cover of a murder mystery. No one will pay attention to the rest of the book, right?

When the Gong.io team started sharing our deck before opening sales calls, we learned it was a winning move.

If your deck is compelling, prospects will want to get into it with you, even if they know the main point. Together, you can dive in, dissect the good bits, and talk through questions. It’s going to be a juicy conversation, and they know it.

Then, you can begin the conversation during your presentation with a statement like, “Based on the information in the deck I sent, where should we start?”

2. Invoke self-discovery.

It’s tempting to stick to a positive linear story during your sales presentation. That usually invokes talking about benefits, outcomes, and desired results. But, that approach isn’t always the best.

Before discussing solutions and results, you must understand your prospect's problem. More importantly, you have to be sure your prospects understand the problem.

Self-discovery is the ticket that gets you there. Instead of telling the buyer what the problem is and how you’ll address it, get your buyer to connect with the problem on their own.

3. Talk about Point A. Don’t skip to point B.

This is 100% linked to the tip above. There’s a problem (point A) and desired outcome (point B). Point A is the status quo. It’s a problem your buyer will continue to face if they don’t make a change.

You can stand out by focusing on point A, as talking about a pain point is shockingly more effective than talking about positive outcomes.

Make your buyer feel the pain that results from the status quo. Convince them the pain will only worsen without your solution — because you know that to be true.

You should only talk about benefits once they’re on board with that line of thinking. Urgency is what allows benefits to land. Without urgency, benefits are just happy points that hold no real meaning.

4. Insight is your #1 lead story.

Buyers are experts on their circumstances, but they want insights into their situation from you.

You’re most likely to impress a buyer by telling them something new about themselves, as your offering is a unique insight into their problems and opportunities.

Check out this TaylorMade video. It’s a bang-on example of how to lead a presentation with insight, and then move on to your product’s strengths:

You learned how to get more distance from your golf swing (an insight into what you’re doing). Then you learned how that’s supported by the product’s particular strength.

Insight comes first. It changes how your buyers think about the problem your product solves. Only then benefits can land effectively.

5. Don’t lead with differentiators, lead to them.

At Gong.io, we’ve taught our sales reps to speak with buyers about a critical problem only we can solve. It’s the delta between top producers and the rest of the team.

don't lead with differentiators in your sales presentations

"The numbers from your top reps are fantastic."
"The downside is they’re annulled by everyone else who’s missing their quota."
"Your team goes from outstanding numbers to breaking even or missing quota. Both of those options are unsustainable."

We only introduce our key differentiator once the backstory is clear and the buyer gets it. Then, our reps say something like this:

"Gong is the only platform that can tell you what your top reps do differently from the rest of your team. We can tell you which questions they ask, which topics they discuss, when they talk about each one, and more."

See why we lead to our differentiator, and not with it? It just wouldn’t land the same way if we started with the differentiator. In fact, it might not land at all.

6. Focus on value, not features.

Gong.io research found that focusing on features over value is not impactful. Prospects, especially decision-makers, want value propositions about how you’ll help them solve their problems rather than an overview of the features they’ll get.

https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/anatomy-of-a-perfect-sales-presentation-infographic

7. Flip your presentation.

he next, eventually achieving a shiny, final outcome. This isn’t always the best strategy.

Instead of building up to the most significant and impactful part of your demo for your prospect, begin with the most valuable part, which is how you’ll help them, and let the conversation flow from there.

There’s one other tactic underlying it all: The best product demos start with topics the buyers highlighted on the discovery call . For example, if the buyer spends 4 minutes talking about X and 10 minutes talking about Y, you want to begin with Y, as the buyer has demonstrated that they’re heavily interested in Y. In the opening section of your presentation, address the biggest issue from discovery. Address the second biggest issue second, etc.

It’s called solution mapping, and it’s going to change your sales presentation process forever. Stop saving the big reveal for last. Stop building anticipation. Start with the good stuff. Let it rip right out of the gate.

8. Turn your presentation into a conversation.

If you sensed we were looking for a two-way dialogue during your pitch, you’re right. That’s a relief to most salespeople, especially the ones who hate delivering traditional presentations.

A two-way dialogue is going to make your pitch feel more natural. To do this, Gong.io says to get buyers to ask questions by giving them just enough info to inspire them to ask more questions and keep the conversation going. In fact, top performers ask fewer questions because they don’t bombard prospects with too much information but instead give buyers just enough information to have them ask questions.

Long monologues won’t help you have real conversations with your buyers. Instead, aim for a great two-way conversation.

9. Mind the 9-minute period.

This tip is crisp and clear: Don’t present for more than nine minutes. Gong.io data supports this.

Presentations for lost deals last an average of 11.4 minutes. Why do they go so poorly? Because it’s hard to retain attention. If you do go longer than nine minutes, switch it up.

Vary something that re-captures attention and keeps people engaged. Change channels by doing something like switching up who’s speaking in real life or on video. This can rest your clock to zero, and you’ve got nine more minutes for the next portion of the show.

10. Be strategic with social proof.

Social proof. Best friend or worst nightmare? It can be either one, so use it carefully. For example, generic social proof (i.e., naming impressive clients for brand power alone) is a disaster. Buyers might not identify with them. Sure, they’re dazzled, but they may not see how they relate to your current client.

An effective strategy is to reference clients similar to your buyer, with the same pain points, challenges and needs that they can relate to. You can tell an accompanying story about the client and their pain points, helping the buyer see themselves in the story you’re telling.

11. Talk price after you establish value.

Would it surprise you to know it matters when you talk about certain topics? It can actually affect whether you win or lose a deal. Pricing is a great example of this principle.

The top salespeople wait to talk about pricing. They know it’s important to demonstrate their product’s value first.

pricing discussions should happen after you establish value

Set an agenda at the start of your call so your buyer knows when to expect a pricing discussion. They’ll be less likely to raise it early, and if they do, you can refer back to the agenda.

Open with something like, " I’d like to talk about A, B, and C on our call today. Then we can go over pricing at the end and -- if it makes sense for you -- talk about next steps. Does that work for you?"

You’re all set.

12. Reference your competitors.

Our data shows that you’re more likely to win a deal if you talk about the competition early in the sales process instead of ignoring them completely.

For best results, practice this during your first sales presentation. Waiting until the end of your sales process puts you into a dangerous red zone. Your buyers will already have formed opinions, and they’ll be harder to change.

In other words, at the end of the day, buyers will justify a decision they made early in the process, which is why it’s critical to set yourself up as the winner early on. Talk about the competition in your presentation. Put the conversation out there. Get your buyer to see you through that lens, and you’re golden.

Over To You

You now have 15 new tips and techniques to throw down this quarter. Many of these data-backed moves come from Gong.io’s own findings and have proven to be effective for us. Implement them, and I know you’ll boost your numbers.

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9 Incredible Sales Presentation Examples That Succeed

In our analysis today, we’ll be reviewing the top sales presentation examples.

Why? Because customers want to understand how you’ll be able to add value to their businesses. As such, how you deliver your sales presentation in of the essence.

As tempting as it may be, you need to steer away from thinking of a sales presentation as a “pitch”. This is because, in baseball, the best of pitchers tend to strike batters out.

Since this is not something we want to do, we’ll look at creating convincing pitches that resonate and get hit right out of the park.

By the end of our review, you should have the tools you need to make that home run and meet all your goals.

What is a Sales Presentation?

Elements of a great sales presentation, 1. 21 questions, 2. clarify the priorities, 3. customer is always right, 4. moving pictures, why sales presentation is important for businesses/sales reps, 1. face-to-face, 2. engagement, 3. flexibility & versatility, 4. consistency, overview of the top sales presentation examples, 1. snapchat, 4. salesforce marketing cloud, 5. office 365, 7. immediately, 9. talent bin.

A sales presentation refers to a formal and pre-arranged meeting online or at a location where a salesperson gets to present detailed information about a product or product line.

A great sales presentation is one that endears a brand to prospects. For this to happen, you first need to ensure that it’s not purely focused on products. Rather, it should be tailored to connect with your audience.

The trick, therefore, lies in making your narrative compelling.

Living in the informational age has forced salespersons to change tack when handling customers. This is because more than ever, prospects have all the relevant data about what they want right at their fingertips.

As such, before you make your presentation, you need to first ensure that the information you have is relevant. You can then use that as a Launchpad to connect with prospects.

Importantly, you need to practice listening and avoid religiously sticking to a script before responding to objections.

Often times, salespeople tend to spend plenty of time preparing for what they want to say to customers. While this is perfectly okay, it’s also essential to dedicate enough time to draft the right questions to ask.

With an objective outline of questions, you may actually find yourself deeply engrossed in conversation with prospects.

If you find that prospects are not willing to fully confide in you, it’s good practice to tweak your setup with leading questions before tabling open-ended questions . The responses they share will be able to inform you on how to proceed with the interaction.

