B2B sales and the typical B2B customer buying journey sports its own challenges. When selling to another business on behalf of one business, salespeople have to be prepared to understand the buying behaviors of multiple decision makers from their target buying account.
Throughout the B2B sales process, sales reps are known to support their calls and demos with either product showcase pages or sales presentations (sales decks).
A sales deck is one of the most crucial supporting elements in any sales process, not only can it be used as a reference during a sales pitch, it can also be repurposed and sent as a follow up cadence to pursue and finally close a deal.
A typical sales deck should include updated and relevant information about your company and product along with its latest features and it needs to be amended and personalized before each sales pitch to include key problem areas and solutions for the target account a sales person is hoping to close a deal with.
In business-to-business today, buying journeys can become more complex simply because every business and decision maker has a plethora of competing options and solutions to choose from. Understanding this and using supporting sales documents like the sales deck to deepen prospecting message and try to close a deal can help initiate better ROI at the end of the day.
For this to happen, sales leaders need to identify newer ways and strategies that can help their company’s sales deck stand out from the crowd while creating that push to buy.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when recreating a sales deck for better effect in 2022:
A Product-feature Heavy Sales Deck won’t Cut it
B2B teams and decision makers today receive far too many product pitches and even sales presentations in their inbox. While it is important to craft sales presentations in a way so as to capture the most important features and its benefits your services and product can offer to the prospect, a product-heavy sales presentation won’t be enough to create that mark in such a competitive market.
Crafting the sales deck to broadcast the most important service features and benefits while also using it to tell your product and company story in a creative manner is needed to get prospects to return to it and reread it.
Too much Information Adds to the Noise
Sales decks are meant to be used to support a sales conversation or sales call, or to be sent as an attachment after a sales call, as a follow up or to act as a summary of what you discussed during an actual sales meeting.
We live in a digital-first world where prospects of every kind receive far too many attachments, pitches and emails already. Content heavy sales presentations might have worked many, many years ago for certain environments but today’s need of the hour revolves around having light weight, easy to read, crisp sales presentations that have all the most required information about a product or service/pricing comparisons/contact details and similar such elements.
Interspersing the text with creative visuals that can prompt the reader to keep moving to the next page can be a useful tactic in getting them to read the full presentation or staying attentive to it if you are using it while on a sales call.
Keeping Multiple Readable Formats of the Sales Deck Ready
A typical sales deck usually comprises of a couple of pages as a PPT. This is where sales leaders can work closely with their core content marketing teams or those responsible for company collaterals to create multiple versions like one-pagers and PDFs to add value during future sales follow ups.
Readers/buyers in today’s competitive digital-first environment don’t necessarily have the time to carefully read through everything you send them, the most common behavior is to skim through these kind of documents to capture the most essential elements only.
Recreating your main sales message or product information through quote cards, one-pagers, a voice note, for instance, can add value and give the reader/recipient something different in their inbox, this can help get your brand and pitch to stand out.
Maintaining Different Sales Presentation Versions Based on the Buyer Journey
Moving B2B buyers through the buying journey is easy enough once you have the right data on their purchase intent and buying patterns in place. Keeping various versions of any sales collaterals, including the core sales deck can help save time when you try to move prospects through to the purchase stage.
For these various sales deck versions to be regularly updated and maintained as a central repository, it is crucial for sales executives to properly decode and breakdown their target prospect’s buying journey and to identify the right prompt and triggers that can be used in these different variations.
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