In general, many sales presentations aren’t giving any benefits. Presentations tend to be about the physical characteristics of products or services. Presenters talk about what they’re selling, but they’re not tying those characteristics back to the three things people care about. In other words, it’s not enough simply to translate features into benefits. Good presentations are about taking a step further. To do this ensure the benefit tie directly to

Productivity – reducing waste, increasing efficiency, boosting production, eliminating errors, and so on

Profitability – cutting costs, increasing revenues, making a product more profitable

Image – the image of a company, a department, or an individual

Every audience is different – some will care about all three (Productivity, Profitability and Image), some will care about just one or two – but the bottom line is that every prospect’s hot button will be at least one of them, and you need to address it by relating features to a benefit that’s tied to the appropriate one.

Simply telling an audience that your product is reliable – as many most salespeople would do in a presentation – is of no real value to the buyer. Instead, you need to spell out exactly what reliability means and how it is relevant to the PPI factors.

Even if you think you are hitting the PPI factors, go through your slide deck and take another look. If you don’t see the reason the prospect should buy tied back to a PPI, whether qualitative or quantitative, your presentation won’t persuade. These PPIs are so important in a presentation that they should be mentioned at least three times – during the opening of the presentation, during the actual presentation when you discuss each key idea and when summarised the presentation at the closing.