5 tips on how to pitch a winning sales presentation. September 11, 2019

5 tips on how to pitch a winning sales presentation.

Sales presentations are a key factor in making a sale for your business. The sales presentation needs to be done right!

Your presentation is your pitch. Delivering a winning presentation isn't just about having the best or the cheapest product, but about creating a convincing, informative and confident pitch.

It is about being able to present yourself and get trust from the people you are presenting to, so that they can make an informed decision and hopefully purchase your products or services!

An effective sales presentation engages prospective customers in the products or services offered and influences the purchasing decision.

Below we discuss 5 different key areas and tips on how to present a winning sales presentation.

1. Body Language

The first key area is body language. Body language is a huge part of communication in business and in personal life. Approximately 55% of what we present in our body language is picked up on and people respond to that accordingly. If you have open and welcoming body language you are more likely to endear trust for yourself, your organisation and the people you are presenting to. This means it is more important than ever during a sales presentation, to ensure you are displaying confident, open and friendly body language to your audience.

2. Visual Aids

The second key area is the use of visual aids. Depending on what your product or service is, visual aids are very important in both engaging audiences and getting your point across! Some examples of visual aids include physical samples of products, videos, models, pictures, graphs and charts. Nowadays with the use of new emerging technology some businesses even use VR and AR technology as visual aids in sales presentations.

We all know that people learn differently, and it applies the same to people buying differently! Some people like to have things explained to them verbally with words and some people like to see things visually. We’ve heard the expression, ‘a picture paints a thousand words,’ and this is very true in sales presentations. It is understanding what motivates individual’s buying behaviours and how we can use different visual aids to the best of our abilities.

3. Engage your audience

The third key area is to actively engage your audience! Depending on who your audience is, you need to make sure you tailor your pitch to them specifically to maximise their engagement.

Your audience will be made up of different people at different times. You might not necessarily do the same presentation every time depending on who you are presenting too. If you had 6 managing directors in the room at one time for example you may want to get straight to the point and just name the facts and figures whereas the managers underneath them will want to know more about what the product or service does or how it functions. You may also need to change your body language, tone of voice, outfit and visual aid for each audience. A suit and tie with a lot of confident body language may be suitable when speaking to business executives in a boardroom however if you are meeting with shop floor manager at their shop you may want to dress down more casually in order to make your client feel more comfortable.

An effective use of engaging your audience would also be to ask them tailored questions, getting them involved in the presentation as individuals, finding out their specific pain points, needs and aspirations for your product/service. The more involved and engaged somebody is, the more they are going to trust you.

4. Get your point across quickly

The fourth point is getting your point across quickly. We have all heard the term, ‘time is money,’ so what we want to need to do is make sure that our presentation is succinct, clear and that we get the point across straight away.

Be specific in your pitch and do not waste time on non-essential information. People, especially mangers are time poor and will appreciate time efficiency.

5. Establish Credibility

The last key area we focus on is to establish credibility. This is a very critical point. Personal and organisational credibility can be established in several ways. We have talked about trust and that is a key credible attribute to have, but also understanding what you are talking about and being an expert in your field is extremely important.

Use external facts and figures, professional/expert quotes about the industry, use numbers, graphs and findings from research. Also use internal sources of information – present good customer feedback, reviews, case studies, client pictures and sources of marketing or promotion that intend to build credibility.

Get to know your product or service extremely well! Whether it is highly technical or not you should know what you are selling like the back of your hand. You should be an expert in your field and also an expert in information about your organisation, eg. How long have they been in business, how many locations, biggest clients etc. If you have the time you should also research this information about your client as well. You should keep informed of current marketing promotions, offers or deals to ensure you are offering clients the best deal. It would look bad if you were to offer a quote face to face only to find your product is cheaper elsewhere online. This is crucial to establish your personal credibility and to position yourself as a representative of the product/service and a consultant.