5 Creative Presentation Ideas from Top Sales Leaders

While sales isn’t the only profession that has to deliver impactful presentations frequently, it’s certainly something sales professionals do regularly. So how can you go about keeping your prospect’s attention and covering all the information you need? Try these five creative presentation ideas I learned from Julie Hansen of Performance Sales and Training to improve your presentation style and gain new and effective presentation skills.

#1 Break Your Talk Down Into Chunks

People are constantly being bombarded with new and exciting information and the average attention span has gone down to five minutes. This means long, linear presentations are no longer the most effective way to present your material. Instead, you should break your talk into three to five minute chunks and focus each chunk on a certain part of the message. Changing chunks is as simple as changing topics or shifting to a new point.

#2 Focus on What’s Most Important

Your prospect has already read your website and reviewed enough information to determine whether you’re likely to be able to help them, so skip the parts of the presentation where you introduce your company. Just like movies and novels start with the most compelling part of the action, your presentation should start by answering the main questions that they’re likely to have. Focus on what’s going to be most important to them.

#3 Customize For Your Audience

Different buyers of the same product will be interested in different features or aspects. Take the time to think about what might be driving their purchasing decisions and customize your presentation to talk to the specific prospect. This is more than putting their logos on your standard slide deck. This is doing your research and getting into their heads to be able to answer those most important questions first. Ask yourself how your features will impact them. When you understand your customers, you can help connect the dots between the problem they have and the solution you’re offering.

#4 Know Your Key Point

What is the one thing you want your audience to walk away from your presentation remembering? For a sales professional, it’s probably that you can help them solve a certain problem. If you know the key point you want them to take home, you can then build the rest of your presentation about that topic and present it in a number of different fashions to improve its stickiness.

#5 Keep Your Audience Engaged

When your audience is actively engaged with your presentation, they are much more likely to remember the details of the material you’re presenting. There are many different ways to engage your audience, asking questions is only one. Simple engagement such as slides, videos, and stories is the first step. Active engagement such as questions and contests are even better. You can add these engaging sections in between the different chunks of your talk to help break it up and keep your audience attentive.

With these five tips, you’ll be sure to keep your audience engaged and spark an ongoing conversation about how you can help your prospect. While we can’t replace the charisma and art of the sales professional in the field, Team StepUp can support your company with great branding, insightful content, and lead generation. We can also help with automation – get a taste of how automation can improve efficiency with our free guide to email follow-up. These and other automation tools free your sales team to do what they do best – take the story of your company and share it with your best prospects, personally.