Before you begin your sales presentation, you need to first clarify what their priorities are. It’s also good practice to inform them that you’ll be making logical pauses during the presentation to query about what they think about certain points raised.

If you’re unsure about what kind of questions to ask, try to frame the questions from the prospect’s point of view.

Questions like, “How do you see that fitting into your existing process?” and “How does that compare to what you’re currently doing?” are great ways to frame your inquiries.

As always, the end-goal is to close sales. You can facilitate this happening by promoting engagement levels.

When handling prospects, it’s best to first talk more about them, and less about you. If you have prepared “about us” slides, then have them featured right at the very end of the presentation.

Ideally, you want to put more emphasis on your customers’ goals, expected outcomes, and then divulge how you’ll lead them towards success.

To further convince them to join your bandwagon, it’s important to showcase how others have benefitted from your initiative.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then video is the real deal.

By incorporating videos as part of your sales presentation, you’ll be able to break the monotony that usually exists in text-only slides. While making your presentation, try to also walk about the room and engage your audience.

If you follow through on these steps, you’ll realize you have plenty of talking points throughout.

As a suggestion, try to also make a video about how you can aid your prospect’s company. It also wouldn’t hurt if you interview a couple of team members and hear their take on a range of issues.

As a salesperson, you can use sales presentations to inform, educate, inspire and persuade prospects to buy your products.

A well-crafted and detailed presentation can actually help a business reinforce its reputation and act as a showcase of the level of professionalism.

Before we list out a host of sales presentation examples, it’s best to first note that they are a great way to meet up with customers and prospects in person.

Through face-to-face interactions, you can build trust and reinforce existing relationships . When done right, you may realize an influx in the number of purchases after such meet-ups.

Sales presentations are great when it comes to audience engagement. This is because images have the power of captivating audiences while bullet points can help them follow the logic of the entire presentation.

By injecting theatre during the presentation, you can leave a lasting impact on individuals. This is quite in contrast than if you decided to just talk to them. This heightened sense of engagement is great since your message is properly relayed to your audience.

Sales presentations are fantastic because you can swiftly change up the content and make modifications on the fly. They are vastly better than printed mediums like brochures where you have to stick to the agenda and making tweaks is usually an expensive undertaking.

Presentations are also a versatile communication tool. You can employ them in one-to-one meetings or in large meetings that require you to make use of a projector. Alternatively, you can choose to expand your reach by making them available for online viewing and downloading.

Sales presentations offer you a structured way to communicate about different products, services, and companies.

If you’re working in an organization, you’ll realize that people in various departments are capable of communicating information in a consistent fashion.

Having revealed this, it’s worth pointing out that you need to make good use of bullet points/prompts to ensure that you always remain objective and stress on the key points.

Snapchat , the impermanent photo messaging app, is a big hit among millennials.

Having been conceived as part of a Stanford class project in 2011 under the initial name of Picaboo, it’s has quickly risen through the ranks. Today, it’s one of the most dominant social media platforms out there because it encourages self-expression in the here and now.

From this sales presentation example, you can clearly see what Snapchat was trying to do. While a large portion of it is filled with fine print and explanations, they’ve divided it into major talking points that readers simply can’t miss. This strategy is great since it ensures even readers who simply want to skim through the content are able to catch all the highlights.
Impressively, they also created content that resonates with prospects of varying levels of knowledge. This is a fantastic strategy since it increases the probability of closing a deal.

The self-proclaimed “front page of the internet” has been shaping trends for a good minute now. Eager to impress, the sales honchos at Reddit decided to go the sales presentation route and won hearts while at it.

Reddit’s opening image of a cat riding a unicorn has great visual appeal and helps leave a lasting impact with audiences
This is one of the best sales presentation examples because Reddit strives to remain objective and stick to its brand identity
Reddit also makes great use of memes and pop-culture images to get their message across. This is a great strategy since Redditors love this kind of content. In addition, it helps the brand stand out from the rest because of the “X” factor in their presentation.
The round data figures shared by Reddit are also striking since they help their audience to digest the information and get to thinking how a product/service can help them grow

This social media management tool gives you the freedom to manage multiple social media profiles in a single dashboard.

Their sales deck is fast-paced and begins with them sharing how they have left an impact on the social media scene. This is a brilliant strategy since it helps audiences get a breakdown of the services offered without much ado
In other slides, Buffer goes at length to share their milestones and how they’re planning to grow their reach in the years to come. This is one of the finest sales presentation examples because it’s systematic and they manage to bring the message home with every slide

Salesforce is renowned as being the driving force behind one of the world’s top CRM solutions, Sales Cloud. Through their ventures, they’ve been able to transform how enterprises (including fortune 500 companies), connect with clients.

Salesforce crafted one of the best sales presentation examples because they were able to simplify the sale and help prospects further down the sales journey
They also broke down the complex processes involved in simpler formats using visual diagrams and flowcharts
By incorporating images and text overlay slides, Salesforce made a point of ensuring that you have a better understanding of what their services were all about

Microsoft’s subscription-based productivity suite is great for collaboration in the workplace. We’ve listed them out as one of the best sales presentation examples because they came up with a comprehensive layout that really spoke to the masses.

The color scheme employed was in line with their productivity apps. By doing so, the designers sought to maintain synergy with the move acting as a clear show of consistency all around.
The images used on every screen is a pointer to the fact that they have a dedicated team that aims to foster collaboration at the workplace. Commendably, the text sections also have a bright, vivid block of color to ensure clarity. This is a fantastic strategy since colors allow audiences to dart their eyes across the screen and focus on what really important

This end-to-end product management software comes in handy in supporting the product journey. If you’re a product manager, you’re surely going to love having it as a go-to tool since you have the power to convert great ideas into great products.

The minimalist concept behind this approach makes it one of the most exemplary sales presentation examples
The content layout is also super-duper. As you read through the informal tone, you get an impression that you’re actually conversing with a friend over coffee than actually sitting through a meeting getting pitched on why you should adopt a product
The short sentences are also super engaging and the text in parenthesis gives you the impression that you’re actually getting the scoop on a trade secret

This fantastic platform was built with the sole intent of making the workplace a happy place to operate in. With Immediately, you get the opportunity to focus on the tasks that really interest you.

By making use of stock photos and callout bubbles, Immediately perfectly illustrates various audiences’ pain points and helps create a sense of relatability
There’s great personalization involved throughout the slides which helps the brand connect with various audiences. As a salesperson, you can borrow a leaf from this approach and embrace it to drive home the essence of your product.

Zuora is an enterprise software company does a great job of providing bespoke subscription-based services.

Through its ventures, the company has been able to produce one of the standout sales presentation examples. Here’s why we think they are definitely winning:

Their presentation largely constitutes images and minimal text with thought-provoking facts
The backgrounds are laden with images. This is a masterstroke since it helps personalize and distinguish the brand from the competition.
The wordplay is excellent and the imagery used gives you a contemporary feel about things. This is perfectly in line with their brand message of how important it is to adapt to the times. If you think that they can help you position yourself in the market, then, you need not look further!

This online applicant sourcing and tracking software enables organizations to discover top talent by gathering implicit data from a large pool.

Great graphical layout and use of white space to represent numbers. The colors incorporated are quite brilliant and go a long way in telling the narrative.
The bulleted points have greatly help compartmentalize detailed content. You can implement this same approach if you’re looking to ensure that your audience follows the message.
Compelling imagery is used to convey their brand message and compel prospects to take up their services

So there you have it. We’ve highlighted nine of the top sales presentation examples to get your creative juices flowing.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to convert more prospects into paying customers !

Do you think there are some sales presentation examples we’ve missed?

Which ones do you fancy?

Let us know in the comments section below!

Jack is known for leading the charge in sales innovation. He has a proven track record of working with top organizations to help them integrate social into their traditional sales process.

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Ace the Presentation

1. The Apple Team And Their Sales Conferences

Apple uses a unique team-centric approach to their presentations. They use multiple team members to deliver content at different points in their sales presentations. And everyone working during this presentation is passionate about Apple and its products. This strategy keeps the audience engaged and wanting more.

How To Model Your Sales Presentation Like Apple

To model your sales presentation after Apple’s approach, you want to keep the following points in mind:

Use more than just static images – Videos and sound bites increase engagement.
Pass the mic – Use your team to your advantage and share the floor with them.

Also, to keep everyone engaged, know that the tone of your voice goes a long way. People can hear the passion you have for a project in your tone.

2. Appsflyer’s Sale Presentations Have Great Visuals

Appsflyer’s sales presentations rely heavily on brand recognition and little to no text. Because this company specializes in analytics, images speak louder than words in many cases. They use strong examples within their presentation to highlight their successes.

Creating Your Own Highly Visual Sales Presentation

To create your own visual sales presentation, you need to know what message you are trying to convey in your presentation.

