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If you do a Google search on sales deck design, you're going to come across a litany of articles that talk about making your presentations more visual, less wordy, and avoiding cluttered slides. While all of this is 100% accurate, there's another level of sales deck design that modern B2B sales teams need to take into consideration. This level goes beyond the actual design itself and encompasses thinking like an architect, rather than a graphic designer. It also involves looking at your sales decks from the perspective of your sales cycle, rather than just as a "company deck".
In this article, we will take a look at the old approach to sales deck design and compare it to the new modern way for B2B sales teams. We’ll also explore how smart B2B sales decks can make selling your products and services more efficient for your sales team, and paint a better picture of your brand to your prospective clients.Â
If you've been in B2B sales long enough, you've likely heard the expression, "just send them the company deck." It’s an old phrase thrown around that assumes all buyers are the same and one presentation is all that’s needed to close a deal. If that’s your company and it works, awesome. But for most of us in B2B sales, our cycle is long and requires multiple touchpoints before closing a deal. Therefore reassessing the design of your sales presentations must be well thought out.Â
Let’s look at the 5 major problems in traditional sales deck design thinking:
As we mentioned earlier, the concept of the company deck is outdated, and it’s time to focus on building sales deck systems that align with and cater to the buyer’s journey while standing out from the competition.
As designers, we need to approach this with a different mindset, one that is akin to that of a UX designer rather than a traditional designer. Building a sales deck system is similar to building a website. It requires a thorough understanding of the different buyer scenarios and the creation of organized presentations that caters to their needs.
Let's break it down into two steps:
Step 1: The Architecture
The first step is to think about the architecture of the sales deck system. It is crucial to involve all key stakeholders in this process, including sales, marketing, creative, or anyone else who can provide valuable insights into understanding the buyer's mindset throughout the sales process.
For this phase, we typically use programs like Figma, which allows for online wireframing and collaboration within the organization. Here, we create a schematic of the sales cycle, including the initial touchpoint, necessary follow-up presentations, product or service validation, ROI demonstration, product demos, visualization, and proposal delivery. In this phase, we consider all potential touchpoints throughout the sales cycle, so we can start mapping messaging and content to each.
It is important not to leave anything out in this phase. There are no wrong answers, and we suggest putting everything on paper, digitally or otherwise. Take a step back and revisit the plan in a few days, and perhaps bring in a different group of sales reps from your organization to get their opinion. Validate if this sales deck structure meets their needs when they're selling your product and services.Â
We can’t stress enough that it is critical to have full alignment between sales and marketing before moving on to the next step of building out your sales decks.
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Sales flow presented in Figma
Step 2: The Build
Now that we have our architecture in place, we can put our UX hat to the side and put our designer hat back on. From this point, we like to look at building sales decks as designing a television commercial or a film. The power of storytelling in sales stories must take a buyer through a very specific narrative and leave them wanting to see the sequel.
Here are 5 tips that we like to implement in our B2B sales deck process:
If you did a search on presentation designers or presentation design agencies, you're going to come across 10 pages of options, all of which have beautiful portfolios illustrating their design capabilities. However, it's important that prior to hiring a presentation design agency, you look for one that truly understands the B2B landscape and has a rich background in production capabilities spanning from web design to content creation.
As you begin to vet out design partners and look at their portfolio of work, here are seven questions to ask to help find the right partner for your B2B sales deck design needs:
With over 20 years of experience building websites and creating content for startups to Fortune 500 companies, Nuvue has developed a process specifically tailored for B2B leaders. Our formulaic approach is built to scale and evolve as your organization grows. In addition, we bring a technological solution to the table that enables your sales team to present your sales decks with a click of a button, while providing your organization with rich insights into how your sales decks are performing and how your team is using them.
If you want to learn more about how Nuvue merges design and technology to help B2B organizations present with clarity and efficiency, schedule your “Hello Call” today!