Can Sales Presentations Be Consistent and Customized At The Same Time?
by Dave Paradi, MBA, co-author of "Guide to PowerPoint"

Sales and Marketing executives today realize two important factors in the marketplace that seem to be at odds with each other.  First, they need sales presentations to be consistent from a branding and messaging perspective.  Second, every presentation needs to be customized to the customer and the situation.

The need for customization leads to standard slide files and set presentations.  These are typically created by the marketing department and often the number of different combinations of products and services leads to a fixed number of presentations that try to deal with only certain situations.  These presentations get sent to the field staff, who see them as too restrictive and immediately set about modifying the set presentations to actually meet the needs of their upcoming client presentation.  So all the work at standardization exists for less than ten minutes once it reaches the sales professionals in the field.

The other end of the spectrum allows the sales professionals complete control over all aspects of the presentation to deliver the most customized presentation for each customer.  The sales professionals, not trained in graphic design, pick one of the standard slide templates in PowerPoint or buy one off the Web.  They create slides that are usually text heavy and devoid of many visuals at all.  And it usually takes them hours to create the slides since they don’t have the proper training.  The slides lose all branding impact, are poorly designed and likely do not convey a consistent message about the products or services being offered.  When an executive goes into the field to see a client presentation, they are horrified at what they see and how the company is being portrayed.

If neither of these approaches work, what can you do?  Fortunately, there is an approach that gives you the benefits of both of these ends of the spectrum without the downside usually associated with either.  This blended approach gives sales professionals the standards and structure that is required to ensure consistency, but also allows them to customize the presentation within given boundaries.  The result is a sales force that spends less time creating presentations that end up being more effective when delivered.

Let’s look at each part of this blended approach.  In order to create some standards and structure around the message that is delivered to the marketplace, organizations have to put two key pieces of the puzzle in place.  First, they need to create an organizational “look” to all presentation pieces, from slides to printed material.  This is a consistent set of colors, layout and graphics that will reinforce the brand to the customer.  It also frees the sales professionals from having to create a “look”, which can take a lot of time.

Second, they need to create standard presentation pieces around the messages they want to deliver.  This is usually done for printed pieces, but the greatest benefit will be in creating a set of slides that communicates the common messages that sales professionals need to include in many of their presentations.  These messages may be about the product, services, intended uses, results, testimonials from existing customers or any other idea that is regularly communicated.  The slides should be more visuals than text to encourage discussion of the idea with the client.  The standard slide files form a library of slides that the sales professionals will use to dramatically reduce their presentation preparation time.

The customization part of the approach is achieved through training.  Once the standard slides have been created, sales professionals are trained on how to pick and choose from the standard set to quickly create the framework for a new presentation.  By properly structuring their presentation and picking the standard slides that they need, usually 80% of the presentation is complete in a very short period of time.  Then, the sales professionals learn how to create new slides and modify existing slides to customize them, all within the parameters that will keep the presentation looking clean and polished.  They learn to think visually to keep the slides interesting and conversational.

When the sales professional delivers these slides, they will do so more comfortably because they have practiced with the standard slides in previous presentations.  The visual nature of the slides allows them to talk about the idea instead of reading text off the slides (the number one annoyance for audiences).  And the few customizations are easy to work into the flow of the presentation.

Organizations who adopt this consistent but customized approach will see greater sales professional productivity and more effective presentations, leading to higher sales.  This approach captures the two crucial success factors that sales and marketing executives need to focus on in today’s competitive marketplace.

© MMVII Dave Paradi

Dave Paradi’s Think Outside the Slide™ approach helps presenters get results by showing them how to quickly create effective PowerPoint presentations. He is the co-author of “Guide to PowerPoint”, part of the Prentice Hall Series in Advanced Business Communication. He offers a free PowerPoint e-course, newsletter and articles on his web site at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.