A salesperson in your company calls you saying that she needs the latest product presentation as soon as possible for a meeting with a customer prospect. Another salesperson contacts you because he needs to provide a technically oriented audience at an existing customer site a detailed product update. Your CEO stops by and asks you to create a few product overview slides to include in his presentation to investors, analysts and the media. And you must not forget to keep updated the product presentations you use to train your company’s sales and marketing teams and distribution partners. With such diverse demands, how do you create the most effective product presentation for each audience?

These are typical situations product and marketing managers encounter on a regular basis. They must provide a constant and up-to-date flow of information to the sales team, customers, and partners about the products they manage in order to facilitate the sales process, as well as to other external stakeholders, such as investors, analysts and the media, to communicate and enhance the perception of the company. Is it possible to create one generic presentation to address all situations? Unfortunately, the answer is “no.” Too often, “canned” product presentations miss their mark instead of properly aligning with their purpose, audience and situation.

This article provides a framework for creating effective product presentations with emphasis on such presentations to customers.

What is the purpose of your presentation?

Clearly understanding a presentation’s purpose is the most critical factor in developing a successful presentation. A given product presentation should have one of the following as its primary purpose with one or both of the others as possible secondary purposes:

• Education – all product presentations should be designed to provide useful information to the listener. Presentations vary by the amount and level of such information according to the needs of the audience and, for customers, where you are in the sales cycle.
• Persuasion – all product presentations have, as a goal, to enhance the value of the product as perceived by the listener. Depending on the circumstance, some presentations will be more overt than others in persuasion style. For example, even in situations where a customer wants “just the facts and no sales pitch,” there is the opportunity to present to the customer the facts (e.g. features, specifications, internal design/architecture) along with their benefits.
• Training –a special form of education concentrating on “what” and “how to.” For example, for a customer, the presentation may provide an overview of what a feature does and how to use it. For a salesperson or distribution partner, the presentation may explain how to position the product or a feature, both in terms of its application and how it compares to competitive offerings.

To further clarify the presentation’s purpose, you should answer the following questions:

• What do you want your audience to take away from the presentation?
• What is the essence of your message? What are the top three to five points?
• What defines “success” for the presentation? What outcome do you want to achieve?
• If the product presentation is part of a larger set of presentations being given, where does the product presentation fit into the overallagenda and what are its relationships to the other presentations?        

Who is the audience for your presentation?

It is crucial to understand the audience of your presentation because it allows you to provide the right information in the right manner and at the appropriate level of detail necessary to achieve the purpose. (A common mistake in product presentations is in not properly calibrating the level of technical detail to the audience. The tendency is to provide too much detail and not emphasize enough of the product’s applications and benefits.) In short, the audience is your customer and your job is to meet/exceed their expectations.

Product presentation audiences can be segmented as follows:

• Within your company: sales, sales engineer, customer support, marketing, product management
• Distribution or solution partner: sales, sales engineer, engineering, support, marketing, manager, executive
• Customer: purchasing, engineering, operations, support, manager, executive. Additionally, customers should be segmented, as appropriate, by market and/or application.
• Investors
• Industry and market analysts
• Media

Wherever possible, seek to understand your audience beyond these general categories and incorporate that knowledge into your presentation. Individuals with similar titles often have very different backgrounds and interests, and their companies have unique situations. Key questions to answer about your audience include:

• What are their primary interests and “hot buttons”?
• What do they want to get out of the presentation? What specific questions and topics do they want covered?
• What perceptions (positive and negative), if any, does the audience have regarding your company and products?
• What is their background?

Where are you in the sales cycle?

The goal of enhancing the value of the product as perceived by the customer means that you are always selling when giving presentations to customers. (As previously mentioned, there is a range of how overt you can and should be. This should be discussed in advance with your sales team.) As such, the presentation must fit into and support where you are in the sales cycle. The table below shows a simplified sales model consisting of four phases. Within each phase, the company has certain things it wishes to accomplish. In parallel, the customer is following a purchase cycle with its associated needs.

Simplified Sales Model

Questions to answer include:

• How does the presentation fit into the overall sales strategy?
• What has happened with this customer in the past and what do you want to have happen next and in the future with this customer?

