Sales Presentations with Attitude
We’ve all been there. Sitting through a sales pitch with 40 slides of mostly boring text about what a great company or product the vendor is pitching. How long is your attention span? Now let’s reverse roles and imagine it’s your customer or prospect being presented to by one of your sales representatives. Do you want the sales deck to be exciting, thought provoking and memorable or dull and forgettable? We know the answer. What often makes for a great presentation is visually stunning graphics that captures the audience’s attention and tells the story about why people should do business with you.
Sales Presentation Timing
According to Carmine Gallo, a senior contributor with Forbes Magazine, your audience tunes out after 10 minutes. Mr. Gallo suggests the best way to re-engage a person’s attention when it begins to wane is to change up the format of the content. That can be achieved by adding colorful charts and diagrams, or with adding a video in the middle of a presentation. Read the full article here.
An exception to the ten minute rule would be if there is a scheduled break between subject matter and the attention clock can then be restarted. Include a quick brainstorming session or Q&A period to break up the time. The second half of the presentation should focus on action items and next steps. Keep it to less than 5 minutes. Additional timing advice would be to limit the use of a single slide to only 30 seconds whenever possible. Skip unnecessary, drawn out details! Keep it moving along unless there are questions by the audience.
Contact Vesteras about your sales presentation needs and how we can help to keep your audience engaged and excited to work with you.
Credits: Forbes.com article by Carmine Gallo, Senior Contributor, February 28, 2019
Graphic Illustration by Centelon, a Vesteras LLC Business Partner