The following is a list of key elements to focus on when creating a highly visual sales presentation:

Choose powerful and meaningful images – If you stray away from using lots of text, make sure the images you use can evoke emotion and gives the audience a sense of what you are talking about
Do not focus on one point for too long – When presenting, you want your audience to come away with a specific feeling or call to action. Try to avoid hammering one point in too many times, some repetition is important, but too much repetition can cause a boring presentation.
Practice makes perfect – With little to no cues on your slides for you to speak from, you need to know what you are planning to say all the way through to create a crafted and coherent message. That means you need to practice your slides and practice them again!

3. Facebook’s Captivating You Through Simplicity

Facebook’s sales presentation is all about simplicity. They use a streamlined approach to sharing their key points. In Facebook’s sales presentation, they use the following guidelines :

Limit clutter – Every quote, excerpt, and blurb has a purpose. There is no frivolous detailing.
Stay readable – Their presentation uses limited text to allow the presenter to be the focus. The presentation only serves as the guide.

If you can keep these two points in mind and incorporate Facebook’s more universal strategies below, you are bound to have an impactful sale presentation.

Three Strategies To Model Facebook’s Presentation

Facebook is an internet and social media giant. It may seem difficult to compete with all of their skill and talent, but if you can use the following strategies like Facebook, you will, without a doubt, improve your sales presentations:

Incorporate testimonials or proven success stories . Impart the sense that your business is thriving (because it is!) to your audience by using stories from real customers or clients.
Select graphics that evoke emotion. Choose smiling faces over neutral expressions.
Use icons to convey statistics . Relate numbers in a visual format to be more pleasant on the eyes and easier to assess visually.

By incorporating Facebook’s sales presentation strategies, you too will develop an out of this world sales presentation!

4. How Contently Uses The Before-After-Bridge Method

With Contently’s sales presentation, they focus on their successes and use those to show how they encapsulate their mission. They also create visually stunning, stand-alone presentation slides.

The following is a list of things that Contently is doing right for its sales presentations:

Highlights their mission wisely – They put their mission front and center to remind you just exactly what they are good at before you even leave the title slide.
Implements the before-after-bridge formula – Even though these slides are text-heavy, they tell an important story. Read on for exactly how to use this method in your sales presentations.
Use of striking visuals – These visuals get the point across and allow you to expand upon your points without the teleprompter feeling of reading straight from a slide.

Try Before-After-Bridge In Your Next Presentation

If you wonder how you can present the perfect testimonial when doing a sales presentation, look no further. The before-after-bridge delivery will set you apart from the competition and clearly illustrate how your company is great at what it does.

The following is a description for each part of the before-after-bridge method:

Before – This describes what a customer needed from you or lacked before entering into business with you.
After – The after tells the audience exactly what your company did for your customer
Bridge – The bridge details the specific outcomes and actions

Now the best way to deliver this is by marrying great visuals with minimal text. Use text as a supporting feature but be as concise as possible.

5.Reddit Uses Unexpected Content To Its Advantage

Reddit can capture its audience’s attention by using an image that is striking and out of the ordinary. This is a great way to establish and maintain their specific brand identity.

In Reddit’s sales presentation, they use humor as a way to captivate and engage their audience:

Highlight impressive data
Incorporate timely pop culture references
Value creation and feature it as a top priority

The unexpected and humorous nature of Reddit’s sales presentation makes it really stand out from the crowd. They balance both the fun and engaging, with the serious and data-driven, very well. This is an unconventional approach that creates a deeply positive feeling among their audience.

How To Feature Humor In Your Sales Presentation

To use humor like Reddit, you must ask yourself first if it is the right direction for your brand:

It must be authentic – If you are not a humorous person, humor may not be the best route for you to take during a sales presentation.
It must be engaging – Using humor can be difficult because you have to choose an appropriate level of humor for the workplace. It can’t be too dark or too raunchy. But it must still be engaging and heartfelt enough to elicit an audience response.
You must be alright with it falling flat – Not everyone will understand the joke or reference. That is normal. Keep moving through your talking points, and do not get too hung up if your joke flops.

6.Buzzfeed Offers A No-Nonsense Delivery

Buzzfeed has created a business model that works to their advantage. They cover viral news and trending topics in a way that is always clickable. Their sales presentation is almost the complete opposite of their business model. Buzzfeed’s sales presentation is great at:

Making use of bullets
No frills language

Because of this, Buzzfeed gives off an air of confidence. They stick to the facts and do not leave any room for interpretation. They spell it all out for you in their sales presentation.

Trim Your Sales Presentation & Give Just The Facts

If you are looking for a confident and simple approach to your sales presentation, use the following tips:

Having no visuals gives you an aloof and confident vibe
Keep it short
Keep text on slides to a minimum
Use bullets

Buzzfeed’s use of minimalism is striking compared to some of the more over the top sales presentations. It definitely makes them stand out amongst the competition.

7. Try LinkedIn’s Comprehensive Approach For The Win

LinkedIn is known for its ever-professional attitude. This feeling translates well to their sales presentation. Their presentation covers everything we have discussed so far:

Creates engaging data visualization
Highlights key points
More is better mindset
Simplicity on each slide
Uses visuals to their advantage

Not only does LinkedIn share their sales pitch, but they also give its audience an engaging way to use their platform to its fullest potential.

Explore More Is Better & Match LinkedIn’s Model

LinkedIn’s sales presentation is long, but it is full of good information through and through. They also use an outline to help the audience gauge where they are in the talk and what is coming.

The reason more information works for LinkedIn is because of the following:

Balances captivating and informing the audience
Uses text and visuals to their advantage, not too few and not too many
Uses time to its fullest potential

Sometimes time is not on your side. If that is the case, aim for simplicity and brevity. It is always in your best interest to be respectful of your audience’s time.

8. Uber: The Best Combo Of Data Visualization & Text

In addition to powerful text, Uber uses data visualization to present many of its important company statistics. Their five-pronged approach to sales presentations can be used again and again.

What is Uber’s five-pronged approach to sales presentations?:

Synthesize it – You, as the sales presenter, should know what market you are after and how your business aims to dominate that market. This means getting all the facts in order and sharing them as part of your pitch.
Seed germs – Create a nurturing environment that fosters growth and enrichment. For Uber, this means selecting the right cities for future expansion.
Become contagious – You want to be the next hottest, in-demand thing on the market, no matter whether it is a good or service. To spread wide and far, you need strong partnerships and consistency with your customers.
Mutate fast – You want to focus on what is next and how you are going to be the first on the market. It is important to evolve in a way that suits your clients’ needs and puts you at the front of the pack against your competitors.
Defend – Put protections in place to keep your spot at the top. This could be by focusing on the legislature that will grow or inhibit your company or through finding new ways to support your workers in times of stress.

If you can adapt and tailor Uber’s sales presentation to your needs, you have a recipe for success! Nothing can beat the numbers. If your company has strong data points, highlight them with fewer words and more visuals representing the data.

Using Data Visualization To Your Advantage

If your company runs on numbers, as many in today’s world do, data visualization is a key part of any sales presentation. Now, you may be wondering how you create visuals based on your numbers. Well, the answer is simple, and there are a few different ways to do it.

The following is a list of ways in which you can begin visualizing your data when giving a sales pitch:

Do it yourself – Doing it by yourself may seem daunting and very time consuming, but you will have a presentation you understand front to back at the end of the day.
Gather a team – This is probably your best course of action. Get a group of colleagues together that are familiar with the numbers. Break down the story you are trying to tell and assign each group member a piece of the pie. Remember, to be cohesive, you need to establish some parameters for the visuals’ look and feel.
Hire a professional – While outsourcing is by far the easiest option, it can be the most difficult because once the visuals are made, you are stuck with figuring out how to make sense of them.

As you can see from the other sales presentations we have discussed, in addition to Uber, visuals are very important. And visuals can make or break a presentation.

If you do not strike the right balance, your audience could feel bombarded and overwhelmed by too many visuals. But you do not want to overcorrect and leave them with paragraphs to read during your sales presentation.

9. Zuora Uses Beautiful Imagery & Narrative Flow

Zuora uses storytelling as their main form of giving a sales presentation. They will lead the audience through their discoveries and ideas to lay out the concept they are trying to create.

Zuora is good at using the following elements within their sales presentations:

Uses background images – An image speaks a thousand words. If you choose a good visual, it will not only support your story but reinforce the emotions and feelings you are trying to evoke.
Uses quotes – A strategically placed quote can tie up a story nicely. It can also have a lasting impact if used correctly. Do not add too many frills around your quote to keep the final message vivid in your audience’s minds.
White space – Creating balance and space for the audience to assign meaning and importance.

If you harness any of the elements above, you are that much closer to an out of this world sales presentation.

