In most B2B sales, even in a startup you will find yourself giving presentations to potential customers. There are many types of visual enablers you can use for presentations, the most common being PowerPoint. We all remember the student in college who either overdid his presentations, or just left us wondering why he even needed a PowerPoint if he was just going to read off every slide. In this article I will provide you with some key tips to success in your sales presentations.
A few tips on visuals: the goal of visuals are to help your presentation stand out. A good test is called the “Billboard Effect”, is your message clear in 3-5 seconds? If it takes longer than that to decipher the purpose of the visual, you probably should not be using it. Simplicity of design especially in a PowerPoint presentation helps keep the focus on the important things such as your product, so try to have just a few points per slide, a few contrasting colors, simple fonts, and photos and art only as required. No one wants to visually sift through layers of pictures, animations and jokes. Simplicity is the name of the game. Below is an example of how terribly wrong this can go.
When using data in a presentation, stay away from pie charts, bubble charts and 3D charts. These are more complicated to look at and take more time to read. Visuals such as charts should clearly and quickly show the positive message. Good charts to use would be bar charts, dot plots, and line graphs.
Keep the structure of your presentation simple. A good template to follow in a sales presentation is a three step structure: Problem, Pathway, Solution. This helps make the presentation easy to follow and allows you to either contract or expand it based on the amount of time you have.
Lastly, just remember that not every presentation needs a PowerPoint presentation. So before you make one ask yourself if what you’re presenting on is significant and if the viewers would benefit from a visual aid. Then, go out there and present with passion. No one wants to hear you read off a slide in a monotone voice. Significance creates passion, passion attracts attention, and attention leads to action.
testacr22 
Trinity Blank 
Caroline Marie Dawson
Mastering the art of presentations and powerpoint is a difficult skill. These are some great tips for getting it right. Personally, I’m a fan of the pie chart. Another key thing to remember is maintaining continuity between slides. Keeping the themes the same as well as imaging.
I’ve always observed that the most effective presentations do not have all the “fluff” but get right to the point in a creative way. In fact, the best presentations can sometimes just be pictures on a powerpoint with no words, requiring the creator to do most of the communicating.
This is definitely an applicable skill on many levels in sales and business, pretty much any profession could potentially require presentations at some point in the education process leading up to the job or the job itself. I like the way that you touch on the visuals and basic structure to simplify the process of creating an engaging yet succinct presentation!