I've been a bit obsessed with sales presentations lately. Not so much on construction of attractive slides, but on the requirement to tell a compelling story via the world's most torturous medium: PowerPoint.

In the Inside Sales world, Reps work incredibly hard to earn 10, 20 or 30 minute discovery/needs analysis calls. At presentation time, we’ve got (at least in theory) guaranteed prospect attention.

But far too often, we squander all that preceding effort by confusing, boring or annoying prospects while generally failing to move the sales process forward.

I just came across this eBook from the folks over at SalesCrunch called "Designing Presentations That Sell." And let me tell you, it rocks. (Note: I wouldn't normally link to registration required content - but it is that good.)

In the eBook, presentation designer Jan Schultink goes through 3 acts: Images, Stories & Content. I thought I’d share the bits that most impacted me.

 
I have a confession to share – I have gone through the full 5-stage Kübler-Ross coping model with the buzz around Social Selling.

Here’s how it went:

I recently sat in on a vendor presentation and let me tell you, it was a disaster from hello.

From the start, the Seller launched into a canned pitch - essentially a 10 minute monologue about their product. She sounded like Billy Mays, the Infomercial king. When I was able to interject, she provided a slightly varied version of her canned pitch. I never received a direct answer to my questions.

Needless to say, I was quite frustrated. Here’s a company with a seemingly good product (at least from what their website suggested) but the seller failed at moving the process forward. After the call, my client commented that he would not evaluate the product because he couldn’t envision working successfully with the sales rep.
.