You Use Data to Optimize Every Aspect of Your Business. Why Not Sales Presentations?

In today’s modern, cloud-based culture, everyone is clamoring for data-driven everything. To that end, data and analytics are a standard feature of any presentation platform. But simply having access to data isn’t enough. You have to know what metrics actually matter — and what to do with that information in order to improve your sales presentations.

Numbers alone won’t tell you anything. Simply reviewing standardized, topline stats (open rates and time on page) month after month doesn’t help you optimize your sales process or refine your sales story in and of itself. 

The good news is that presentation data can be leveraged to give you the insights necessary to enhance your sales presentations, align your team to set them up for success — and maybe even grow your business. To do that, you have to learn to dig deeper into your presentation data to extract insights. 

We know analyzing your presentation data sounds like a lot of work. But we also know your company (rightfully) puts effort into optimizing social spend, pricing structures, website copy — the list goes on. Why not optimize your sales presentations, too? 

1. Tell a More Concise Sales Story and Get Rid of Presentation Bloat  

Every one of your presentations needs to have a sales story. And yours should be compelling, consistent, and concise across all presentations. A good sales story takes your prospects on a journey with you. It needs to engage your prospects by relating to their pain points and show how your solution will work for them. 

Without a sales story, your presentations are boring, even robotic. You know what that’s like. We’ve all suffered through our fair share of scripted PowerPoints. 

Defining your sales story is difficult. It often requires you to complete foundational work, like developing brand guidelines and producing new supplemental content. Here’s where presentation analytics come in: Your existing presentation data holds crucial clues about how you should create or improve your sales story. 

To put it bluntly, if the information you’re presenting isn’t immediately compelling, engaging, or actionable, it’s what we call presentation bloat. And it needs to be cut. Removing content that prospects are ignoring anyway doesn’t just debloat your sales presentations, but also your overall sales message. Your presentations should never contain anything extra “just in case” it’s needed. Presentation bloat like this muddies the waters, obscuring what matters in the moment. 

Analyzing these metrics will help you hone in on where your presentation bloat lives. Which slides are prospects (or clients) overlooking or spending less time on? Are they dropping off on certain slides and then reengaging? Or are they totally checked out after a particular slide? 

Specifically, look at presentation engagement data. How a prospect interacts with certain slides can tell you a lot about what is — and isn’t — working in your sales story. Say most prospects interact with the first 10 slides of your initial sales deck, but ignore everything past that. Why? Is the information beyond slide 10 irrelevant to prospects? Is the presentation just too long? If so, you need to delete it or save those slides for a subsequent presentation.

The presentation at hand now has a sales story better tailored to your prospects’ tastes — as dictated by your own data. 

2. Shore up Your Sales Team’s Accountability and Chart Their Path to Success 

It makes sense that you want to ensure your investment in your presentation platform isn’t going to waste. Good news: Presentation analytics can also help keep your team accountable.

Take a look at usage patterns. Is everyone on your sales team using the right presentations? Start there and address any issues with overarching sales team buy-in. Next, dig deeper into usage data to make sure everyone is using your presentations in a correct and unified manner. Are they sending the right presentations at the right time to the right prospects? Discovering why (or why not) is the first step to getting sales team members back on track. 

You can also use presentation data from individual sales reps to optimize your overall sales process. Say you have a particularly effective sales rep who regularly brings in new business. Investigate what contributes to her strong sales numbers. Your sales presentation data might tell you she sends a particular presentation at a particular time in a prospect’s journey — and those prospects are more likely to convert. Thanks to your available data, that sales rep’s effective process can serve as a roadmap for the rest of your sales team to duplicate. 

3. Create and Refine Presentations for Prospects in All Stages of the Sales Cycle 

You’re well aware that you can’t speak to all prospects in the exact same way. Someone who’s researching a solution for the first time will have different expectations and questions than someone ready to purchase. That’s why there are different stages in the sales cycle.

But just because you know you should speak to cold prospects differently than sales-ready ones doesn’t mean you — or your sales team — always know how. Of course you want your sales materials to resonate with the prospect at hand. You just don’t always know which presentation to send at which stage. 

Analyze stats to see what prospects in each stage of the sales cycle are engaging with. Are cold prospects always drawn to certain slides? Extract those slides into their own presentation tailored to that audience. Or maybe you notice sales-ready prospects linger on a slide about one of your products. That could be a sign you need a supporting presentation all about that product to appropriately nurture those prospects. 

We already know the most effective sales stories speak to individual stages in the sales cycle. Now you know your presentation data can help you customize those stories for every prospect. 

Let Nuvue Glean Insights From Your Presentation Data So You Don’t Have To

We said you probably spend time (and money) optimizing other pieces of your company’s sales and marketing toolkit. And we strongly believe that your sales presentations also need to be optimized — yes, using data — for the best chance at winning business. 

But that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone. 

Most presentation platforms offer data and analytics, it’s true. What most don’t do? Extract insights from that data for you like we do. Our platform not only includes the typical analytics dashboard you’d expect from any presentation platform worth its salt, we also share our own take on your data. 

When we implement Nuvue’s sales presentation solution for your company, we’re in the weeds alongside you every step of the way. By the time we have presentation data to analyze, we’ll have institutional knowledge about your business. And you bet we use that information to shape the insights we extract on your behalf. Let us help.