Stop the scramble: Why our modular sales libraries are so popular

DesignMarketing

2 Oct

There’s a reason modular sales libraries have become one of the most popular pieces of commercial creative we build, and they’re also one of the simplest.

We’ve created them for businesses across data, tech, data, live events, insurance, property, construction and plenty more besides. Different businesses, different buyers and completely different sales conversations, yet the same problem keeps cropping up.

Most businesses don’t have a shortage of sales collateral, they’ve got loads of it. The problem is finding the right thing at the right time and getting it in front of the right person, quickly.

You’ll have everything you need

When we start one of these projects, we’ll normally ask a client to show us what they already have. There might be a main sales deck, a couple of older versions, service PDFs, case studies, sector presentations and various documents that have been created for individual pitches over the years.

Most of what they need is already in there somewhere, it’s just spread across different places. Every new enquiry can mean searching through old files, copying slides, checking what’s still accurate and pulling together another version before there’s anything ready to send.

It takes time and makes responding to a fairly straightforward enquiry harder than it needs to be, which is exactly the problem a modular sales library is designed to solve.

Start with the essentials

We normally begin with a core deck covering the things somebody needs to understand about the business, including who you are, what you do, who you help, the problems you solve and why somebody should choose to work with you.

There can be a temptation to include everything, just in case somebody might want to know it. We’d rather work out what they really need to understand to take the next step, whether that’s having a conversation, requesting a quote or finding out more.

The core deck might only be eight to ten slides. Some businesses need a little more and some need less, but the point isn’t to create a huge presentation covering every possible conversation. It’s to get the core story right and give you something useful to build around.

Then make it modular

Once the core is sorted, we start building out the library. The slides are designed so you can use all of them, some of them, one of them or none of them, then add service pages, sector pages, case studies and, where it makes sense, content specific to a particular service within a particular sector.

The library itself can become substantial over time without the presentation you send becoming 50 pages long. You might choose six core slides, two that relate to the client’s sector and another couple covering the services they’re interested in, giving them something focused on their needs rather than everything your business could possibly tell them.

Because the whole library has been written and designed together, whichever combination you choose still works as one document. We can also create editable opening and closing pages where your team can add a client name, logo or a small amount of specific information.

When an enquiry comes in, you choose what’s relevant, make those small changes and have something ready to send or present within minutes.

More useful than you think

Speed is one of the big benefits, but it’s far from the only one. Once the library is in place, it makes it much easier for people across the business to find, share and present the right information.

Clients use their libraries to:

Respond to enquiries in minutes rather than hours
Tailor each deck to the conversation without starting again
Share something relevant straight after a meeting or introduction
Keep messaging and design consistent across the whole team
Make simple client specific changes without needing a designer

One of the nice things about building a modular sales library is that you start to find plenty of other uses for it too. You’ll find marketing can use it as a clear source for agreed messaging and content, while new starters have a simple way to get their heads around the business without picking up bits and pieces over their first few weeks.

What starts as a sales tool can quickly become a useful reference point for the whole business.

We’ll make it yours

How the library is built depends on how your team needs to use it. We can design in Adobe, where we have full control over the visual side, but that isn’t always the most practical answer when people across the business need to use and edit it regularly.

PowerPoint, Google Slides and Canva are all options, which means we can choose a format that gives your team enough control to change a client name, swap an image or make other light edits without needing to come back to us each time.

There is a sensible point where it’s worth getting us involved again. If you’re adding whole new sections or page types, we can make sure they fit properly with everything that is already there, while the everyday changes remain easy for your team to handle themselves.

You’ve already started

If any of this sounds familiar, the good news is you probably already have most of what we need.

our existing sales decks, service PDFs, case studies, old pitch presentations and sector specific content all give us somewhere to start. We can work through what you have, keep what’s useful and accurate, tighten up the messaging where it needs some attention and bring everything together into one library your team can use with confidence.

There’s no need to have everything figured out before you speak to us, and there’s certainly no need to start again. Send us what you’ve got, however organised or otherwise it might be, and we’ll help you work out what’s missing and what could be working harder.

If the next enquiry landed tomorrow, how quickly could you get the right story in front of them? If the answer involves searching through folders, old decks and previous pitches, it might be time to build your library.