Borrow From Zuora’s Playbook And Tell A Story

Zuora uses five major elements in all of their sales presentations to make them stand out. The following is a list of important elements you can consider incorporating into your sales next presentation:

Be bold and be the change – Show your audience how you have adapted to what once was and what is to come in the future.
Cite the spark – Tell your audience exactly why you are here and what has happened in the world to need your business as part of their lives.
Create excitement – Highlight features that set you apart from the competition
Prove your worth – Use meaningful soundbites and client testimonials to support your story
Solve their problems – Tell your audience how your product or service will solve a problem, show them why your company exists

Zuora does a wonderful job of using imagery and text to their full potential.

In Brief: Use Sales Presentations For Your Benefit

Now that you have nine out of this world examples of sales presentations, it is time to implement the tools that make these sales presentations great into your next presentation.

If you are worried about finding the right balance, you can always seek an outside opinion. Sometimes, if you choose to practice on a fake audience, they can guide you and offer corrections. Whatever you do, make sure you use the tips above to create a stunning sales presentation.

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The Best Sales Presentation Ever: Unveiling the Secrets

Sales is the most important part of a business. simply put, without customers, nothing else matters. so, it’s not surprising that 1 in 8 of all us jobs are full time sales positions..

However, with such a dependency on sales teams, we are always dismayed at POP to find that most sales presentations are still – for the most part – mediocre.

Unprofessional, static, vanilla, text-heavy, and all delivering zero data-based insights without a consistent message and brand. The typical sales presentation has a long way to go. And tools like PowerPoint are falling behind the pack.

With over 20 years’ experience in enterprise sales and the development of interactive digital sales tools, we know what works and we know how to deliver for our customers – and, most importantly, for your customers. Read on as we unveil the secrets behind the best sales presentations and experiences ever, and how your organization can, with little effort, take advantage of new tools and best practice!

1. What is a sales presentation?

A sales presentation is an opportunity for your sales team to showcase your products and services to potential, new or existing customers. But in a world of information overload, buyers often find themselves in a confidence crisis. As individuals, we usually steer clear of tasks or situations that appear challenging, unfamiliar, risky, or disruptive. The same holds true for organizations.

Therefore, the primary goal of a sales presentation is to help the audience make sense of their options. As Brent Adamson, former VP Advisory for Gartner, cited “Sense Making sales reps are best positioned to bolster customers’ confidence in the information and allay their skepticism about the seller. In fact, 80% of the sellers who used the Sense Making approach closed high-quality, low-regret deals.” If you want to be in the 80% helping your customers understand where your value can be realized, so they can make informed, faster buying decisions, we highly recommend you read on.

2. What should be included in an effective sales presentation?

An effective sales presentation needs to be informative, engaging, persuasive and memorable. Here are some of the key things to consider:

Review – First off, do an audit on what currently works and what doesn’t with your current messaging and positioning.
Personalization – Address the challenges and pain points of your audience and how your product or solution is going to solve these.
Storytelling – Facts and statistics alone can be a little flat. Framing these as part of a story creates a narrative flow and can really drive home your message.
Layout and interactivity – A linear presentation cluttered with information just isn’t fit for purpose today. The right information should be displayed at the right moment in a way that’s both clear and digestible. Interactivity allows you to craft presentations that open up a two-way dialogue. Incorporate imagery whenever possible to simplify complex messaging.
Call to action – Make sure the audience know what the next steps are to make a decision / purchase.

Learn about the key factors to consider when preparing presentations >

3. bad sales presentation – why some pitches stink.

After securing a meeting with a potential buyer, a salesperson’s job isn’t over. Capturing their interest is just the start. You must now retain it and convert interest into action.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, some sales presentations fall flat. Knowing why is key, so you can avoid the same mistakes again.

There are plenty of tell-tale signs of a bad sales presentation, including:

It’s a standard corporate deck with no personalization.
An information overload on your slides.
A confusing or hard-to-read layout.
A lack of visuals like videos and images.
Inconsistent branding.
No tailoring or customi z s ation for your target audience.
Flat linear presentations with no interactivity.
Incorrect, outdated or missing information.
Content that is too complex and not simplified or explained.
It doesn’t differentiate you from other brands.
You don’t meet your sales quotas.

4. The problem with traditional PowerPoint presentations…

PowerPoint has been the go-to presentation tool for some time , the first version being released in 1987 – so 36 years in fact! Being e asily accessible and widely used, around 30 million people create sales presentations with PowerPoint daily. However, with the demands of the modern buyer , it will struggle to keep you ahead of the pack :

It’s hard to create an interactive presentation, meaning consultative selling is often a no-go and customer engagement soon becomes disengagement.
It’s hard to use, so design takes longer and often leads to a poorly designed presentation leaving a bad impression on your brand and business.
It’s time-consuming. The average office employee spends close to an hour per day creating PowerPoint presentations, according to a study by GfK .
Analytics around what pages in a presentation resonate most with customers, and how customers are using presentations, are almost impossible to gain. There are some third-party apps that claim to do this, but results are patchy at best.
Unless you are an expert in PowerPoint design, customizing, and making PowerPoint presentations interactive can be complex and time-consuming. If you’re not confident in your PowerPoint skills, it’s best to stick to a linear structure but be prepared to inhibit your opportunity to cross sell and upsell.
You may have to become familiar with other software tools. If it’s 3D modeling that you need or have highly technical or data-heavy presentations, you are going to require specialized software or tools that offer these advanced data visualization capabilities.
Integrations with your DAMs, PIMs or CRM will always be wishful thinking. Don’t forget that sales and marketing alignment can improve your ability to close deals by 67% .
Global updates and changes are a drag, as is protecting your brand with your sales reps making their own changes.
Above all else, PowerPoint is no longer the only presentation tool in town and audiences expect a much slicker approach. If you look out of date, people won’t care what you have to say.
If you still use PowerPoint for sales presentations, now is the time to reconsider. There are alternatives that could transform your pipeline!

5. Going interactive: the future of sales presentations

We promised to unveil what we consider to be the secret sauce to creating the best sales presentation ever – and going all out interactive is top of our list!

The days of linear sales presentations and death by PowerPoint are soon to be short lived. Interactive presentations are revolutionizing the way businesses operate, as digital presentation software and interactive content have become essential tools. Instead of traditional, one-dimensional presentations, they empower brands to design immersive, customer-driven experiences that not only assist their sales representatives but also drive their business forward. Not convinced? The experience a company provides is just as important as products and services, according to 80% of customers .

person interacting with touchscreen display on white table

Crucially, an interactive presentation allows reps to take different routes as the conversation progresses, letting the customer steer it in a direction that’s most relevant to them. What’s possible with an interactive sales experience is truly impressive and companies not embracing this approach will be left behind.

Learn more about what’s possible with interactive sales presentations >

6. the benefits of interactive sales presentations.

As well as the financial benefits of interactive presentations , there are countless sales-driven benefits too.

97% of senior decision-makers said the professionalism of a potential supplier’s sales presentation was important or very important in awarding a contract, according to the RSW New Business Survey .

This just goes to show, any gains you can make to improve your sales presentations shouldn’t be overlooked – with interactive features being a huge gamechanger. Here are just a few of the benefits of interactive presentations for you, your business, and customers:

Help customers make faster, more informed decisions and speed up the sales cycle.
Deliver more information without overwhelming customers in your presentation.
Simplify complex ideas, products, and solutions with visual storytelling.
Ensure branding is consistent throughout your presentation.
Help your sales team be more consultative, be able to cross sell, upsell in the moment, and give your customers a more personalized experience.
Differentiate and create a clear space between you and your competitors.
Free up your sales team from mundane tasks like searching for content and preparing presentations for meetings.
Speed up onboarding, using interactive sales presentations to train staff.
Gain valuable insights with advanced real-time analytics on content being used and the customer journey.
Facilitate remote presentations to reduce travel costs.
Reduce print costs.
Allow your buyers to self-serve.

Learn more about the benefits of interactive sales presentations >

7. should your sales presentations be interactive.

By now, you might be seriously considering making your sales presentation more interactive. Interactive presentations provide customizable experiences and engage audiences. But is it essential for you, or is your current format sufficient?

Here are five questions you should ask to decide whether your sales presentations should be interactive:

Do reps skip slides in your existing presentation?
Can your team easily find the content they need?
Do you want to tailor content for your audience?
Do you want presentations to be focused on the customer and their needs?
Do you want to simplify or better explain complex ideas or products?

If the answer is yes to one or more of these, you could benefit from interactive sales presentations.

Learn more about whether your sales presentations should be interactive >

8. how to get started with interactive sales presentations.

To get started with creating an interactive sales experience, you’ll need a working group with the key stakeholders. Next, research what works and what doesn’t for current presentations, then clearly define your audience.

Map your objectives and those of your customers, then create a broad content map for your presentation that links the two. Once you’ve developed your argument within that, you can storyboard your presentation with key messages.

Finally, you can test your argument, visualize your story, and pilot the interactive presentation. Remember, you can continually refine and revise your presentation after that.

