We’ve all seen this sad story play out: a small company is doing great, nailing their sales goals and scaling up rapidly. But once they hit a critical tipping point, their sales process becomes a mess.
Marketing and sales have lost critical communication lines. Sales reps aren’t sure what content prospects have engaged with or what touchpoints they’ve received. The prospect’s experience varies wildly depending on who they speak to.
This scenario can be a tragedy for a blooming company. But the good news is that there’s a straightforward solution: a sales enablement process.
Want to keep track of the process you’re building for sales enablement? Then it’s time to create a sales enablement deck. This easy-to-peruse slide deck resource is exactly the kind of support your blooming sales team needs.
What is a Sales Enablement Deck?
A sales enablement deck is a presentation for your internal sales team that helps organize and systematize your sales process. This deck explains what prospects see and experience as they move through the sales funnel, and dictates how your sales reps should respond and continue to nurture those prospects through each funnel stage.
But that’s not the only definition. You’ve likely also heard the term to describe a typical sales pitch deck that's part of a company's sales enablement content (we’ll look at both types of sales enablement decks in our examples section below).
Going back to our first definition: your sales enablement deck ties together your entire sales enablement “suite,” all the resources your reps need to sell successfully in the real world. This can include a wide range of materials like:
- Internal content including battle cards, sales scripts, email templates, pricing information, and objection-handling documents
- External content including blogs, case studies, white papers, social proof, and testimonials
- Sales productivity resources like sales metrics and KPIs, performance data, customer information, onboarding materials, and new hire training
Think of your sales enablement deck as the ribbon that ties these key elements together. It aligns all involved parties and provides an actionable roadmap for what your company’s sales process should look like.
What Are the Goals of a Sales Enablement Deck
Here’s a breakdown of the goals most companies intend to get out of a sales enablement or strategy deck:
- Keep sales messaging on track: A well-crafted sales strategy deck aligns your reps behind the value that drives your customers to make purchases. It’s a handy resource for enabling your salespeople to have consistent sales conversations and clear sales pitches. For example, you might include talk tracks for specific product features, or templates for how to approach decision-makers on LinkedIn.
- Provide valuable insights: A sales enablement powerpoint deck can be the go-to place for reps to find high-level info about the sales strategy. For example, what kinds of sales enablement content do they have, and where are they to be found? How is the sales team structured, and who is responsible for what? What type of sales channels is the team using? How do reps use the CRM? Which customer stories align best for different use cases? Which call-to-action works best for follow-up emails?
- Communicate changes: A sales strategy deck is also an important document to relay changes to the team whenever you change or update your sales process. Think of it as the one place where you can get an overview of your sales strategy, that a rep can use to quickly get oriented with changes.
- Help reps explain differentiators clearly: Knowing your unique value proposition gives your reps an edge when conversing with potential customers, and helps your team close deals. Make sure your sales enablement presentation clearly conveys what sets your products above those of the competition.
- Enhance company reputation: Your sales reps’ first impression on customers determines how your company is perceived. When reps are responsive, informed, and helpful, it reflects well on their employer.
How to Build a Sales Enablement Deck
For easy skimming, sales enablement decks are usually set up using slide presentations, so that’s the format we’ll refer to in this section.
Here’s how to build a sales enablement deck step-by-step:
Step 1: Start With the End in Mind
Before creating your winning sales deck, start with the end in mind:
- What key goals should your sales team be aware of?
- Which sales workflows and techniques will they use to achieve their goals?
- How can your sales team use the deck to achieve success?
On slide one of your deck, summarize the above answers in a few short sentences. To illustrate key ideas and boost your sales team’s memory retention, choose pictures over text whenever possible. To help emphasize key elements, make sure to include plenty of white space on each slide.
Note: If your first slide doesn’t have ample white space, see if you can summarize your key points further or create two slides instead. Use bullet points to make main points stand out. Create a table of contents so each element is clearly visible within the sales deck presentation.
Why this step is important for success: Starting with the end in mind prevents wasted efforts and steep consequences that can happen when teams aren’t on the same page.
Step 2: Gather and Organize Internal Content
For this next step, gather and organize all of your internal sales content. Then, sum it up over a series of slides.
Some examples of internal sales content include, but aren’t limited to:
- Sales scripts: Help keep the sales message concise and focused
- Product demonstration scripts: Allow reps to better explain the product’s key features
- Playbooks: Enable salespeople to employ best practices during different stages of the sale process
- Value proposition descriptions: get reps aligned with the core statement of your company
- Buyer personas: Help reps gain a better understanding of the ideal customer
When summing up these materials, remember: be concise. If it’s imperative that your sales team has access to full-length documents, include a link to the document under its summary.
With each slide, ensure:
- You’re using graphics and images to illustrate key ideas
- You’ve summarized each material as concisely as possible
- Each slide is clean and easy to read
- Each slide is necessary, valuable, and has a clear purpose
- Sales reps understand how to use the slides to achieve their goals
It’s also important to ask your sales reps for feedback on this section. Are all slides easy for them to understand? Are there any missing elements? Do they have any suggestions for improving this section? Do they understand how to use this section to achieve their goals?
Why this step is important for success: To move prospects and stakeholders through the buying journey, reps must be able to quickly reference internal material as needed.
