A prospect from a company that is an ideal customer for your product or service has a specific problem that they are losing sleep over.  They see one of your generic ads in an industry trade publication and it interests them enough to visit your web site.  At the web site, they read more detailed generic information, and it looks promising, so they contact a sales rep.  The sales rep meets with the prospect to find out specifics on the problem.  The rep leaves behind a generic brochure.  The prospect heard enough promising information from the rep that they decide to invite the rep to present to a larger audience of key decision-makers.

What is the Marketing department going to provide the rep for this important presentation?  Too often, the answer is a generic set of slides.  And that's going to be a problem - for the rep and for the decision-makers at this key prospect company.

The sales rep knows he needs a customized presentation to meet the specific needs of the situation.  So he'll do one of two things.  Either he'll use the generic presentation and fumble through it as he skips the parts he doesn't need.  Or he'll create his own set of slides and present poorly designed slides that don't match the important branding that the Marketing department has worked hard to create.  Neither approach results in a successful presentation and neither give the sales rep a good chance of securing the order. 

What the sales rep really needs is a customized presentation that is consistent with the corporate branding.  It is primarily visual so that he can talk about the specific needs and relate how your products and services have solved problems similar to the ones they are facing.  It looks professional and gives the impression that if they buy your proposal, they are going with a firm that stands behind what they say.

Yeah, right.  Who has the manpower or time in their Marketing department to create a custom set of slides for every sales presentation?  No one does.  So what are you to do?

There is another solution.

The solution is to create a partnership with the sales force where Marketing provides them the tools and training to create Consistently Customized Visual (CCV) presentations every time.  The key is to use the strengths of each party when approaching the prospect.  Marketing brings the consistent branding skills and key messages, and the Sales reps bring the knowledge of the prospects needs.  Here are the steps you can follow to develop CCV presentations in your firm.

Step 1: Create a library of standard slides

The marketing department, in consultation with the sales staff, creates a library of slides that capture the key messages that the sales professionals use most often.  This library consists of visual slides instead of overloaded text slides and is consistent with the branding of the company.  The library is not intended to cover every slide that a sales rep would ever want to use, but will usually end up providing 70-80% of the slides for each sales presentation.  This step provides each presentation with consistency of brand and key messages using visuals.

Step 2: Train the sales staff on how to use the slide library

Once the library of slides is created, the sales staff needs to know how and why to use it.  The benefit of using the library is that by picking and choosing from the already created slides, the sales professional will be able to rapidly assemble about three-quarters of their presentation.  Since most sales reps and support staff don't know how to use a slide library, they will need to be given simple instructions on how to select slides from the list and generate a new presentation.  There are a range of tools to help facilitate this task, ranging from using a simple file of slides on the company intranet to specific web based packages that manage content enterprise wide.  It is usually easiest to start with a simple approach first.

Step 3: Educate the sales staff on how to create visual slides

Using the library will still leave the sales rep with about one-quarter of their slides still to create.  They now need to be trained on how to create customized slides that have the same look and graphical approach as the slides from the library.  This does not require training on graphics packages.  Rather, it is showing them how to use the already designed "look" to the slides and helping them see how a visual can persuade better than a slide full of text.  Some firms even go as far as creating template slides for certain concepts that allows their staff to pick a pre-designed slide and fill in the required text or graphic.  This step adds the customized visuals that make the presentation laser-focused for each situation.

Step 4: Evaluate and update the library every four months

Once the training is done and the library is in use, regular evaluation is necessary.  Are the sales reps able to use the library easily?  Are there slides that they would like to see added to the library?  Is there additional training needed on the "how-to" aspect of creating slides and presentations?  This feedback should be used to update the library every four months.  If additional training is needed, make it as specific as possible by canvassing the sales reps and addressing the topics they need to learn in as short a time as possible.  You may also want to provide short "how-to" videos on the corporate intranet as reminders of the key techniques.

In your role in the Marketing department, you have a choice of how to support the sales presentation that will be delivered this year.  That support will be key in determining how well your organization does in the next twelve months.  Instead of creating sets of generic slides, use the four steps above to help your sales reps create Consistently Customized Visual presentations that persuade decision-makers.

©MMIIX Dave Paradi

Dave Paradi teaches professionals and executives from Fortune 500 corporations to non-profit agencies how to transform the overloaded text slides they currently use into persuasive visuals that sell ideas, products and services effectively to decision makers.  He is the author of "The Visual Slide Revolution" and co-author of two "Guide to PowerPoint" books from Prentice Hall.  His ideas have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, BusinessWorld India and many other publications around the world.  Learn more at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com