What is a sales pitch deck?
A sales pitch deck is a concise presentation that effectively communicates an organization’s product or service value proposition, features, benefits, and proof points to potential customers. A pitch deck for sales typically consists of slides with appealing visuals and messaging that highlight buyer challenges and how the organization’s product or service solves those problems. The objective of the deck is to persuade and engage the audience during a sales conversation.
What’s the difference between a pitch deck and a sales pitch?
While “sales pitch deck” and “sales pitch” might appear to be synonymous, they carry distinct meanings. A sales pitch refers to the messaging or talk track that a sales professional uses to communicate value when engaging with a customer face-to-face, over the phone, or via email.
A sales pitch deck is a visual tool used in a sales pitch that enables sellers to present a narrative and elaborate in greater detail about use cases, features, and customer stories. A B2B sales pitch deck gives sellers the opportunity to ask questions and frame the conversation around the prospect’s unique needs.
The purpose of a sales pitch deck
The purpose of a sales pitch slide deck is to help a sales rep tell a compelling story that generates interest and a two-way dialogue with a potential customer. Creating a meaningful sales conversation helps the seller learn more about the buyer and convince them to continue down the path to purchase.
What to include in a sales pitch deck outline
A sales pitch deck typically includes information on the company’s problem-solving solution, product or services, market opportunity, competitive landscape, customer testimonials, pricing model, financial projections, team expertise, and a call to action. Done well, slides are made up of a combination of visuals — images, charts, or diagrams — and clear and simple language that make it easy for the audience to understand how your product and/or services will benefit them. When creating a sales pitch deck, consider an outline that includes the following types of slides:
Problems and challenges
This slide introduces the pain points that your customer is facing and should include research that demonstrates your understanding of the industry and business landscape. Starting with the customer problem helps the seller adopt a consultative sales approach that builds trust.
Solution and value proposition
After acknowledging your customer’s challenges, it’s time to make the connection between your solution or service and how it can solve the problem. This is an opportunity to present a new way of thinking and to articulate your unique value proposition in a way that stands out from the competition.
Features and capabilities
This slide is an overview of the key features and capabilities that your solution provides. Pairing this information with benefit statements makes these slides relevant to your audience while helping them understand how these capabilities will address their needs.
Demo
Questions and discussion about the product and services often lead to a short demonstration (demo) of what your product offers. Seeing your solution live helps the seller highlight unique features and capabilities and translate them into tangible business benefits.
Customer testimonial
Sharing a few customer stories that align with the prospect’s industry or size is a great way to show proof of success and provide the right context to help buyers envision using your product or service.
Pricing and services
After generating excitement about your product or service, it’s important to clearly explain your pricing and what’s included. It should be easy for your audience to understand how they can purchase your product and/or service offerings and the value it could bring to their organization.
Streamline personalization for effective engagement
Best practices that inspire the perfect pitch
To deliver a compelling story that will convince your buyers, your sellers must be well-versed in your product and knowledgeable about the challenges their buyer faces. To effectively communicate your value proposition, a sales pitch deck needs to include the essential elements noted in the section above and must be organized in a way that engages your audience.
Sales pitch deck examples will differ between organizations. But, there are sales deck outlines and recommendations around length and flow that nearly every seller can benefit from. Read on for tips to create the best sales deck for your team.
The 10-20-30 rule
When composing a sales pitch deck, it can be challenging to distill your value proposition and product details into just a few slides. While it’s easy to get carried away — you are passionate about your organization, after all — the 10-20-30 rule advises limiting pitch decks to 10 slides, keeping presentations under 20 minutes, and using a minimum font size of 30 points. Shorter presentations with clear, readable slides help the audience maintain focus and understand your messaging without getting overwhelmed.
How to organize a sales pitch deck
To tell a compelling story, it’s important to build a narrative that draws in your audience. Organize a sales pitch deck by starting with an attention-grabbing introduction, followed by slides outlining the problem, solution, product features, market opportunity, competitive analysis, customer testimonials, pricing, financial projections, team expertise, and a compelling call to action. Maintain a clear flow between slides and keep content concise for maximum impact.
How to end a sales deck
End a sales pitch deck with a strong and memorable conclusion that summarizes key points, reinforces the value proposition, and highlights the call to action. Solicit feedback by inviting questions and asking about the buyer’s timeline to determine next steps. Express gratitude, leaving the audience with an impression that motivates them to continue along the buyer journey. Be sure to follow up promptly after the presentation with a copy of the deck and other collateral that is relevant to the discussion.
Nail your next sales pitch deck with Seismic
Creating personalized presentations at scale doesn’t have to be time-consuming. The Seismic Enablement CloudTM provides content automation and personalization tools that enable reps to easily find, customize, and share personalized sales pitch decks, helping them create effective presentations in a fraction of the time. Our modern content personalization capabilities give sellers autonomy to tailor sales pitch decks without sacrificing consistency and important branding elements, enabling them to build the right slides for the right client, every time:
- Guided Assembly: Create workflows that guide sellers to build personalized content for every client conversation. Sellers can input details of a deal, such as a customer’s industry and the products they want to pitch, to automatically generate a deck using pre-selected, approved content.
- Seismic for PowerPoint and Google Slides: Through plug-ins, sellers can pull in content, data, images, and mix-and-match slides without leaving PowerPoint or Google Slides. Our plug-ins give sellers access to templates and slides from proven sales pitch decks, speeding up the creation process and ensuring they work within your system instead of using old files on their desktop.
Ready to nail your next sales pitch deck? Reach out to us for a demo.
