Pitch Perfect: How Pitching Software Is Changing the Game in Sales

What’s more frustrating than nurturing a lead for months and dedicating hours to build a sales pitch only to have it fall flat? 

Ineffective sales pitches can derail a deal in seconds, and it’s worse if you don’t know where things went awry. Crafting the ideal sales pitch requires effort, but it also demands insight into your buyer. Failure to personalise your pitch, focusing too much on sales, and ignoring industry trends mark some of the most common missteps that result in poor pitches.

Sidestepping pitches that miss the mark is easier than you think when you have the right sales presentation management tools at your disposal. Forward’s digital sales room provides teams with the tools they need to mitigate weak pitch presentations and deliver interactive, engaging alternatives that work.

The Importance of a Winning Sales Presentation

Of all the B2B sales tools to master, your sales pitch might be the most critical. Your presentation needs to check all your buyer’s boxes, build trust in your brand, and reinforce how your product can boost their bottom line. 

The B2B sales cycle is a notoriously lengthy process compared to a B2C brand, but that’s not the only difference. B2B sales teams need to address multiple decision-makers while creating a personalised experience for each one. 

Developing a winning sales presentation requires alignment between marketing and sales teams. It’s necessary to create a balanced presentation that focuses on your buyers and how you can solve problems for them. 

In today’s virtual sales world, you need to go above and beyond to make those connections and win a buyer. Delivering an engaging, thorough, and personalised presentation isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible with the right strategies and pitching software.

5 Elements of Successful Sales Presentations

At its core, a successful sales presentation only has five elements. Nailing each element can make an impression on buyers and boost your conversion rates.

Customised

Personalisation might be the most crucial element of any effective B2B sales pitch. Putting your buyer at the centre of your pitch makes them feel valued and understood. 

You can set yourself apart from your competition, establish credibility, and reinforce the relationship you’ve been working so hard to build. 

Demonstrating that you understand your buyer’s struggles and needs is the first step, and it requires speaking to each decision-maker in the process. Your pitch should cover every viable pain point while positioning your product as the solution for each stakeholder. 

Personalising your sales pitch typically begins with researching your buyer to ensure you understand their story, struggles, and goals. Position yourself as their ally and avid supporter, the missing piece to pull everything together. 

Engaging

Sitting through a PowerPoint presentation containing fifty slides packed with text is beyond boring. If you’re bored making the presentation, there’s a good chance your buyer will nod off or skip out early.

An engaging sales pitch should be clean and well-structured, with visuals and limited text. Rely on spoken words to flesh out key ideas on the slides and try to incorporate interactive elements to keep the buyer’s attention.

It helps to use video sales tools with templates you can customise for each buyer. Forward supports cross-team collaboration to create an interactive sales pitch or demo that covers all the bases for a supercharged buyer engagement experience.

Credibility and Differentiation

B2B sales often involve many competitors vying for a limited crowd of buyers, meaning you need to differentiate your product from the rest. There are many ways to establish credibility with buyers and differentiate yourself from your competitive set.

• Create a slide comparing your successes with your competition. The compare and contrast approach can be effective, especially if the buyer is trying to decide between you and a competitor.
• Highlight what makes your brand or product unique, like exclusive offerings or approaches.
• Share customer success stories and testimonials.
• Present the cost of not using your product.

Avoid going overboard with differentiation to the point where you disparage your competition. Keep the differentiation factual and objective to sound more credible.

User-Friendly

Complicated presentations and software demo tools can drive buyers away. Keep everything clear and user-friendly to avoid confusion and frustration. 

One common misstep with presentations is to overlook mobile responsiveness. Many buyers view sales materials on mobile devices while on the go. If a buyer can’t access a pitch because it won’t play on their smartphone or tablet, they may not return to it.

A user-friendly sales deck is easy to follow, concise, and easy to navigate. Your buyer should be able to move through the presentation easily and fully understand what you want them to do next.

Clear Call to Action

Speaking of knowing what to do next, every sales pitch should have an obvious call to action (CTA). It doesn’t matter how amazing your presentation looks if your buyer doesn’t know what to do next. 

Whether you forget to include a next step or make your CTA too clever and confusing, missing the mark on this element spells trouble. Keep your CTA simple and focused, like “Chat with us” or “Try X for free.” You could even pair it with a graphic demonstrating the next steps.

Key Features You Need in Sales Presentation Management Tools

Shopping for sales presentation management tools can feel overwhelming. It’s easier to narrow the field when you know what to look for in a product.

Templates

All of this advice makes it sound like building the perfect pitch is going to be as time-consuming as the B2B sales cycle. It might be if you reinvent the wheel for every presentation. However, you could save valuable time and energy with templates.

Create templates that contain all pertinent information but allow plenty of room for customisation. Using templates allows your team to work more efficiently, ensure consistent presentation every time, and avoid missing crucial and costly details.