To find out more, download our eBook on getting starting with interactive sales presentations >

9. How long to develop an interactive sales presentation?

If you’ve seen an interactive sales experience in action, you’ll understand how powerful they can be. The alternatives pale in comparison. However, adopting them within your sales presentations can be a daunting, complex, and time-consuming process.

So, how long will it take exactly? There are several factors that can impact development time for interactive sales presentations:

Content readiness – What state is your current content in? Will this need an overhaul?
How many stakeholders within your business need to be involved and input into the development?
What technical integrations will you require, such as accessing your Digital Asset Management System, PIM, CRM or BI tools?

Learn about the lead time for developing interactive sales presentations >

10. how much do interactive sales presentations cost.

If you’re going to be working with an outside team, then you’ll want some idea of how much this is all going to cost. This depends on the features you need, such as analytics, integrations, offline functionality, multilingual capabilities, content requirements, and device compatibility. However, some companies may also charge extra for setup, onboarding, training, support, experience creation, and upgrades.

Additionally, it’s important to weigh up the difference between purchasing outright and paying for software as a service. Here are some estimates for the different kind of pricing models:

Software as a service – $15 to $40 per user, per month.
Flat monthly usage – $1,000 to $7,000 per month for unlimited users.
Creator licenses – $1,000 to $4,000 per month, for each admin with the ability to create and manage content.

Learn more about the cost for interactive sales presentations >

11. create the best sales presentation ever with storytelling.

Now you’ve got to grips with interactive sales presentations, here’s the next secret to the best sales presentations ever – spinning a yarn.

People don’t buy from strangers. They want suppliers they trust. Storytelling can help you create a true bond with your target audience by showcasing your brand values and personality. However, storytelling doesn’t end with the words you say.

Visual storytelling uses visuals to support a narrative, which frames how your audience understands your products and solutions. Think images, charts, diagrams, maps, infographics – and more. It’s based on findings that our brains process images 60,000 times faster than words and retain over five times as much information from images.

To develop an effective storytelling presentation, consider:

The action you want customers to take immediately after the presentation.
Your customers’ position, such as problems they’re trying to solve.
How you can link the two with a story that includes their current position or problems and leads to the required action.
A content map or storyboard can help you put your argument and proof points in a logical order.

Learn why visual storytelling is important for sales presentations – and how to develop an effective presentation narrative >

12. examples of powerful sales presentations.

Over the past two decades, we’ve helped countless organizations build powerful sales presentations that engaged their customers and drove sales.

Take a look at these sales presentation examples and see for yourself.

From manufacturing, medical devices, and mobile processors to infrastructure solutions, security tech, and biotech, the leadings brands worldwide are switching to interactive sales presentations that utilize visual storytelling:

Black iPad displaying Bacardi Limited interactive touchscreen sales enablement tool on desk amongst pens and keypad

13. Sales presentation tips – how to close more deals

And for our final secret to the best ever sales presentations, it’s all about the human aspect. While the tech you use to deliver your presentation is critical, so is the person using it.

If you want to master the art of sales presentation, here are nine tips to send you on your way:

Great presenters rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
Use your presentation as a complement to spoken words, rather than a replacement or alternative.
Share information with your audience ahead of your presentation, allowing them to ask more informed, useful questions.
Make your presentation a two-way dialogue, letting customers’ talking points guide the direction.
Always cover the customers’ challenges and pain points rather than simply skipping to the solution.
Focus on the true value you can offer clients, rather than features of your products or services.
Keep your presentation succinct and leave time for questions. 9 minutes (or under 10) is a commonly cited target, but it depends on what you’re presenting.
Ensure your presentation has a structure that’s logical, relevant, and cohesive.
Use visuals like graphics and charts that back up and clarify what you’re saying.
Include a clear call to action at the end of your presentation.

When it comes to delivering an A-grade sales presentation, this is just the start! If you want to improve, you must keep researching, test your findings, analyze the results, and optimize your presentations.

Take your sales presentations from good to great with POP in your corner

If you want to find out more about interactive content creation platforms for your sales presentations, you’re in the right place. POP has over 20 years’ experience helping clients in a wide range of sectors – from manufacturing and medicine to cutting-edge tech. Watch our video, book a demo or get in touch!

How to Make Zuora's "Best Sales Deck Ever" Even Better

Is Andy Raskin's Zuora sales deck still the best sales deck ever? Here are some tweaks we made that will make its brilliant storyline shine again.

Dominika Krukowska

13 minute read

This post will take you through all the principles that make Zuora's sale presentation the “best sales deck ever”. On top of those we added our high-level tweaks that make it even better.

Before we dive in, first take a close look at the entire refurbished Zuora sales deck, then we'll break each part down and explain why it works so well.

Zuora sales deck (interactive remake):

Zuora's content approach is timeless but their delivery is dated

You can find thousands of sales deck examples online, but have you seen what’s meant to be the best one out there?

The concept of the “best sales deck ever” came to life back in September 2016, when Andy Raskin wrote his viral post: The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen. In it, he outlined the 5 key elements of Zuora’s sales narrative that make their presentation the best sales deck ever created.

The concept behind Zuora’s pitch deck is brilliant. But, years on, its key message gets lost in the slide format.

In this article, I’ll show you a number of fixes we made to Zuora’s original pitch deck to move with the times and amplify its performance. You can apply each of these fixes to your own deck and see it perform on par with the best in the world.

Here’s what the original deck looked like (left) next to its new, supercharged version (right):

Interactive

5 main elements of a winning sales narrative

In his post , Andy Raskin argues that the reason why Zuora’s sales deck is so successful is because it swiftly leads prospects through 5 key elements of a sales narrative.

1. Present a shift that is happening in the world

One of the main mistakes most companies make is focusing on themselves right from the start. Instead, you should begin by painting a huge shift in the world that creates a big urgency for your prospect to make a change and big stakes for choosing to do so.

By choosing this approach over starting with a problem, you’re mitigating the risk of your prospects getting defensive. They may either be unaware or unwilling to admit they have a problem, and putting them on the spot could have the adverse effect.

Change, on the other hand, grabs people’s attention, especially when it directly affects them.

We found that the secret to making highly engaging sales decks is leveraging storytelling frameworks. If you want to take your prospects from casual to engaged, you should navigate them through a story that contains 7 main elements.

7 elements of a great sales deck structure

This way, you’ll captivate your audience and make them stick around until the end.

2. Divide people into winners and losers

Even though change gets people’s attention, sheer interest isn’t enough to get them to ditch the status quo. In behavioral economics, this is called loss aversion —a situation in which a person would rather stick to the current state rather than risk incurring a loss by making a change.

A way to beat loss aversion is to demonstrate that the big shift in the world will divide people into 2 groups: winners and losers. In other words, adapting to this change will have a highly positive impact on the prospect. Failure to adapt will result in a miserable future for them.

This simple trick works like a charm—I mean, who’d want to be a loser?

3. Entice prospects with the “Promised Land”

Another mistake many companies make is overloading prospects with information about their product or service without providing context.

Instead, you need to tease the Promised Land— the happily-ever-after state prospects will achieve by switching to your solution.

But, in order for this to work, it needs to meet 2 conditions. (1) Prospects have to find the Promised Land desirable . (2) You have to create a sense that it’s impossible to get there without the help of your solution . Otherwise, prospects could just tune out and look for alternative ways to reach the Promised Land.

And, note the use of the word “state”. It’s important that your Promised Land isn’t your solution. It’s the outcome your solution provides. It’s what life can be like thanks to your solution.

4. Treat features as stepping stones to the Promised Land

Sales narratives aren’t that different from films or fairytales, after all.

What do the most successful stories have in common? They all take you through a gripping storyline, from discovering there’s peril on the road you tread all the way down to the Promised Land, with several obstacles along the way.

But, where does your solution fit into this? In his original post, Andy Raskin used the perfect metaphor to illustrate this. He likened Zuora’s solution to the fairy godmother, helping Cinderella get to the ball by casting spells.

Instead of bombarding prospects with technical aspects of your solution, you need to position your solution’s features and capabilities as stepping stones to the Promised Land you teased earlier in the deck.

Not only does it sound less salesy, but it reinforces the belief in your solution as the only one capable of getting prospects to the desired state.

5. Prove that you can deliver on your promises

Finally, you need to make a promise: anyone who chooses to join you will reach the Promised Land.

But, the road to the Promised Land is winding, rocky, and littered with obstacles. So, if at this point prospects are still a little skeptical , they have every right to. The last thing that’s left is to show proof that you’re going to deliver on your promises.

Our own data here at Storydoc supports that Andy was right. We always recommend our customers add a “trust slide” right before the end. We saw that a customer quote or a slide with customer logos increases the conversion rate of the deck .