Step 3: Gather and Organize External Content
In this step, gather and organize all external sales content. This includes anything you share with people outside your organization (primarily prospects and customers).
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Then, summarize each piece of content over a few slides. Feel free to add links to full-length documents under each material description if necessary.
Examples of external sales content may include:
- Blog posts and storytelling elements
- Case studies and success stories
- Whitepapers and third-party industry research
- Post-sales materials
- Thought leadership content
- Email templates
- Product deep-dive content
- Sales presentations
Why this step is important for success: Prospects need data-backed evidence, product examples, and multiple touchpoints before they’ll agree to buy. Having client-facing content readily available helps reps make the most out of these touchpoints.
Step 4: Summarize Sales Productivity Resources
For this step, gather and organize your sales productivity resources and sum them up over a few slides.
This section will act as an easy-to-use database that reps will reference to — you guessed it — boost productivity.
Some examples of sales productivity resources include:
- Sales metrics and KPIs
- Performance data
- Customer information
- Onboarding materials
- Sales data
- New hire training resources
Why this step is important for success: Productivity databases help reps understand what sales metrics, KPIs, and performance metrics they need to meet. Productivity databases also give new hires easy-access to pertinent training resources such as videos, training guides, and mentorship options.
Looking for tools to drive sales success? Our article on sales productivity tools is a treasure trove of actionable insights.
Step 5: Break Down the Sales Process for Each Lead Segment
In this final step, analyze your lead lists and look for common patterns in:
- Demographics
- Preferences and needs
- Pain points
- Financial information
- Lead scores
- Buying habits
- Touchpoints
- Conversions
- Repeat customers
- Hot/cold leads
Then, segment your leads into groups that share common patterns. Give each lead segment a name, a goal, and breakdown the sales process for each segment.
Then, make a note of any client-facing materials reps should utilize with each lead segment. Finally, summarize the data and sales processes you created for each lead segment in a series of slides.
Why this step is important for success: Breaking down the sales process for each lead segment ensures reps will utilize the correct sales workflow for every lead they manage.
8 Sales Enablement Deck Dos and Don’ts
Perfect your sales enablement deck with these tips:
- Do be concise. Only include information that’s clear, to-the-point, and ties into your main goals for creating the deck in the first place.
- Do provide actionable insights. Make sure that your team walks away knowing exactly what they need to do next and how to do it.
- Do tell a story. Instead of plopping in random bits of information, tie it all together with a story that engages and motivates your team to do their best.
- Do mind your aesthetics. Especially when relaying complex graphs, your deck should be easy on the eyes and simple to follow visually. Use simple, easy-to-read fonts.
Avoid these mistakes when building your sales enablement deck:
- Don’t include too much text. Nobody wants to wade through giant text blocks — do yourself a favor and leverage white space.
- Don’t forget your graphics. This ties into the giant text blocks, but takes it one step further. Incorporate descriptive, helpful, and eye-catching imagery to keep your team engaged.
- Don’t make assumptions. Instead of only including the information you think is important, include the questions, comments, and experiences of your team.
- Don’t be rigid. Avoid a “one-size-fits-all” sales enablement deck. Update it continuously with new, relevant information — even if it means changing the story.
4 Sales Enablement Deck Examples That You Can Use
Here are four great sales enablement deck examples to inspire your own deck:
1. Internal Sales Enablement Deck by Close
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This first sales enablement deck example is our favorite. Its components are designed to help reps easily digest each slide. If your sales team feels bombarded with information or if you have new trainees, this deck is the perfect solution. Best of all, you can download and customize this sales deck template for your own team!
ACCESS THE SALES ENABLEMENT TOOLKIT →
2. Demand Campaign Sales Enablement Deck by Uberflip
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We love this deck by Uberflip because it’s a great fit for virtually any sales team. With minimal design elements, this deck template is easy and quick to fill in. If you’re in a bind and need to build a sales enablement deck quickly, this one’s for you.
3. Sales Pitch Deck by Reddit
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We love this deck by Reddit because it’s unique and creative — making it perfect for creative teams, ad teams, and sales teams alike. Need a colorful, engaging, and design-focused deck? If so, this one’s for you.
4. Ad Sales Deck by Snapchat
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This deck by Snapchat makes numbers, stats, and facts look like interesting snippets. The style is great for teams that place an extra focus on data sets and productivity metrics. If you’re looking to create a data-backed sales deck, why not take inspiration from this refreshing template?
Nail Your Sales Enablement Deck
Creating a sales enablement deck is more than putting a few slides and resources together: it’s the combined process of:
- Contemplating what you want to get out of the deck and jotting down your objectives
- Gathering and organizing relevant internal and external content
- Summarizing sales productivity resources for referencing and performance evaluation
- Breaking down the sales process for each lead segment so that reps utilize the correct sales workflow
By taking the steps mentioned in this blog, you will be able to create a sales enablement deck that’s as engaging as it is powerful.
By the way, if you want to discover recent AI-driven solutions in sales enablement, delve into the transformative tools revolutionizing sales productivity.
Need more ideas for sales enablement content? We’ve created the ultimate Sales Enablement Toolkit to help you get started, with tons of valuable content you can use for your deck.
Download the Sales Enablement Toolkit now and fill your sales enablement deck.