Forward features a library of predefined templates that your team can customise. It’s easy to include all relevant data, like legal disclosures, and personalise it with each buyer’s branding.

Visual Integrations

Visually appealing presentations with images, charts, and videos leave a lasting impression because they resonate with buyers. Integrating multimedia aspects creates a more engaging and interactive experience.  

Forward seamlessly integrates with your favourite sales video tools to craft engaging presentations that leave a lasting impression. Teams can easily upload and share images, videos, and more.

Collaboration

It would be convenient if one person possessed all of the knowledge and information to craft the ideal sales presentation with all the necessary elements. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. Things can get confusing when several teams need to work together to cover all bases, and you could lose a lot of time passing slides back and forth.

Of course, it would be easier for your teams to collaborate on a presentation from anywhere. Forward offers a solution for remote teams to overcome this hurdle. Your teams can easily collaborate in real time to craft the perfect presentation that checks all the boxes. 

Seamless Sharing

An effective sales pitch requires sharing information with your team and your buyer. Traditional methods, like email, can be cumbersome and require everyone involved to have compatible software. It’s easy for things to get lost or attachments to fail. 

You need tools that work for everyone involved, as universally as possible, to ensure you provide your pitch in a functional, user-friendly format. 

Forward is the ideal solution for seamless sharing between teams and buyers. Teams can share documents, images, and more from one central platform. It’s also easy to transmit necessary information, like Mutual Action Plans, to your buyer for a seamless experience.

Analytics and Tracking

How do you know if your prospects even open your sales presentation? How much do they watch? Do they drop out or click through your CTA? The best product demo tools allow you to track buyer engagement every step of the way. That data gives you insights into what parts of your pitch work and what don’t. 

Proper analytics and tracking let you know how and when your buyer views a presentation. Based on user behaviours, you can refine your presentation to make it more relevant and have the desired impact.

Forward’s real-time prospect tracking provides insight into buyer intent and helps you narrow down the most critical pain points. As you drill down to the most relevant information, you stand to make the perfect sales pitch for each buyer.

Top Video Sales Tools for B2B Teams

The top options for sales presentation software allow personalisation and feature powerful elements to deliver an engaging, interactive, and user-friendly buyer experience.

Canva

Canva is a free platform with some in-app purchases. Sales teams can use existing templates as a starting point and then customise them to meet buyer needs. It’s user-friendly with drag-and-drop features and a library of elements, both free and paid options. 

Slidebean

Slidebean is geared toward small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs. It’s easy to use and compatible with PowerPoint. The platform offers a free plan, but you must sign up for a paid plan to access all features, like removing watermarks. 

Google Slides

Many people are familiar with Google products, making Slides a viable option. It’s a free, web-based app that works with all other Google products, including Docs and Drive. You can create a stunning pitch deck, especially if you don’t crave all the bells and whistles.

Prezi

Prezi splits its attention between the business world and educational institutions. This platform is more formal on the business side but capable of building competitive sales decks. Users can tap into a free trial with limited features before upgrading to a paid plan. Prices start at $19 per month for business accounts.

PowerPoint

Like Google Slides, PowerPoint offers a basic, user-friendly interface for building sales presentations. The Microsoft product is a staple in the business world, but it might not be practical if you don’t have a 365 subscription. 

Whether you opt for one of these sales presentation tools or something else, Forward offers seamless integration, giving you power over your pitch. Choosing the one that works best with your budget and meets your team’s needs is essential.  

Elevate Your Pitches With Forward

Crafting the perfect pitch can seem impossible, but it doesn’t have to be with appropriate sales presentation management tools. Forward is the ideal option to bring everything together in one place so your team spends more time on the tasks that matter, like focusing on your buyers.

• Know Your Buyer. Research your buyer to determine their goals, needs, and pain points. Quality, accurate analytics makes this possible as you track buyer engagement and behaviours across all platforms. Forward lets you tap into real-time analytics to better understand buyer intent.
• Cross-Team Collaboration. Have your teams collaborate to ensure all requisite elements, including financial and legal information, appear in your presentation. Forward supports real-time collaboration between teams and your buyer to ensure a seamless experience for everyone involved.
• Interactive and Engaging Pitches. Include visuals, like graphs, charts, and videos, to create a more engaging pitch and hold your buyer’s attention. Forward allows your team to share libraries of images, videos, documents, and more to make your presentation interactive and engaging.
• Customise Content for Each Buyer. Personalise your pitch to position your product as the ideal solution to your buyer’s greatest struggles. From personalised micro-sites to customisable success plans, Forward delivers the tools your team needs to succeed.

There’s no reason to keep struggling with your sales pitch or any other part of your pipeline. Forward offers a one-stop shop for everything you need to engage buyers and reach joint success. From cold emails and first contacts through the sales presentation to the deal, Forward supports teams with crafting customised, interactive solutions.

Learn how Forward helps your team craft and deliver stunning sales pitches. Try Forward for FREE today!