You need to keep selling when you’re no longer in the room

Let’s start with some context. What does Zuora actually do? Zuora is a company that offers a SaaS solution for subscription management. So, in simpler terms, if you pay for any subscription-based services, it’s likely Zuora manages those transactions.

it would be a huge mistake for Zuora, even having the best deck ever at their disposal, to assume they could simply send out their deck, and it would seal the deal.

It takes as little as 15 seconds for someone to decide whether they want to keep reading a deck . If your boss received Zuora’s sales deck without context, the most important thing they’d need to know is: why should they even care?

Many people mistakenly assume that decision-makers read every deck they get. The reality is, they briefly scroll through them and pick whatever they think is most important. If nothing grabs their attention enough to keep reading, they’ll bounce.

Even a narrative as brilliant as Zuora’s can get lost in a static presentation. What they need is a deck that people actually read and engage with, one that tells the pitch story for them when they’re no longer in the room.

Enter: Storydoc.

Disclaimer: The Storydoc team made this version of Zuora’s old deck based on the slides that are publicly available on this link . This was made for demonstration purposes and doesn’t represent a real Storydoc deck being used by the Zuora team.

Making Zuora’s best-sales-deck-ever great again

1. replacing still images with video.

The cover of Zuora’s slide deck features a catchy tagline that encompasses the nature of their business, along with company logo and basic information about the founder.

Most importantly, we switched the static image in the background to a video. Our study findings show that presentations with a video in the cover slide can boost interactions by 32% as compared to those with a static cover background.

And the benefits of video are not limited to the top part of your sales pitch deck. By embedding any video, you can enjoy a 37% longer average reading time and increase your CTA click-through rate by 17%.

2. Setting readers’ expectations

Another tweak is actually the lowest-hanging fruit in the sales garden. We included information on the average reading time.

This simple bit of information will reduce the number of people who bounce off your deck right away by 24%. That’s right—just by adding this small blurb, you can have more eyes on your sales decks for longer.

3. Optimizing the deck for mobile performance

Nowadays, a third of all decks are opened on mobile devices. So, let me put it this way—if a company doesn’t optimize their decks for mobile performance, they’re losing 1 in 3 prospective customers. That one prospect you lost could very well be a critical decision-maker.

And the share of people reading decks on mobile increases the higher you go up the funnel: when it comes to initial outreach decks, almost 50% of them are opened on mobile.

In case nobody told you - PDFs were not made for mobile screens . They do not adapt themselves to mobile screen dimensions, which makes them virtually unreadable on mobile devices.

In stark contrast, all Storydoc components have been designed with mobile in mind and are 100% mobile-responsive. This way, you can be sure that your deck will look perfect regardless of the device it’s viewed on.

Don’t believe me? Just take a look at this slide from Zuora’s deck:

There’s so much tiny text crammed into this one screen that it’s practically illegible .

You have to keep pinching in and out in order to read anything, and even then there’s no telling which bits of information you should pay attention to.

Your orientation is disrupted and any context you could have had is lost. It makes for a really poor user experience.

I can assure you that 9 times out of 10, readers won’t bother to zoom in . They’ll simply scroll past and move on to the next section.

The Storydoc deck, in comparison, makes navigation as seamless as can be. The narrator slide adds context to the graph so that the readers know what they are looking at at any given moment.

Zuora sales deck improved mobile experience

4. Turn casual scrollers into engaged readers

Zuora pulled up statistics from various countries around the world to show how the subscription economy is taking over the globe.

Best sales deck ever “Shift the world” Stats slide

But, as they’re presented in a static format, it’s easy for these important insights to get lost among other pieces of information.

Zuora sales deck improved “Shift the world” Stats slide

We replaced static numbers with our running numbers slide. Now, as readers are scrolling through Zuora’s deck, it will automatically make them stop and go:

Wait… What’s that about?

There you go—a simple trick to turn casual scrollers into engaged readers.

5. Giving the audience something to play around with

On one of the next slides, Zuora shows what will happen to the ‘losers’—aka, the companies that will fail to adapt to the shift happening globally. They will share the fate of 52% of all Fortune 500 companies that have disappeared in the last 15 years.

Notice the clever choice of an example. If more than half of America’s largest corporations weren’t immune to the change, what makes prospects feel they would survive in the ever-changing business landscape without making necessary adjustments?

Best sales deck ever “Winners and losers” Consequences slide

The thing is, the prospects might not even notice this as they skim through the deck. Plain text against a plain background is a surefire way to bury a vital piece of information.

Zuora sales deck imp“Winners and losers” Consequences slide

Giving customers something to play around with, such as this Before and After image, can work wonders for your engagement and, ultimately, conversion rate.

According to our research, slide decks with interactive elements (such as these before and after images) get scrolled all the way down to the bottom 41% more often . Not only that, but on average, your audience will read your deck 21% longer.

6. Condensing information into fewer slides

The next section of Zuora’s sales pitch deck provides examples of famous companies that survived the ongoing shift in the world—aka, the winners.

Best sales deck ever “Winners and losers” Winners slides

They dedicated separate slides to different household names, along with short one-liner summaries of the main changes they implemented in order to thrive in the global market.

Unfortunately, this makes Zuora’s sales deck unnecessarily long and confusing. There’s a better way to condense it without compromising on the amount of value for the readers.

Zuora sales deck improved “Winners and losers” Winners slides

We took those 5 slides and replaced them with a single tiered slide. This way, you’re providing multiple seperate slide of related information as one integral slide, while also creating active engagement.

Interactive components make buyers feel a degree of involvement when reading your sales deck , which turns them from passive listeners to active participants in the story, making them see themselves as the hero. They can choose whatever piece of information they feel is most important to them and click through things like tabs to learn more.

According to Sales Hacker , on average, prospects are capable of remembering just 10% of all numbers and a quarter of all images they see. If they can position themselves as the protagonist in your storyline, that number automatically jumps to 60-70%.

7. Guiding prospects through the narrative

Next up, Zuora provides a comparison of the old, product-centric model and the new, relationship-based experience. By presenting the Promised Land in a more aesthetically-pleasing way, it automatically makes it more enticing to potential customers.

By the time they finish analyzing the slide, they’re already curious about how to reach this new state. Or, at least they should be, if they ever make sense of it.

Zuora best sales deck ever“Promised land” Before-and-After slide

The problem with this slide is that it doesn’t provide much context apart from the odd label. The simplified diagram, somewhat counterintuitively, makes it hard to understand the meaning it tries to convey.

Leaving such an important slide unclear opens the way to individual interpretation and leaves room for confusion, miscommunication, and frustration.

Zuora sales deck improved “Promised land” Before-and-After slide

We took back control of the storyline with the help of our narrator slide. This allows you to add short descriptions to each individual stage and guide readers through your way of thinking.

Also, as most buying decisions involve 7 people on average , it ensures that everyone’s on the same page when your deck travels internally.

8. Including a clear next step

Zuora closes their sales deck with a simple ‘The end’ and a hashtag inspiring readers to start their story.

Zuora best sales deck ever “The end” slide

But, it doesn’t give any direction on how exactly to go about that. Instead of capitalizing on the immense value delivered to the prospects, they’re closing off communication.

Wait, I’m interested, but what do I do next? Do I go back to Zuora’s website to look for their email address or do a quick Google search?

Let’s be honest. When faced with this choice, most prospects will simply close the deck and move on to the next offer.

Creating a sales deck without making the next step clear and actionable is like building a supermarket without a checkout counter . You build up excitement around your solution, prospects are ready to part with their hard-earned money… and there’s no one to give it to.

Best sales deck ever improved “The end” slide

Thanks to various CRM integrations, Storydoc facilitates encouraging and guiding prospects down the funnel . You can include a live chat widget or embed your calendar in your deck, so a potential client can easily find the next available time slot. No more guesswork or inefficient back-and-forth communication.

9. Personalizing the deck

So, you’ve already gone through at least one meeting with the sales team. You’ve shared your main pain points, expectations, and left hopeful that you’re going to receive the perfect solution tailored to your needs.

Then, the sales deck arrives and all excitement is gone . It looks super generic, like you were just one of the hundreds of names on the company’s recipient list.

Have they even listened to what I said? Can they cater to my needs if I’m not even sure they got them right?

Planting a seed of doubt in your prospect’s mind can cost you the deal . We all like to feel special. I mean, when’s the last time you responded to a “Dear User” email?

By adding dynamic variables to Zuora’s sales deck, we made it possible to personalize at scale . You can pull all the necessary information, like a client’s name or logo, straight from the CRM into your deck.

Creating thousands of different versions, each tailored to a specific recipient , will now literally take seconds. The implications are huge.

When you include personal notes in your deck:

The number of people who read it in full will increase by 68%
The average reading time will be 41% higher.
It will travel around internally 2.3x more often.

The more eyes on your deck, the higher your chances of landing that dream client!

Transform your own sales deck from boring to buzzworthy

Want to transform your own deck the way we did Zuora’s? You can have the best deck ever too! Just pick a sales deck template from our extensive library designed for different use cases and let our editor take care of the rest.gle

Alternatively, you can upload your deck and get our storytelling expert’s opinion on how to improve it.

