How to Make a Custom Sales Deck Template [A Guide]
- Ink Narrates | The Presentation Design Agency
- Aug 23, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Sep 10
A few weeks ago, our client Carol asked us a question while we were building her custom sales deck template. She leaned in and said,
“What’s the fastest way to make sure my team never messes up the design or the story when they make their own slides?”
Our Creative Director smiled and replied,
“You build the template so well that it’s impossible to get it wrong.”
As a presentation design agency, we work on many sales deck templates throughout the year. In the process, we’ve noticed one common challenge: teams either overcomplicate the template or make it so bare-bones that it becomes useless.
So in this blog, we’ll walk you through exactly how to make a template that’s both foolproof and flexible enough for your sales team to win more deals.
In case you didn't know, we specialize in only one thing: making presentations. We can help you by designing your slides and writing your content too.
Why You Need a Custom Sales Deck Template
If you’ve been in sales long enough, you’ve seen it happen. One person on your team nails a pitch with a perfectly structured, visually sharp deck. Then someone else takes the same slides, tweaks a few things, and suddenly the flow feels off and the design looks like it came from three different companies.
That’s the real reason a custom sales deck template matters. It’s not just about making slides look nice. It’s about creating a shared framework so your team can focus on selling instead of wasting time figuring out layouts, fonts, and colors.
We’ve seen this play out in companies big and small. The sales team downloads a “ready-made” template online because it’s quick and cheap. Then they spend hours trying to fit their brand into it, bending the design until it looks like a knockoff version of what it was meant to be. A custom template flips that problem on its head. Every slide is built to fit your brand, your story, and your sales process from the start.
When your sales team knows the slides already look and read exactly the way they should, they stop reinventing the wheel and start focusing on conversations that close deals.
How to Make a Custom Sales Deck Template
Let’s get this out of the way first. A custom sales deck template is not just a PowerPoint file with your logo slapped on every corner. That’s the bare minimum, and it won’t get you the consistency, clarity, or persuasion you’re looking for. A good template should guide your sales team to tell the right story without making them think too hard about design decisions.
Here’s exactly how we approach it when we create templates for our clients.
1. Start with the story, not the slides
Too many people open PowerPoint, pick a blank slide, and start adding bullet points. That’s like building a house by picking the curtains first. The first step in making a custom sales deck template is deciding what story your sales team needs to tell in almost every pitch.
Ask yourself: What’s the sequence of ideas that leads a prospect from “I’m just listening” to “Where do I sign?” That’s your foundation.
For example, a common flow we design around is:
Problem – What’s the gap or pain the prospect feels right now
Solution – How your product or service fixes it
Proof – Evidence that you can actually deliver
Process – How it works, step by step
Call to action – The clear next step
When you lock in that structure, every slide you design serves a clear purpose. That’s when you can start thinking about layouts, visuals, and text styles.
2. Lock down your brand elements
A custom sales deck template is useless if it looks different from your website, your product, or your other marketing materials. Inconsistency makes prospects wonder if your team actually works together.
Your brand elements should be baked right into the template. That means:
Colors: Not just your primary brand colors, but secondary shades for accents and highlights.
Fonts: The exact typefaces you use everywhere else, in predefined sizes and weights for headings, body text, and captions.
Logo usage: Placement and sizing rules so it’s consistent without looking forced.
Image style: Whether you use photography, illustration, or a mix, make it consistent.
We’ve seen teams send out slides that look like three different designers made them on three different days. A locked-down template eliminates that risk and saves hours of editing before every pitch.
3. Design “smart” master layouts
The master slides are where the magic happens. These aren’t just static layouts. They’re design frameworks that help your sales team drop in content without breaking the look and feel.
Here’s what we usually include:
Title slide – The first impression. Crisp, minimal, with space for a client-specific title.
Section dividers – Clear breaks that reset the audience’s attention.
Content slides – Multiple options for text and image combinations so your team isn’t forcing every idea into the same box.
Data slides – Preformatted charts and graphs that match your brand colors automatically.
Quote or testimonial slides – Designed to make social proof stand out.
Closing slide – A strong end with a call to action.
We also hide a few “special” layouts in the master view. Things like custom icon sets, pre-styled infographic elements, or alternate color backgrounds. These give the team flexibility without letting the design go off the rails.
