Slide 9: Marketing & Sales Plan

This slide concerns how you are going to deliver information about your product or service and, later, how you will actually transmit that product or service to the customer. Take a look at the Marketing and Sales material for a refresher on the type of information that an entrepreneur considers in developing a marketing plan. You don't need to recite all of the information in the marketing section. Rather you should focus on your overall marketing strategy and the intended action plan. For example, do you plan to be a low-cost, high volume seller or a high price, high margin seller? These are just two examples of strategies you could employ.

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How You Will Implement the Strategy

For whatever strategy you employ, you will need to present the tools you plan to employ in undertaking the marketing strategy. You should also have a rough estimate of how much you plan to spend on marketing efforts. After outlining the marketing strategy and action plan, you need to state the intended methods of sales distribution. 

Any distribution method should have a projected sales cycle, or time period from when the product or service is ordered into it is delivered and payment made. If you have a complex distribution system then you may want to have separate marketing and sales slides. For example, if you sell through multiple channels that are not similar in nature, you should separate the slides.

Your presentation of this slide should answer the following questions:

• What marketing strategy do you plan to employ? (I.e., what do you want your brand image to be?)
• Why do you believe this strategy fits your business model?
• What tools will you use to make the customer aware of your product or service?
• What distribution channel(s) will you use to move your product or service?
• What is the projected sales cycle?

Keep It Simple

Again, this is a lot of information to fit into a small slide and very short time period. Do not try to fit lots of words on the slide. Just use single words that represent your intended course of action. For example:

Low-Cost Seller = Fast Market Penetration

20% Traditional - 80% SEC & Social Media

Big Box Retail = 14 Day Sales Cycle

These three lines provide a sufficient cue to answer all of the above questions. This is obviously not the only or best way to present the information. Your slides do not have to be plain and boring. You can be creative in how you present your information. The key is to capture the investors attention and invoke curiosity. You will answer his or her questions as they arise. Don't try to fit everything into the slides.