In the ever-changing business world, the content is just 1 of 3 pillars of a successful sales deck. The other 2 are design and delivery.

We can observe this in Zuora’s example, whose “best sales deck ever” had a brilliant content behind it, but the other 2 elements haven’t been moving with the times.

With the help of our storytelling team, we made 4 broad changes to Zuora’s sales deck:

We added interactive slides to give viewers something to play around with and make them feel like they’re in control of the narrative. This will improve user experience and boost engagement.
We split text into more digestible chunks to ensure that no important insights get lost.
We added dynamic variables to make personalization at scale possible.
We made the next step clear and actionable to skyrocket the closing rate.

With all these changes, we brought Zuora’s deck back to its rightful top spot.

And, we can do the same for you! Try Storydoc free to see how we can reach new heights together. Are you in?

Hi, I'm Dominika, Content Specialist at Storydoc. As a creative professional with experience in fashion, I'm here to show you how to amplify your brand message through the power of storytelling and eye-catching visuals.

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20 Best Sales Deck Examples To Revamp Your Sales Strategy!

Looking for sales deck examples? Your search ends here, with our top picks for some of the best sales deck examples. Read on…

A sales deck is an essential aspect of the sales process . It is the tipping point that decides whether or not you are going to convert your prospects into customers. Thus, taking the time to create a great sales deck is time well spent.

What is a Sales Deck? (Definition)

A sales deck is defined as a presentation, in slide format, that you can present or pitch to clients. Sales decks help prospects feel connected to your company, understand your product/services, get ‘wowed’ by your results, and ultimately end with a call to action. Remember your ABCs of sales…always be closing!

Bottom line, your pitch deck should give your prospects the big picture , in a concise manner .

If you’re in need of a sales deck makeover , these sales decks will inspire you to revamp your messaging and imagery to help you captivate your prospective clients and close more deals . Without further ado let’s dive in!

List of Best Sales Deck Examples:

We have curated a list of 20 of the best sales deck examples from companies all over the world. They will inspire you to make meaningful improvements and highlight your company , product / services, and value in captivating ways.

1. Zuora’s Sales Deck Example: Visuals Help Sell Your Story

One of our favorite sales decks comes from Zuora, an enterprise software company that provides accounting software tailor-made for subscription-based services. Zuora offers three significant features, commerce, billing, and finance.

The sales deck is comprised of main images with minimal text that contain thought-provoking statements, facts, stats, etc. The image-rich backgrounds help to personalize and differentiate their brand from their competitors.

The modern and exciting imagery plays perfectly to Zuora’s pitch deck message of how important it is to adapt to the changing times and those who haven’t adapted failed. Zuora’s pitch deck positions itself perfectly to be the solution to their prospective clients. Spot on!

Read more: Pitch Deck: What is it & How to Create an Impressive One?

2. SalesForce Sales Deck Example: Simplify the Complex

Salesforce, if you are not aware, is the company behind the world’s #1 CRM solution, Sales Cloud. Salesforce’s cloud-based applications have completely transformed the way enterprises communicate with customers.

With major fortune 500 companies as their customers , Salesforce’s marketing cloud sales deck focuses on the high-level benefits of a complex product.

This sales deck is perfect if you need to simplify your sales and help your prospect walk down the sales journey.

You’ll notice that complex processes are turned into visual diagrams and flowcharts, along with images and text overlay slides that make it easier to comprehend. It’s definitely worth checking out!

3. Uber for Business Sales Deck Example: 3 Point Rule

Global taxi-hailing service Uber has a professional-looking sales deck with big, bolder images and underlying text. Uber starts with its features and goes on to discuss frequently asked questions about safety, policy control, and management in its sales deck.

Most of the slides have been created to focus on a central image and the main text. For some of the more complex slides, you will see no more than three bullet points or three boxes filled with information. By compartmentalizing detailed content, it helps audiences follow the message.

Ending sales decks and presentations with customer quotes is a powerful way to leave a lasting impression. You help them visualize how your product/service can help them too!

Read more: How To Create A Sales Process Document The Right Way!

4. Reddit Ad Sales Deck Example: Show Off Your Brand Identity

One of the largest social networking sites, Reddit, starts its sales deck with an image of a cat riding a unicorn. By sharing something visually unexpected, you likely leave your audience with a lasting impact.

Throughout the deck, Reddit focuses on maintaining it’s brand identity. This sales deck example engages the audience and is not afraid to throw in memes and other pop-culture images to get their message across. Of course, this plays right into the community that Reddit has helped create. Reddit tries to stand out from boring sales pitches and aims for the “x” factor.

“Creation. Conversion. Cats.” – summarizes this sales deck!

Another technique Reddit uses is that they draw in their audience right away with impressive data points. It’s easy for your audience to digest nice round figures and helps clients measure how a product/service can potentially help them.

Read more: Presentation Tools That Enable Better Collaboration!

5. Snapchat Ad Sales Deck Example: Get the Headers Right

Snapchat is the pioneer of the newest form of communication- disappearing photos, videos, and messages. It is certainly a crowd favorite amongst 13-30-year-olds. Snapchat is known for having a relatively complex user interface and initially, they had difficulty in getting marketers and brands excited about promoting via Snapchat.

In 2014, Snapchat created a detailed sales deck explaining their product’s basics, it features, and examples of how people are using Snapchat to engage with one another.

Although Snapchat created a detailed sales deck filled with fine print and explanations, they broke their sales deck up by major points that their reader couldn’t miss. This technique is really helpful when a user is reading through your sales material and maybe skimming it. The bold highlighted text that screams ‘Our Story’ or ‘What Do I Snap’ helps clients to choose their own adventure.

It’s important to remember that all of your prospects have different levels of understanding about your product/service and space. By creating sales decks that can help prospects of varying levels of knowledge is important as you work to close your deal!

Read more: 6 Awesome Video Presentation Software and Tips to Follow!

6. Tumblr Ad Sales Deck Example: Less Slides & More Content

Blogging giant Tumblr released a new “web-in-stream” ad product that allows brands to be a part of the ‘greatest content stream’ on the internet. With a short six-slide-long sales deck, Tumblr gets straight to the point of what in-stream ads mean and why brands should care.

By choosing to keep their sales deck brief with only 6 slides, they were able to add more content inside of each slide. However, it’s difficult to use the same technique on a slide deck of 20 slides filled to the brim with information, because you could potentially lose your client’s attention.

If you can get straight to the point, this technique may work for your sale.

Read more: Sales Pitch: What is it & How to Create a Killer One?

7. WeWork Sales Deck Example: Variety of Visual Charts & Graphs

The pioneers of the co-working space mania, WeWork, provides shared-workspace, communities and services for entrepreneurs, freelancers, startups and small and large businesses. WeWork operates in over 16 countries and is now valued at $20 billion .

WeWork’s sales deck example begins by explaining what they do and how the industry they are serving needs their solution now more than ever. They have heavily relied on charts and flows to get their message across.

It’s important to note that they have taken the time to add images, logos, highlighted colors and a variety of chart styles to make each slide unique and interesting.

8. ProPad Sales Deck Example: Focus on the Prospect

Propane is a product management software that allows managers to share ideas, review, get feedback and create product roadmaps that keep the team informed and aligned.

This sales deck starts off by describing the problem they intend to solve and slowly moves into their value proposition . One technique Pro Pad deploys with their pitch deck are simple slides trickled throughout that have one bold sentence and bullet points on nearly all of their slides focusing on the words you & your .

It’s important for prospects to understand and subtly visualize how your product/services can help them. By speaking directly to their prospects, they help answer the what, why & how questions audiences have as features are presented to them.

9. Office 365 Sales Deck Example: Use Color for Impact

Office 365 is Microsoft’s subscription-based productivity suite that offers apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access.

Office 365’s sales deck follows the color scheme of all their productivity apps to maintain synergy. They have images of professionals working in the background to promote productivity and collaboration, and on each screen, they highlight important text behind a bright, vivid block of color.

Color is a great way to grab the attention of your audience and get their eyes to move around a page and focus on what’s important.

10. Crew Sales Deck Example: Keep it Minimal

The crew is an online marketplace for hiring freelancers, graphic designers, illustrators and software developers. Crew’s freelancers have completed work for companies like Dropbox, Eventbrite, Medium, and Tinder.

Crew’s sales deck is a perfect example of what a minimal deck looks like. As you go through this deck, you’ll see that it mainly comprises of single images, graphs & sentences entered in the middle.

This technique conveys your message succinctly on each slide. These types of sales decks are great when you are presenting so your audience doesn’t get distracted by the presentation behind you.

11. LeadCrunch Sales Deck Example: Play with Text Hierarchy

LeadCrunch uses artificial intelligence to mine quality, top of the sales funnel leads for B2B businesses.