4. Keep it idiot-proof
This might sound harsh, but it’s the truth. A great sales deck template is so intuitive that even someone who’s never designed a slide before can use it without breaking it.
That means:
Text boxes are locked in place where they should be
Fonts and colors are preset so you don’t have to hunt for them
Placeholder text is descriptive (“Insert product benefit here”) instead of generic (“Lorem ipsum”)
Image placeholders are pre-cropped and scaled for the right aspect ratios
We learned this the hard way years ago. We handed over a beautiful template to a client, and a month later, we saw a sales deck that looked like it had been through five different software filters.
Why? Because the template gave too much freedom. Now, we build them like a guided path — plenty of options, but no room to mess it up.
5. Build for adaptability
Yes, the template needs structure, but it also has to work for different scenarios. Your sales team isn’t giving the same pitch every time. Sometimes they need a short version for a quick intro call. Other times they’re doing a 40-minute deep dive.
The way we handle this is by creating a “core” set of slides that work for any pitch, then optional slides for specific needs — like product demos, pricing options, or industry-specific case studies.
Think of it like a LEGO set. The core blocks are always there, but you can add or remove sections without breaking the overall look.
6. Pre-load it with brand-approved assets
Your sales deck template shouldn’t be a blank canvas waiting to be filled. It should come stocked with assets your team will actually use. That way, they’re not wasting time searching for that one logo file or trying to guess which image style is “on brand.”
We include things like:
A library of branded icons
Ready-to-use charts with your brand colors pre-applied
Approved product photos or lifestyle images
Infographic elements for quick visual storytelling
This not only saves time but also ensures that every sales deck looks like it came from the same place — your company.
7. Plan for updates
No matter how perfect your template is today, your business will change. New products, updated branding, fresh case studies — all of these mean the template will need updates.
We recommend having one person or team in charge of maintaining the master file. That way, changes are consistent, and the latest version is always in circulation.
One client of ours, a SaaS company, set up a quarterly review process. Every three months, they check the template for outdated stats, visuals, or messaging. It keeps their sales decks sharp without a massive overhaul every year.
8. Test it before rollout
Here’s where most companies drop the ball. They design the template, send it out to the team, and hope for the best. That’s risky.
Instead, test the template with a small group of sales reps. Watch how they use it. Do they find the right layouts quickly? Do they know where to find assets? Are they breaking the design unintentionally?
We’ve learned that the best feedback comes from watching someone struggle with the template. It shows you exactly where the friction points are. Fix those before you send it to the whole team.
9. Train your team to use it
A sales deck template is only as good as the people using it. Even the most intuitive design benefits from a short training session.
This can be as simple as a 30-minute walkthrough showing:
How to choose the right layout
Where to find preloaded assets
How to swap images without messing up the formatting
The “do’s and don’ts” for customizing slides
We sometimes record a quick video guide so the team can reference it later. It’s a small step that saves hours of frustration down the road.
10. Treat it like a sales tool, not just a design file
At the end of the day, your custom sales deck template is part of your sales strategy. It’s not just a visual aid. It’s a tool designed to help you tell a consistent story, build trust faster, and close more deals.
The right template:
Keeps your brand consistent
Speeds up sales prep
Improves clarity in presentations
Gives prospects confidence that your team is organized and professional
If you think of it only as “slides that look good,” you’re missing the bigger picture. This is a conversion tool. And like any good tool, it should be designed with precision, tested in real scenarios, and improved over time.
That’s how we approach making a custom sales deck template — a mix of strategy, design discipline, and real-world usability. When all of these elements come together, your sales team gets something far more valuable than a set of pretty slides. They get a consistent, ready-to-go system for winning more pitches with less effort.
Why Hire Us to Build your Presentation?
If you're reading this, you're probably working on a presentation right now. You could do it all yourself. But the reality is - that’s not going to give you the high-impact presentation you need. It’s a lot of guesswork, a lot of trial and error. And at the end of the day, you’ll be left with a presentation that’s “good enough,” not one that gets results. On the other hand, we’ve spent years crafting thousands of presentations, mastering both storytelling and design. Let us handle this for you, so you can focus on what you do best.