Top tips for creating a persuasive presentation

If you’re tasked with putting together a sales presentation, you have one fundamental objective to fulfil in a limited amount of time. That’s right – we’re talking about converting leads into new customers or clients!

But you can only achieve this if your presentation is truly persuasive, and for that, it needs to tell a convincing story, emphasise your value proposition, relate to your audience’s needs, and of course, finish with the grand finale – a clear call-to-action.

Oh, and don’t bore your audience along the way – keeping them engaged at all times is essential.

Of course, this spells out one cardinal rule for effective sales presentations: Never ever use a generic template. Each presentation you deliver must be individually crafted for the specific product or service and with your target audience in mind.

So, let’s take a more detailed look at some of the components of a powerful and persuasive sales presentation.

Greet your audience and introduce yourself

Naturally, you’ll have “sell, sell, sell” dancing on your mind, but your audience won’t warm to you if you launch headstrong into the guts of your sales pitch. Be human – step back and take some time to introduce yourself and your team, explain what your company’s value proposition is, what you promise to deliver, and why you.

Getting off on the right foot with a personable title slide (complete with branding) will lead to a more open-minded and trusting audience, comfortable in the knowledge that there’s real value in giving up their time to listen.

Identify your audience’s problems and present the solutions

As a creator, business owner, or salesperson you will believe the world can’t live without your product or service. After all, it’s your job to think that way and you wouldn’t get far without a healthy dose of confidence!

But when delivering a sales presentation, your own emotions must be cast aside in favour of a pre-emptive and empathetic strike at your audience’s unbiased and practical questions. Your audience will want to know exactly how your product or service will make their lives better. In this instance, it’s important to appeal to the problems they experience (you know these from research, right?) and how you can resolve them.

Let’s take Uber for example – you might say Uber’s on-demand, crowdsourced transport is the perfect solution to unreliable and expensive taxis. You get the gist.

And here are a few housekeeping tips to help you along. Remember, you’re probably introducing some unfamiliar and complex concepts, so your communication and delivery needs to be spot on.

Think about how infographics could aid your audience’s understanding, and whether some well-placed facts, figures, and bullet points could assist with illustrating your key messages. Or, why not throw in a short explainer video for some added entertainment and personality.

Above all, get to the point – keep your messaging clear, on-track, and free from confusing buzzwords.

Prove it! 

So, now you’ve told your story and successfully convinced your audience you could (possibly) improve their lives – be that through convenience or cost savings.

But it’s only on paper. When it comes to gaining credibility, there’s nothing more effective than examples from existing customers your audience can identify with. Adding testimonials to your presentation will highlight everything your customers or clients love about doing business with you, as well as demonstrating how you’ve helped them in a real-life scenario.

Images, videos, and sound bites will go along way in ensuring your testimonials really resonate with the audience in front of you. But there are other ways to make your presentation more credible (and therefore persuasive!). For example, you could include some market comparisons with competitor products, or present some well-researched data or expert quotes that really illustrate the benefits of your product or service.

And don’t be afraid to field a few sceptical questions, welcome these and be positively prepared for everything.

Go out with a bang: The call-to-action

Sometimes the simplest things are easy to forget, and a call-to-action is one of them. There’s no point in putting on your best presentation performance if you leave your audience without recourse to take things further.

The impact you will have had on individuals among the audience will vary – some will be sold, others will be keen to find out more, and others will be curiously sceptical. So, make sure you direct customers to take a course of action that satisfies their needs.

These could include options for “how to buy”, “sign up for a free trial”, “how to contact us to find out more”, or “sign up to our mailing list”.

Now, you have everything you need to deliver a truly persuasive sales presentation with outstanding results. So, give it a go!

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