Slidebean vs Powerpoint: Which is Better for B2B Sales?

Slidebean vs. PowerPoint: which is the better option for my scaling B2B organization? If you're like many B2B organizations, you've been using PowerPoint because it’s the default presentation tool in the market. However, if your organization is growing, you're probably feeling some frustrations from using PowerPoint, such as the inability to control your sales story or your team from spending too much time creating sales presentations. This is leading you to look for other options, such as Slidebean.

In this article, we'll compare the two presentation platforms from the perspective of scaling B2B organizations and see how each platform stacks up.

What Are the Essential Features for Modern B2B Sales Teams in a Sales Presentation Tool?

In our previous article Canva vs. Powerpoint, we started by laying out the requirements for modern B2B sales teams in today's presentation landscape. Let's take a quick recap as this will be the basis of our analysis. We’ve broken down the needs of the modern sales teams into six categories and will stack each platform against these criteria.

Let's start with presentation responsiveness – it's no secret that we're all glued to our phones, and that holds true for B2B buyers as well. According to a survey by Google, 70% of B2B researchers use mobile devices during the purchasing process. So, it's crucial that your presentations are easily viewable on any device.

Next up, presentation visualizations - with attention spans shorter than a goldfish, it's important to make sure your presentations are visually appealing to keep your audience engaged. A study by the Content Marketing Institute found that using visuals in sales presentations can increase the chances of closing a deal by 42%.

Speed is also key - sales is a numbers game and you can't afford to waste time creating presentations. A templated system can help ensure speed, efficiency, and accuracy when delivering your sales pitch. According to a survey by Ethos3, the average salesperson spends about four hours creating a single sales presentation. Some other studies have found that salespeople spend as much as 10-15 hours creating a single presentation. 

Compliance is crucial. Your presentations must adhere to industry regulations, maintain the integrity of your brand, and protect your company's intellectual property. It is particularly important for businesses that sell regulated products or services such as medical devices, pharmaceuticals, or insurance products, as it allows you to ensure the accuracy and relevance of shared information and align it with your brand's messaging while presenting it in a professional and appropriate manner.

Presentation analytics is also important - it's no longer enough to send a presentation and hope for the best. Today's sales teams need to be able to track performance in real-time and make data-driven decisions on next steps. A study by DocSend found that companies using their presentation tracking software saw a 34% increase in closed deals.

Lastly, B2B teams need an effective Asset Management system to control the sales content needed to promote and sell their products and services. This includes things like product brochures, pricing sheets, case studies, and demo videos. A study by Gartner found that sales reps spend on average 20% of their time searching for or creating content and that most of the content they use is either outdated or irrelevant. When your team is not wasting time looking for content they have more time to sell!

Now that we’ve laid the foundation let’s compare Slidebean vs. PowerPoint to see how they meet the needs of scaling B2B brands. 

PowerPoint: The “Granddaddy” for Presentation Sales Tools

PowerPoint, which has been around for over 30 years, is like the "granddaddy" of presentation software. It has stood the test of time and has become the go-to choice for creating presentations. 

Responsiveness: 2/10

PowerPoint is based on a "free canvas" approach, allowing designers to add elements anywhere on the slide, which does not translate in a mobile environment. However, we’ll bump this score up a little as they are making attempts to add mobile responsive features into the platform although online reviews have not been favorable among users. 

Enhanced Visualizations: 6/10

While PowerPoint does offer layout templates and themes, they are generic and dated. However, Powerpoint does have a massive community of designers so it’s easy to find Powerpoint presentation templates on sites like Envato Elements. 

In addition, PowerPoint does have some more advanced design features, such as the ability to create charts and diagrams. It also has the ability to incorporate 3D models and animations. 

Speed: 5/10

PowerPoint can be challenging for first-time users to navigate due to its complex interface and wide range of features and tools, which can take time to learn. Its relatively dated interface compared to more modern design software can also make it less intuitive for new users.

Compliance: 2/10

PowerPoint does offer the ability to add permissions and control access to presentations to the online version, but it may not be as robust or feature-rich as other presentation tools specifically designed for team collaboration and control.

Insights: 0/10

PowerPoint lacks the ability to track viewer engagement, such as who is viewing the presentation, where it's being viewed from, and how much time is spent on each slide. It also doesn't provide detailed analytics on how your team is utilizing the sales content making it difficult to craft educated decisions on content improvements.

Asset Management: 4/10

Microsoft suite comes with OneDrive, a cloud-based file storage system as part of your subscription, but there is no direct connection within Powerpoint, and acts as a standalone media management system.

