What is a Functional Sales Presentation Like? – 4 tips for building a good sales presentation

Trustmary teamTrustmary team
Last edited: March 27th, 2024

One of the most important tools in the salesperson’s toolbox is the sales presentation.

At its best, sales presentation helps the company to

  • stand out from its competitors
  • stay in customers’ minds
  • convinces the customer that you are the right actor to solve their problem
  • distinguish itself from competitors
  • leaves a strong memory footprint

But how do you build a functional sales presentation? Below are four things to remember when planning a sales presentation!

1. Remember social proof

Recommendations, reviews, and one’s and others’ experiences are known to influence purchase decisions. Therefore, Customer Stories and testimonials are the most important elements in a good sales presentation.

Testimonials and reviews affect potential customers in two ways. We are interested in what others do and think because:

  1. we don’t want to feel left out of the group and make bad decisions
  2. we tend to trust that others know what they are doing.

The share of so-called early adopters (ie those who are the first to experiment with new products and innovation) is on average 14 % of the potential customer base. They are people who trust their own intuition and vision and do not need the opinions of others to guide them in decision-making.

You can best influence all the rest with the recommendations and testimonials of existing customers. Use this to your advantage in your sales presentations: Show your existing customers’ experiences preferably right at the beginning of your sales visit.

What about corporate videos? Business videos are often made primarily for the company itself. I know that you would love to show it to the customer right at the start of the presentation. However, the customer is probably not that interested in seeing the video.

Instead, she wants to hear about the benefits of your service and about what kind of partner you really are. Who is better at telling these things than a satisfied customer who has already bought from you? Try Trustmary for free for collecting customer feedback and testimonials for your business.

2. Personalize

A good sales meeting is not a product presentation. Focus on the customer and her problems: listen to what kind of problems and challenges she has and offer a solution to overcome them.

In the presentation, highlight the benefits, and not the features, of your service and products. Tell the potential customer why your approach is better than others. When you describe your company, tell a story instead of detailed facts. Why has your company been established? What kind of problems have you wanted to solve? Where are you going?

A good sales presentation adapts to the customer’s needs. Different customers and buyer personalities require a different amount of information. While the DISC model’s C-type wants to get all the possible information and more, the D-type is bored with dozens of slides and details.

A great way to add credibility and personalize your sales presentation is to add relevant reviews from their field. If you have some known names from that industry highlight what those companies think about working with you!

At some meetings, the sales presentation is not even opened, because the expertise of the salesperson may be enough to build trust. 

3. Use less text

Because we naturally love our own products and services, it is difficult to resist the desire to write all possible information to the sales presentation. When all things are written down on the slides, the salesperson simply cannot forget anything.

However, when your slides are full of text, you’ll encounter two very likely scenarios:

  1. The meeting becomes a product presentation. Especially the junior salespersons may be afraid to depart from the well-planned process and may end up just reading aloud the things written on the slides. In this scenario, the above-mentioned customer orientation and personalization will surely be forgotten.
  2. The customer focuses on reading the text instead of listening to what you have to say.

So, leave details for internal study materials, your own notes, and offers and contracts.

On a sales slide, just the title and a few keywords are enough. Think about what is the most important thing you want the customer to remember from a particular slide and get rid of everything else.

Instead of text, favor pictures, infographics, figures, and videos. The so-called visual stimuli support the emergence of images and leave a stronger memory footprint – even more images.

4. Focus on visuals

Focusing on visuals is a good idea as it helps you to bring out your company’s brand and reflect the right image of your business.

In marketing, the so-called halo effect refers to a situation in which other positive features are also attached to a strikingly positive matter. When your presentation is visually stylish and clear, you get the results of the tasks the company accomplishes are also of high quality and that cooperation with your company is straightforward. Check out e.g. these Google Slides templates to elevate your slideshows easily.

Do not use the “two people shaking hands” -type imagery and other clichés, because they hardly help you to stand out, and they certainly do not help you to build a convincing brand. Prefer high-quality images of your own employees, your customers, your products, and so on.

For visual presentations, we can warmly recommend, for example, the Finnish presentation platform called Seidat. In addition to visual features, it’s easy to maintain, update, and personalize presentations with Seidat. There is also a live presentation feature, which is a convenient solution for long-distance meetings.


Trustmary team
Trustmary team


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