.webp)
.webp)
We've all experienced a bottleneck in business in some capacity. While it's more common for the sales and marketing teams, any department can get bogged down by a bottleneck. The hunger for growth met with resource limitations can be an efficiency killer among teams. Simply put, if your company’s workflow and output is limiting the productivity and success of your employees, you have a bottleneck to manage.
Companies often find themselves with limited design resources, especially when the headcount can't keep up with the demand for content. When said demand isn't fulfilled, it creates a delay for other projects, many of which tend to be client-facing and revenue impacting deliverables.
The notorious sales/marketing bottleneck
The sales and marketing bottleneck is one that happens far too often. Essentially, the sales and marketing bottleneck is the gap between the demand for sales assets and the ability to deliver on that demand using the people, tools, and resources at your disposal. Sales representatives aren’t designers, so they need help from their in-house design team to finesse their sales materials before sending them off to potential customers.
On top of the marketing campaigns and projects that today’s in-house designers focus on, many are asked to rework or design presentations and other collateral for various departments. Designers are pulled in many directions, and do so with limited bandwidth, so meeting deadlines for the sales team can be a challenge.
When multiple teams rely on a small design team, or even a single designer, projects can start to pile up and deadlines and quality are usually the first things to take a hit.
There’s a sense of urgency among sales teams because they’re expected to move quickly in order to capture new leads and close deals. As such, they are constantly in need of new client-facing materials and assets. Sales materials often act as the first impression for new business leads, so the quality is just as important as any other marketing material. In many cases, a sales representative will need a presentation to pitch to prospects. These presentations are an extension of the brand, and need to be clean and professional. However, the frequency and time-sensitive nature of assets requested from sales teams can put extra stress on teams like design and creative.
Insert: the bottleneck.
How our tool solves bottlenecks
Workforce limitations aren’t the only cause of bottlenecks in business. How and what we choose to work with can also cause bottlenecks on a smaller scale. For example, a non-designer using PowerPoint to create a sales pitch from scratch can add hours to the design process. When sales teams are left to their own devices and have to design their own decks from a blank canvas, things inevitably get messy. That’s when we start to see a lot of branding inconsistencies and frankendecks out in the wild. Trying to create a simple presentation can easily become a monster of a project that ends in a garishly animated, off-brand mess. And nine times out of ten, they’ll end up tapping into marketing resources to help redesign their finished deck. We all know that time is money when it comes to scaling a business, so spending 7 hours on each sales deck won’t do.
Using a presentation maker, like Beautiful.ai, can help even the most inexperienced designers create something brilliant in a fraction of the time. With pre-built presentation templates and intuitive controls, sales teams have their own personal deck designer in their back pocket. Gone are the days of relying on creative teams to approve and edit their presentations. The ease of use, shareability, and cohesiveness replaces the infamous bottleneck.
Increase efficiency and unblock bottlenecks
In today’s business landscape a company's design needs often push their design team’s limits and once that limit is met a bottleneck will occur. To lessen the negative impacts of bottlenecks, organization, autonomy, and standardization are key.
Organization
Managing assets such as photos, icons, logos, and branded fonts is an important place to start. Beautiful.ai keeps everything in one place for you, and allows you to get a handle on content management and centralization. Teams can create an on-brand theme and apply that theme to each presentation deck so they can get started faster and easier.
Autonomy
Giving your sales team the trust and autonomy they deserve will boost their confidence and allow them to do more. Luckily, Beautiful.ai already has the necessary guardrails in place so that even non-designers can create something clean and professional without the need to request help from the marketing department. Our smart slide templates use design best practices to help keep your font sizes in check and text boxes properly aligned.
Standardization
Pre-built presentation templates like our sales proposal template gives sales teams an outline for their presentations so they can quickly personalize decks and finish them without assistance. Templates are a great starting point for non-designers who don’t want the burden of starting a deck from scratch. Our presentation templates are curated by industry experts, so there’s something to help every team start inspired.
Beautiful.ai helps unblock marketing bottlenecks by giving sales teams the design help they need to build decks quickly, more cost-efficiently, and in real-time.
Invest in design
If your sales team wants to convert leads, it’s time to ditch the unprofessional presentations. While we’re at it, let’s also kiss the sales and marketing bottleneck goodbye. Luckily, you don’t have to hire a team of creatives to invest in good design. Technology like Beautiful.ai gives sales teams the design help that they need without burdening in-house designers with bottomless tasks. Think of it as a personal designer for sales representatives, without actually paying for another employee. It’s time to invest in design, without breaking the bank.
Design tips for non-designers
Keep it Simple
White space is necessary for controlling the narrative of your deck. Using too much text on individual slides can easily distract your audience from your key message, which could jeopardize closing the deal.
Highlight Visuals
Grab your prospects interest and keep them engaged with interesting images, icons, and videos that relate back to your presentation. The more engaged your leads are, the more likely they are to convert to new clients following the pitch.
It’s easier than ever to produce quality content and scale faster by avoiding business bottlenecks with Beautiful.ai presentation templates. Get started for free today.
