An explain article

I often talk with salespeople. Similarly, I often talk with sales managers or CEOs. They all have one thing in common: They know that sales will become increasingly important in the coming years. Unfortunately, they often lack ideas on how to professionalize it further and thus make the company even more successful.

The sales presentation as the most important sales tool

In times of digitization and globalization, products and services are becoming increasingly interchangeable. Customers can find information on the internet and also make purchases. The difference is really made only by the salesperson. Their communication skills determine whether the customer buys or not.

If companies still want to be successful in the future – and I assume this of every company here – they need an extraordinary and professional sales team. How can that be achieved? What can make sales even more professional and extraordinary in the future? A central lever is the decisive communication instrument in B2B and the most important tool of sales: the sales presentation.

I would like to present three central features of a sales presentation that make sales not only more effective but also more efficient.

#01 - Modular structure for more interaction

A simple calculation: There are studies that show that a sales representative spends too much time preparing their presentation for a sales appointment. They spend several hours in front of PowerPoint, guessing the customer's needs and the course of the conversation. Let's assume that the sales representative prepares an average of two hours for one appointment and does this for three appointments per week. This results in a total of 22 working days a year, which are only needed for creating presentations.

Let's translate this into a monetary amount. Suppose there are about 120 sales representatives in the company. From the preparation time, opportunity costs of about half a million euros can arise. An impressive sum.

The goal should therefore be to reduce this preparation time to a minimum. Then the sales team would have more time in their increasingly tough business to follow up on offers, talk to customers, or do other valuable things. And the company would save a lot of money.

The solution is simple: The sales representative must work with a modularly structured presentation. Most sales presentations we create at EXPLAIN exhibit this modularity. This means that sales have all the necessary content at hand and can access and present it in a dialogue-oriented manner. This also creates a real conversation with the customer. A conversation that does not overwhelm the customer and does not bore them. A conversation with relevant content.

For this, you need a central presentation with a professionally crafted storyline that has additional content in the backup. A short story that conveys emotions and benefits. And not a fireworks display of figures, data, and facts, organizational charts, or locations.

Preparation time approaches zero with this approach. Sales have the right arguments and present uniformly. By the way, this also particularly pleases marketing and management.

#02 - Scalability through acceptance

Due to this modularity, the presentation fits the different requirements and interests of the customers. Equally important is that the presentation suits every salesperson. It must be scalable accordingly for this. A prerequisite for this is the commitment of the sales team. It is necessary for them to be strongly involved in the development of the presentation. This avoids the classic situation: Marketing creates something that sales cannot and does not want to work with.

Then it doesn't matter whether there are two, two hundred, or two thousand salespeople. Together with modularity, scalability is an extremely effective feature. Efficiency is ultimately achieved through a slide management system, with which you can provide the salespeople with specific content at the touch of a button, centrally manage and control slide updates, or easily perform design checks and updates.

We at EXPLAIN and many of our customers also work with such a system. Working time with PowerPoint quickly reduces by 40 percent, and the investment usually pays off within a few weeks. Actually a must for every company.

#03 - Successful sales presentations only succeed through stories

In the end, the target group or person must naturally be reached. Storytelling has been a hot topic for years, but it will decide even more about success in the future. It is now even scientifically proven that you can best reach people with stories, especially in sales. In the spirit of Plato, it can be said:

In the future, products and services will become increasingly interchangeable due to digitization. Their own stories are not – whether it's the founding story, success stories, or perhaps even stories about failures that have allowed a company to grow.

Customers usually do not buy what you offer but why you offer it. Present this "why" first!

Conclusion: Practice makes the master seller

If you enable sales with training to handle this, carry the stories into the world, and present and sell convincingly, then you will not only quickly increase sales but also gain more profit through efficiency. In the long term, however, you mainly secure the company's success, especially in times of digitization.

I wish you much success!