What does it take to deliver a winning sales presentation? Promotional Consultant Today passes along these tips from Julie Hansen, author of Sales Presentations for Dummies.

1. Tailor with a unique value proposition. Today’s prospects are more informed than ever. A salesperson’s primary responsibility is no longer to provide information or even drive home benefits, but to connect that information and those benefits to value for that organization or prospect. And to do this effectively, you need to understand what is of value to each specific prospect and tailor your presentation around that.

2. Adjust for attention deficit disorder. With attention spans half of what they were in the previous century and the siren call of technology never far away, taking your audience on a long, slow ride can spell disaster. It’s critical that you understand what drives a prospect’s attention, how often you need to trigger that attention and how to structure your presentation around those realities. Too often key sales messages fall on deaf ears because the salesperson is not effectively managing the audience’s attention during the presentation.

3. Create differentiation beyond your slide deck. In the 20th century there was more novelty associated with PowerPoint presentations, but today’s buyers have grown up with them as near constant companions in school and work. Awesome animations? Cool new graphics? Ho hum. Prospects have seen it all. Relying on your presentation medium to set you apart is a losing strategy. Yes, you want to have the best slides or medium you can to support your message, but how you deliver it and connect with your audience is going to have much more impact than all the zooming, swooping and fades in the world.

4. Leverage a persuasive structure. From a TED Talk to an informal conversation, there are many ways to structure a presentation. But if your goal is for a prospect to take some sort of action at the end of your presentation or conversation, you need a structure that is proven to persuade within a competitive market. A persuasive structure is easy to follow, memorable and ties in logic and emotion, which are necessary to drive action.

The bottom line is this: No matter how great your product or service is, if you’re still using presentation techniques and skills developed before the words “smart” and “phone” meant a single everyday object, you are at a distinct competitive disadvantage.

Source: Combining an award-winning sales career with her passion and experience as a professional presentation coach and actor, Julie Hansen specializes in helping sales teams craft and deliver winning presentations and demos by applying today’s best practices from business, acting, improv and storytelling.