Modern B2B sales Team Score: 19/60

Slidebean: Made for Startups

Founded in 2013, Slidebean is an alumnus of both Startup Chile and DreamIt Ventures. The company is 100% focused on the startup market, with a goal of making investor pitch decks easy. Their business is divided into 2 main components, one is providing presentation design services, and the other is their presentation software. As explained on their website, you can use their creative services technology for a fee as an option, or you can use the software technology as a standalone. They also offer additional features such as pitch deck writing and financial modeling.

Mobile Responsiveness: 0/10

Like PowerPoint, Slidebean seems to offer a library of templated pages as well as a free design canvas. Therefore, it is not mobile-responsive and functions like most traditional PowerPoint presentations, where they rely on a 16 by 9 landscape.

Enhanced Visualizations: 6/10

Slidebean comes with an array of presentation templates so quickly creating an investor deck should be a breeze. In addition, they have a creative services component that allows you to hire their design services to create custom designs and graphics based on your pitch deck needs. It's not clear the extent of their creative services, whether they have animation or 3D product capabilities.

Speed: 6/10

If you’re using the templates, creating presentations should be a quick and painless process. If you need to make something that is more customized and don’t have any design chops you might need to enlist their creative team for support which could take time and cost money. 

Compliance: 10/10

Slidebean does come with collaboration and team features, which allow you to share presentations with team members and give them edit or non-editability, which is obviously key when controlling your sales pitch.

Insights: 10/10

Slidebean does offer presentation insights. They allow you to see the number of visitors, completion rate, and average time spent on pages. As you can imagine, this is extremely valuable when analyzing how your presentation is performing so that you can have informed follow-up conversations with your prospective investors.

Asset Management: 0/10

Slidebean doesn't come with a content management system. If you need to import images, videos, and so forth, you would be uploading them from your desktop or embedding video links into your presentation.

Some additional reviews for Slidebean can be found here on get app.com.

Modern B2B sales Team Score: 32/60 

Slidebean vs. PowerPoint, the Results Are In

While they don’t check all the boxes, Slidebean is by far the more intuitive presentation platform. Although they position themselves as the presentation platform for startups and investors, we believe there could be a use case for B2B brands.

One of the most interesting components of their offering is the creative services. We strongly believe that modern B2B sales teams require a blend of creativity and technology in their sales enablement efforts.

However, one area where we do see an issue for B2B sales teams is the lack of a content management system. When dealing with long-term sales cycles in the B2B landscape, it's important to give your team access not only to presentation content that aligns with the sales cycle but also to allow easy access to sales assets such as videos, and one-sheets to support their efforts. Relying on external online repositories such as Dropbox and Google Drive can lead to disorganization.

Lastly, one of the deciding factors is analytics, which PowerPoint does not offer. It's really important in today's B2B landscape that sales reps have access to insights that allow them to make informed follow-up decisions with prospective clients. Plus, give your executive team the information they need to help evolve and improve their sales content.  

Meet Nuvue, A Modern Presentation Solution for B2B Sales Teams

Nuvue is quickly becoming a popular choice among high-growth B2B brands as a comprehensive presentation system. Like Slidebean, Nuvue is a blend of creativity and technology. Our award-winning creative team has vast expertise in creating meaningful B2B sales presentations and content, and our presentation management platform helps scaling brands deliver them with 100% consistency and control.

Responsive: 10/10

Nuvue comes with over 50 design templates, all of which are 100% mobile responsive. No matter the viewer's screen size, you can assure they’ll never have to download or pinch and zoom.

Enhanced Visualization: 10/10

Since Nuvue is built like a website, you can incorporate any type of enhanced visualization, such as 3d product tours, explainer videos, ROI calculators – even VR. Plus, we have a creative team that is 100% focused on B2B sales content. 

Speed: 10/10

Nuvue provides teams with a library of preset presentations, so all they have to do is press play. If teams need to create their own presentation, Nuvue’s drag-and-drop editor will allow them to make one in seconds.

Compliance: 10/10

Nuvue’s permissions and teams feature ensures that your team will never alter your story or access presentation content that is not intended for them.

Insights: 10/10

With Nuvue, you’re always in the know. From individual presentation tracking to understanding how all your system's content is performing, you have all the information needed to continually assess and refine your presentations.

Asset Management: 10/10

Nuvue comes with a permissible tag-based media management system that allows your teams to use the content you’ve shared with them within their sales presentations with ease. In addition, you can create tag-based presentations which are a collection of content that all share the same tag.

Modern B2B Sales Team Score: 60/60

The Ultimate B2B Sales Tool: Harnessing the Synergy of Creativity and Technology

Want to see how Nuvue can streamline your presentation process for your B2B sales team? Take the first step by scheduling your 30-minute Hello Call with Nuvue today. You'll learn how to create the sales story your brand deserves, how to deliver it consistently, and how to empower your team to sell smarter and faster than ever before.