Building a Strong, Cohesive Sales Deck

28 May Building a Strong, Cohesive Sales Deck

Just like Lloyd Christmas, our hopes are challenged when giving a presentation and prospects delay contact, vaguely reply, or flat out reject our pitch. Salespeople and presenters recognize that a strong sales deck can say volumes. When you let your presentation, marketing visuals, and product speak for you, ease is created taking pressure off yourself as a presenter.  In order to build a strong sales deck that you or your salespeople can be proud of, use the following suggestions.

Presentation Materials Ease Stress of Presenting

Sales pitches are accompanied by a sales deck. A sales deck includes the collection of items that will be used to enhance a presentation for prospective clients. This deck can include, but is not limited to, items such as business cards, brochures, printed packets, notes from a presentation, and even promotional items. When planning your next sales presentation, take time to tie together visuals and content in a way to pull your viewer into your product or service and make them stick around. A strong, cohesive sales deck can alleviate potential rejection when you know your materials are well designed, printed, and professional. You and your team can present with confidence knowing your sales deck is almost doing the presenting for you.

Key Components to a Strong Sales Deck

A large number of workers who present regularly agree that presentations are critical to their work, and 75% of those who present regularly want to improve their presentation skills. In order to create a positive connection between you and your audience, there are key elements in creating a sales deck that will naturally create ease for both you and your audience. As you present, keep in mind that you are communicating a story, creating strong connections with your audience and providing valuable takeaways. Using just the right amount of printed materials can make or break a presentation.

Presentation PowerPoint/Slides – Choose your method of presentation wisely. It is easy to get carried away with too many slides, and copious amounts of information. Instead, keep your slides to 15, limit the information by keeping key issues on the slides and keeping the design of the slides uncluttered. A rule of thumb in the business world is to keep 5 topics on the slide. Make the font large enough so your audience can read it across the room and keep design elements at a minimal.
Pro Tip: Stay away from clip art and depending on your audience size bring print outs.

Marketing Materials: Brochures, Handouts, Rack Cards – While printed materials are absolutely vital, do not overwhelm with too many. Having a well printed brochure or rack card is enough to get your message across to your customer/client. Pro Tip: use high quality paper, full-color ink, and make the document you are handing out visually engaging.

Product Demo/Props – Just like us, you have sat in many a presentation where a speaker read to you from the slides, spoke in monotone, or talked entirely too much. Consider utilizing a product demo or a prop to spice things up for the audience. The more involved your audience can be, the more interest you will generate. If your work is something where a product isn’t available, consider pictures of a service you offer, or a printout of a customer’s email.
Pro Tip:a small promotional item can stay with clients for years to come!

Quality Print Material Will Sell Your Presentation

Crafting a compelling message for clients takes time. Visually creating the components of the sales deck to engage consumers to listen is part of the creation process. With the bombardment of information flying through our hands and eyes daily, telling a captivating story is an artform. To do this, consider each element of your story: design, color scheme, paper, printing process, etc. When selecting paper use semi-gloss, not glossy paper. Glossy paper is too shiny for most text to be legible. Full-color is absolutely crucial, and when you have prepared your final product take it to a professional printer.When creating handouts to supplement your story, print brochures and materials on high-quality stock. When heading to the printer, remember it is recommended to use a stock of 30+ pounds. If you are using multiple pages in a booklet, be sure to have them bound for a more professional look. As you consider graphic design, be sure to grab your viewer’s attention. All of these things can take some time to implement, but in the long run, they are vital to a well thought out, well-planned and cohesive sales deck for you and your team.

Professional Printer in East Tennessee

If you have an upcoming sales pitch that needs materials or even design from the ground up, we’d love to hear from you. Our high-quality printers can easily take your vision for your presentation to reality. Click HERE or call 855-581-8528 today to get in touch with our expert team of graphic designers and printers and take the first step toward a more efficient, cost effective way to grow your business through print!