Giving an effective sales presentation is key to closing deals and growing your business. However, with the average attention span getting shorter, creating a presentation that engages your audience both visually and verbally is more important than ever. Follow these tips to make a sales deck that grabs attention and drives home your key messages.
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Know Your Audience
The first step in creating an impactful sales presentation is understanding who your audience is and what messaging will resonate with them. Learn about their challenges, goals, and biases to tailor both your verbal message and supporting visuals. For example, are you presenting to the C-suite or mid-level managers? What problems do they want to solve? Tailoring to their perspective makes content more relevant.
Limit Text
Today’s audiences expect visual storytelling over dense text on slides. Limit yourself to a maximum of six words per line and six lines per slide. Any more than that and you risk losing their attention as they struggle to read small font. Use text sparingly to emphasise key data points or convey your core message. Avoid full paragraphs and blocks of text.
Infographics such as charts are a useful tool to condense complex concepts, data, or processes into simple, visually engaging graphics. They leverage the power of visual storytelling to make information easily digestible. What is an infographic poster? This is just one of the templates you can use as part of a presentation.
Effective infographics use colour, icons, diagrams, charts and minimal text to transform intricate details into easily grasped facts. Viewers can rapidly decipher meaning from well-designed infographics much faster than paragraphs of dense text. Simply put, infographics make even elaborate ideas readily accessible. They allow audiences to absorb key messages at a glance. For presenting detailed information to today’s fast-paced consumers and decision makers, infographic visuals get concepts across clearly and succinctly.
Use High-Impact Images
Relevant, high-quality images that reinforce your verbal message can boost engagement and recall. Choose photographs over clipart, as realistic images feel more authoritative. Where possible, use images showing emotive people that the audience can relate to, such as a smiling customer for a slide on satisfaction scores. This creates an unconscious emotional connection.
Prioritise Visual Flow
How your slides connect matters. Use simple transitional builds from one slide to the next rather than randomly flashing up images. Construct a logical visual story centred around your core sales messages. arrange your slides so they flow in a natural order that guides your audience on a visually cohesive journey.
Limit Busy Slides
A common mistake is cramming too many disparate visual elements onto one slide. This overwhelms the audience, making it hard for them to know what to focus on. Simplify busy slides using boxes, arrows or numbers to connect elements and guide the viewer’s eye in the right sequence. Alternatively, split cluttered points across an additional 1-2 slides.
Use Colour Purposefully
Colours evoke emotional responses. Blue creates trust, green signifies growth and renewal, while red conveys urgency. Use colours strategically on key slides to reinforce meanings. For example, red revenue arrows pointing up signify positive financial impacts. Ensure your palette feels cohesive rather than random. Limit colours to a triad for the best visual harmony.
Style Images Consistently
Maintaining a consistent style for images creates cohesion across your deck. Ensure all photos used match in terms of perspective, colour treatment and level of realism. For conceptual illustrations like graphs, consider using the same iconographic style so visual motifs tie together logically. This strengthens branding impact.
Use Video or Animation Judiciously
Motion grabs attention but should not distract from your core message. Use short video clips or animated builds only where most relevant. For example, an animated graph clearly illustrating rising sales figures over 5 years reinforces growth messages verbally. Limit videos to 30-45 seconds. Anything longer risks disengaging your viewers.
Design Visually Striking Charts
Big, beautiful charts such as infographics attract eyes to key data points. Maximise visual impact by stripping away clutter like gridlines, legends and labels. Emphasise only essential headline numbers viewers need to grasp meaning. Colour code elements for clarity. Keep visualisations simple, clear and bold.
Check Accessibility
Use colourblind-friendly palettes and colour-neutral visual motifs. Choose strong colour contrasts between text and background. Check that the font sizes are readable from the back row. These simple adjustments ensure your presentation is inclusive for diverse audiences.
In a digital-first business landscape, sales presentations must appeal visually to gain mindshare. Follow these best practices for slide design, imagery and colour use to craft compelling, professional presentations that engage audiences and deliver results.
