With all the talk of sales productivity and sales tools in the market today, it’s worth looking at how presentations fit into the overall discussion of sales productivity. While sales productivity from an organizational standpoint includes a wide range of activities and tools, presentations can be the critical point in the process where “the rubber meets the road” in B2B business. In a B2B marketplace, presentations are essential to showcasing the value of products and services, helping buyers make informed decisions.

For sales teams where face-to-face presentations are the driver of closing deals, presentations are a key element to productivity. Presentations can affect productivity in three main ways:

• TIME: The more time salespeople spend making presentations, the less time they spend closing deals. While time spent customizing a presentation to a particular audience by selecting appropriate demos, case studies and product demos is time well-spent, time spent tracking down the latest version, updating old presentations with the newest data or worrying about design and branding is time lost.
• IMPACT: While the salesperson is the one who ultimately closes the deal, an impactful presentation can help tip the scales. A presentation’s impact is determined by the quality of the data, the clarity of the story and the impact of the visuals. Media presentations that can demonstrate how engaging the media is help sell the value of advertising; product planning presentations that clearly demonstrate the product help sell the value and benefits.
• ACCESS: The best presentations are only valuable if they can be presented whenever and wherever they need to be. Presentations that are saved as large files that can’t be emailed, Web-based presentations that can’t be downloaded or presentations that only work certain devices and platforms, can have a negative impact on sales productivity. Salespeople know how hard it is to get someone’s attention, so whenever they do they need to be able to take advantage of it and deliver the best presentation possible.

When considering how to improve your sales team’s productivity, especially for Outside Sales Teams whose presentations represent high-value opportunities, make sure you consider these three elements. A sales presentation platform can address these three points with the following:

• LIBRARY: Working from a  Presentation Library lets your sales team work quickly to customize presentations without wasting time looking for the latest content or building slides from scratch that already exist elsewhere. When selecting a Presentation Library platform, make sure it supports real-time updates to ensure that the team is always working from the most recent information.
• VIDEO: The impact of video in sales and marketing today can’t be underestimated. It is by far the most compelling way to engage an audience, deliver a branded experience and explain complex ideas and products. Presentation platforms need to be able to seamlessly incorporate video into sales presentations, not just as add-on elements but integrated into the slides and presentations to tell a complete and unified story.
• BRAND DESIGN: For B2B sales presentations, the presentation has to look and feel like the brand. As much thought, design and effort that goes into your company website, TV commercials or other marketing elements need to go into your presentations. The ability to customize and control the brand design elements of your presentations across your platform is essential to ensuring their impact on prospects.
• MULTI-PLATFORM: Online, offline, on iPads and on laptops, your presentations need to be available, reliable and consistent. Opportunities in sales come and go quickly and salespeople need to be able react and deliver whenever and wherever the opportunity arises.Cloud-based tools are great, but they need to have offline presentation capabilities and iPad and laptop players.

Every company wants to improve their sales productivity with the help of sales tools, and that means different things for different industries and sales teams. But for B2B sales teams that know that in-person presentations are still where big deals get closed, the right presentation platform can make the difference.