LeadCrunch sales deck plays with font styles and sizes to create hierarchies on each page. They are subtly telling their audience what words/phrases to read first and which ones are the most important.

They have done a great job of making sure that each slide feels different with colored backgrounds, charts, and fonts. Although the deck is 20 slides deep, it goes fast because they have done such a great job with their visuals to help get their message across.

12. Mattermark Sales Deck Example: Define the Problem You Solve

Mattermark is essentially Google search for B2B businesses. Mattermark allows users to search for companies, employees, and investors in order to create an actionable list of leads. Mattermark’s sales/pitch deck does a great job of showing the problem they solve and their solution.

Whether you are selling to investors or prospects, it’s important that they understand the problem you are solving and how your solution is the best one out there.

Remember if you can’t define your problem, unfortunately, no one is going to care about your solution! We all want to buy services/products that help us solve the problem we have.

13. Relink Sales Deck Example: Play with Backgrounds

Relink is a technology startup that makes use of artificial intelligence and data science to connect applicants to jobs and jobs to applicants. Relink’s sales deck really makes it a point to stress the problems in current recruitment processes and how Relink’s technology can be used to be future-ready .

Relink’s sales deck example has done a great job playing with background images to draw in audience interest and create visual appeal. It’s important to note that your slide deck backgrounds should never take away from your central message.

You can see from Relink’s sales deck example that they play with transparency and color on top of background images to make sure their text is the central focus of each slide.

14. LinkedIn Sales Deck Example: Long Decks Can Be Interesting Too

Everybody’s favorite professional social network, LinkedIn was founded in 2002. It is a social networking website/app that allows individuals to connect with other professionals in their industry. Just like their site, LinkedIn sales deck is as professional as it can be.

LinkedIn’s sales deck checks all the boxes of a great sales deck filled with information, visuals, and graphs. One important thing that stands out, is its sheer length. Depending on your product/service or sale, there are times when you need a longer pitch deck.

It’s important that you capture your audience’s attention all the way through from the beginning to the end. LinkedIn created a perfect combination of a captivating, interesting and informational sales deck.

15. Buzzfeed Sales Deck Example: Straight to the Point

Buzzfeed is an internet media company that delivers entertainment, celebrity and trendy news to millions of people across the internet. Buzzfeed’s sales/pitch deck oozes confidence.

Starting their sales deck with the “where we are” section shows how much pride Buzzfeed has as they walk their audience on a journey of where they are headed.

Buzzfeed keeps their deck to the point. It’s difficult for the audience to be confused as they go from slide to slide. Sometimes less is more!

16. YouTube Sales Deck Example: Sometimes What You Do is More Important than How it Looks

With over a billion users, almost one-third of all internet users are on YouTube. On mobile devices alone, YouTube reaches more 18-34, and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S. YouTube has come a long way after being acquired by Google for $1.6 billion in 2006.

Their sales/pitch deck shows the early stages of YouTube and how it was meant for bigger things. YouTube knew they wanted to be the “primary outlet for user-generated videos” and succeeded in getting the message across to the investors and the public in general.

What is fascinating about this deck is the focus on the large font, with no visuals. There are times when your idea, product & service are so great that your audience might not mind a simplistic message via plain text on slides.

17. Moz SEO Sales Deck Example: Tie It Together with a Call to Action

Started way back in 2004 as an SEO company, Moz has grown to become a pioneer in content and inbound marketing. With a plethora of experience in getting visibility across the internet, Moz is an SEO and content marketing powerhouse.

It works perfectly for both beginners and advanced users, from keyword research tools, an SEO keyword generator, to link analysis to help companies improve their link quality.

Moz SEO’s analytics experience comes handy on their sales deck, which is full of rich data, key insights, and market trends. Graphs, charts, and tables- you name it, Moz’s sales deck got it all! This visually pleasing sales/pitch deck helped them raise over $18 million.

As you create your pitch deck, keep in mind what you ask. There’s a reason you created your sales deck. Make it clear to your audience that they need to act as you make your case. Check out the last slide of this sales deck and how they delivered their call to action.

18. Foursquare Sales Deck Example: Add Details for Self Service

Foursquare is a local discovery platform to find the best places to visit in your area. Foursquare’s sales deck does a phenomenal job of explaining the product, its features and incorporating social-proof to quickly gain credibility amongst investors.

There are times when you want your sales deck to be read thoroughly and fully understood by your audience. This is a great example of how to add details to your slides to make your sales/pitch deck ‘self-service.’

19. Buffer Sales Deck Example: KISS – Keep it Simple ‘Silly’

Buffer is a well-known social media management tool that allows you to manage multiple social media profiles from a single dashboard. Buffer is an easy way to schedule posts, track the performance of your content, and manage all your accounts in one place.

Below is the sales/pitch deck they used to raise half a million dollars from angel investors. Buffer’s sales deck is fast-paced, starting with the impact of social media on the internet. Buffer then goes on to discuss their milestones and how they plan to continue growing their product.

20. AppsFlyer Sales Deck: Why speak when you can show!

AppsFlyer’s sales deck is a classic example of “images trump written text” as their entire sales deck is filled with images, graphs, charts, and tables . Analytics can be a tough topic to explain and you don’t want to bore your clients with lengthy text-filled slides describing how the product works.

AppsFlyer does an amazing job by making use of pie charts, flow charts, and lots and lots of data to make a case and explain how AppsFlyer is the go-to mobile analytics platform. Take a look…

So there you have it. Our picks for the top 20 best sales deck examples of all time.

These sales deck examples will surely inspire you and get the creative ball rolling. Now go raise some money, impress some clients, and convert those prospects into customers!

Did we miss any sales deck examples that you think should have made the list? Which ones are your favorite? Do let us know in the comment section below!

Further reads:

12 Sales KPIs Your Sales Department Should Measure!
Sales Sheet: What is it & How to Create it? (Steps Included)
9 Sales Collateral Examples You Should be Using in 2022
Sales Contract: How to Create one for Your Business? (Steps Included)
Sales Tracker: What is it & How to Create One? (Template Included)
Sales Proposal: What is it & How to Create a Perfect One?
Sales Playbook: What is it & How To Create? (Template Included)

15 Digital Marketing Tools To Help Every Marketer in 2023!

How to Write an Impressive Business One Pager? (Template Included)

Improve customer satisfaction in these 11 smart ways, 8 different types of branding strategies (with examples), top 13 video hosting sites you need to check out, 7 best issue tracking software in 2023, 11 agile project management tools you should use in 2023, unique selling proposition: what is it & how to create your own.

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Here’s The Greatest Sales Pitch Example Andy Raskin Has Ever Seen (with downloadable slides)

We had just landed in Toronto and I was scrambling to get through customs, find our ride from the airport, and catch-up on Slack messages when I got this email:

Andy Raskin?

We know him. He wrote that article last year “ The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen ” that went viral. We’re big fans of his work and asked him to speak at HYPERGROWTH this year.

What did he do?

So I went over to Twitter and saw this:

“The Greatest Sales Pitch I’ve Seen All Year” — first saw @Drift do it @OpenViewVenture — here’s why it’s brilliant https://t.co/YBkF1LyM7d pic.twitter.com/q1aiwqXoAJ — Andy Raskin (@araskin) October 24, 2017

Andy wrote a new article — “ The Greatest Sales Pitch I’ve Seen All Year ” — and this time it was about what we are doing at Drift.

Since then, this article has been shared nearly 4,000 times, and as a result, we’ve received hundreds of emails and Drift messages from people asking for the sales pitch deck.

So we figured we would do what we do with all of our content here at Drift and give it away for free.

Here’s a full recording below of the presentation we gave at OpenView’s Go-to-Market Forum (that’s where Andy saw this for the first time):

Below are the slides from the presentation. If you’d like a copy, you can access them for download here .

"The Greatest Sales Deck I've Ever Seen"

- andy raskin, get the deck.

Recently we were pleasantly surprised when we ran across this post on LinkedIn. Andy Raskin, a messaging and positioning expert responsible for crafting some of the most successful sales, marketing and investor pitches in Silicon Valley, was touting that a sales deck made by Zuora was the “greatest sales deck he’s ever seen." That’s high praise coming from Andy.

In his post, Andy spells out the 5 reasons he thinks the deck is so “brilliant." We’re flattered because at Zuora our brand and creative team puts a tremendous amount of effort into crafting our messaging and telling compelling, visual stories that help communicate our vision to the rest of the world.

Andy was asked by his source (an ex-Zuora employee) to not share the original deck publicly, and he respectfully obliged. But in case you’re curious to look deeper at our ‘perfect pitch,’ we’ve created this PDF for your viewing pleasure.

Download and enjoy!

Nailing Your Go-To-Market Positioning

Market positioning is hard. For help, check out this solid strategic framework for crafting your…

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The Greatest Sales Deck Ever?
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COMMENTS

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