Here are a few tips to help you to have a more impactful sales pitch presentation.

1. Talk to your prospect before your presentation.
The first tip for your sales pitch presentation actually takes place well before the moment when you are delivering a presentation, and this is to schedule some time to meet with and talk to your prospect. This is worth stating because it can be common to reach the point in the sales process where the prospect asks for a demo or agrees to a presentation, and then a salesperson will show up for the presentation with the standard pitch that is given to everybody.

What we recommend is taking more time to talk with the prospect before the presentation to learn more about them, their challenges, why they want a demo, etc. Not only will this information greatly improve how you build your sales pitch presentation, but it may also help you to qualify the prospect, and you may end up learning that it does not make sense for you to spend your valuable time delivering a presentation that does not make the most sense.

2. Tailor your presentation.
When you meet with your prospect and learn more about them, you can use this information to tailor your presentation to the prospect.

You might have an assumption about what is important to show and what the prospect might care about. But after gathering more information from the prospect, this will likely change, and you can probably adjust what you end up presenting, making the use of time and messaging much more effective.

3. Minimize the “all about me” talk tracks.
A very common flow for a sales pitch presentation can be:

  • This is who we are (company background)
  • This is what we sell (our products)
  • This is what our products do (functionality)
  • This is how you purchase (pricing)
  • Do you want to purchase (close)

That is all very valid information, but the problem with it is that it is a very “all about me” type of discussion and can be a bit boring for the prospect. They don’t care what year you were founded, how many offices you have, and all of the different products that you sell.

4. Talk about your prospect first.
One way to improve the engagement level in your presentation is to start out your presentation and, instead of talking about yourself, talk about the prospect. Open the meeting outlining what you have learned about the prospect in terms of their interests and challenges.

From there, you can confirm that your findings are correct and then spend the remainder of the presentation aligning everything that you present to those interests and challenges.

5. Trial close the prospect during the presentation.
Regardless of where the formal close for the purchase of the product will ideally take place, you can still trial close the prospect during the presentation. This can be done in the middle of the presentation to check in to make sure what is being discussed is on track with what the prospect wanted to see.

You can then also trial close at the end of the sales pitch presentation to see how the information you provided fits with what the prospect wants and needs.