Types of product presentations

Given the multiple stages of the sales cycle and the diversity of audiences, product presentations can be categorized as follows:

• Introductory
  The Introductory product presentationis typical in the early stage of the sales cycle. Its purpose is to whet the customer’s appetite to learn more about the product in a subsequent meeting where additional people (typically including decision-makers, stakeholders and influencers) will attend. As such, the Introductory product presentation only highlights the main product capabilities and attributes and focuses on their benefits and advantages to the customer. Specific questions the audience has at this stage are:
  • Why do I need this product? What is being offered?
  • Why is this the best solution for my needs and problems? What is the value proposition to me?
  • What can the product do for me now? What can it do for me in the future?
• Comprehensive
  The Comprehensive product presentation provides a complete and thorough overview of the product, its features, capabilities, uses, applications, benefits, and competitive position. Please note that “comprehensive” includes what is relevant to the audience and their problems, needs and situation. For example, a given product may serve multiple markets and some features may not be applicable to certain market segments.
• Deep Dive
  The Deep Dive product presentation is specialized on one or a few topics that are of interest to a specific audience. A common example is a presentation about a product’s system-level architecture or about the detailed operation and design of a feature to a highly technical audience. Deep Dive presentations are typically created in response to a customer request for specific information. It is very important to understand who the audience is for this presentation, what they want and expect, and why.
• Update
  The Update product presentation answers the question: “What is new and different from last time?” Of course, “last time” varies by audience and can range from a few months to over a year. An Update presentation assumes that the audience already has familiarity with the product; however, if it has been awhile or there have been personnel changes, it may include a brief product summary at the start.
• Sales Training
  The Sales Training product presentationencompasses the Comprehensive product presentation coupled with product positioning and competitive analysis. Its audience includes both the company’s direct sales force and distribution partners. Training aimed at sales engineers will be more technical than training aimed at salespeople. Please note that as with customer presentations, sales presentations may include Deep Dive and Update types.

The table below summarizes the relationship between the types of product presentations and for which stage of the sales cycle they are most appropriate.

Helpful hints

Of the scores of product presentations I have given, I found that I always customize each product presentation—sometimes only slightly—for several reasons. First, every customer is unique—their needs, wants and situation/environment. Not every customer is interested in all features or the same feature subset. Ultimately, you are there to solve their problems. Second, changes occur rapidly over a short time for both the product and company as well as for the customer, that necessitate presentation updates. For example, it is not unusual for a product’s roadmap or competitive positioning to evolve over a few months necessitating product presentation updates. Third, I incorporate what worked and correct what did not work well from previous presentations. The good news is that by maintaining a “library” of product presentations, I can most often leverage previous materials rather than start from scratch.

Although mentioned earlier in this article, it is worth mentioning again: it is all too easy to focus too much on technology and features. Customers don’t buy technology, they buy solutions. They buy what the technology can do for them. While some presentations are highly technical, such as the Deep Dive, it is important to never lose sight of what the technological and feature benefits are and what they all mean to the customer.

Giving a presentation is a golden opportunity to learn. Although the act of “presenting” connotes a one-way form of communication, you should always have as an objective to learn from your audience. I view presentations more as a dialogue and use two techniques to foster two-way communication. First, I like to have the customer talk or present before my presentation. Not only does this help to “break the ice” and establish a rhythm to the meeting, but I invariably learn things from the customer that I use later in my presentation (e.g. emphasizing a particular product benefit). Second, I will pause at certain points during the presentation and ask questions. This allows for feedback, ensures that I clearly understand a customer’s situation, and verifies such things as assumptions and priorities.

Always find out in advance how much time the meeting will take and how much time is allocated to your presentation. Armed with this knowledge, you should determine how much time you will need and, if necessary and possible, work to adjust the agenda accordingly. The amount of time you have to present determines how much material can be covered and how much detail you can go into. Remember to leave time for questions—both for the ones the audience may ask and for the ones you will ask. In my experience, this tends to consume more time than expected as discussions often ensue.

Product presentation topics

Following is a list of topics typically included in a technology product presentation. Which topics to include, their order and the level of detail depend on the situation. However, each section in the presentation should relate directly to the presentation’s purpose and key messages. Additionally, a product demonstration may be incorporated as part of or as an addition to the presentation.

• Company overview and history
• Key presentation points
• Vision, value proposition and product differentiators
• Features
• Applications
• Product and feature configurations
• Pricing
• Competitive comparisons and positioning
• Roadmap
• Conclusion/next steps
• Backup slides
• Conclusion

The effective product presentation framework requires knowing three things: purpose, audience, and the sales cycle phase you are in. By answering the detailed questions in this article associated with these things, you will be highly prepared to deliver that “killer” product presentation. The rest—product-related knowledge and presentation style—is up to you.

Mark Tiedeman has over 25 years in the high-tech telecommunications industry including 15 years in senior product management and marketing roles. He has served as Vice President of Marketing at Copper Mountain Networks and at Tut Systems and is currently providing marketing and product management consulting services. You can contact Mark at samt1@cox.net