Sales One-Pagers Guide: Examples, tips, and templates

Think of a sales one-pager as your deal’s resume. 

A resume is a neat, tidy snapshot of why someone should hire you. At a glance, it makes your contact information, skills, and work history easy to remember and understand.

A strong resume might convince a manager to bring you in for an interview or remind them of why you’re a great candidate after the fact, but it’s not your life story.

A sales one-pager, or sell sheet, serves the same purpose, but for your company, product, or service.

Just like the name suggests, its most important feature is brevity. A sales one-pager is the “fast facts” on your deal—for a prospect to refer to themselves or share with other decision-makers. 

Traditionally, the term “one-pager” was literal, as these were static PDFs. But in today’s world of elevated, personalized sales, one-pagers can be a lot more advanced and user-friendly as living, interactive workspaces. 

What is a sales one-pager?

A sales one-pager is a document that summarizes your company or product in a concise, sharable format.

A sales one-pager is the tangible version of an elevator pitch. It should entice the person receiving it to continue the conversation, learn more about your product, and get closer to a buying decision.

It’s usually sent to a prospect as a follow-up after a sales conversation, to recap key details of your offer. They don’t need to wrack their brain to remember the takeaways of your conversation—you’re making it easy by summing up the key details of your offer in a sleek, tidy format. 

A one-pager is easy to share and looks the same for anyone who views it. It will stay intact, consistent, and accurate as the prospect shares it among their internal team.

Traditionally, sales one-pagers were printed out sales sheets or standalone PDFs. But modern, high-touch sales processes tend to call for something more dynamic.

What to include in a sales one-pager

A sales one-pager isn’t just a clear, concise summary of your product or service. It’s a summary of why it’s the best solution to your customers’ problems. 

A good sales one-pager is prospect-centric. Don’t just talk about your product’s features in an abstract way. Tie them to specific customer pain points and explain how it addresses them. 

Secondly, a sales one-pager should be geared towards action. Beyond a basic call to action (CTA), equip the reader with exactly what they need to do to move the process forward. What do the next steps look like? How are they getting closer to solving their problem? 

Through that lens, here’s the crucial information a sales one-pager should contain. 

• Information on your product or service: What does it do, and who is it for? What problems does it solve?
• Positioning and value proposition: What sets you apart from the competition? Why should someone choose you, specifically? 
• Contact information: Who should the prospect reach out to for the next steps or more information? Make sure this is contact information for a specific sales rep, not generic company details
• Call to action: What needs to happen next for the deal to move ahead? These can be more detailed than a typical CTA. 

Sample sales one-pager outline and template

Here’s how these categories break down in this B2B Sales Template from Dock.

Overview

Open the one-pager with a brief CTA, high-level value proposition, and contact information.

Product information 

Share resources to help the reader understand what your product does, and how it can meet their needs. If you’re using a digital sales room instead of a basic PDF, consider pitch decks, screen recordings, and feature breakdowns. 

Pricing

If the customer is ready for it, include the different pricing options that could work for them. Dock’s dynamic price quote module makes it easy to include super-customized pricing information that can be updated on the fly. 

Social proof

Don’t just tell your customers you can solve their problems—prove it! Link out to reviews, testimonials, and case studies that show them how other customers like them have gotten great results. The ability to link to dynamic content like this is another compelling reason to move away from static PDF one-pagers. 

Customer service, security, and privacy details

If the prospect chooses to do business with you, how will you support them? Outline the customer support, and customer success resources that will help them reach their goals.

Finally, list important compliance information including resources on your security approach, FAQs, and data processing policies.

👉 Get the B2B Sales Template to create your own trackable one-pager in minutes.

Sales one-pager examples

Want to see these principles in action? Here are some great sales one-pagers to inspire you! 

1. MessageDesk

A textbook example of one-pager best practices from MessageDesk. Look how clearly they define the reader’s problem, their product’s solution, and the exact features that realize it. 

2. Pendo Validate

A crystal-clear overview of why the reader should use this product from Pendo. They lead with benefits, then break a pretty complex product down into a simple three-step process. 

3. Whistic

A slightly more text-heavy one-pager that’s still focused on problems, solutions, and features. 

Sales one-pager best practices

Here are some tips to get you started on building a one-pager that converts.

1. Use prospect-centric messaging

Your prospect isn’t reading because they love you and want to spend time with you—they only care about your offer to the degree that it can solve their problem. 

Your job is to provide a rock-solid argument explaining why that’s the case. Throughout the one-pager, tie everything back to the prospect’s unique needs, goals, and challenges. 

Achieving this level of customization is much easier with a personalized digital sales room for each prospect, compared to a traditional one-to-many PDF. 

2. Centre your unique positioning and value proposition 

It's not enough to talk about what makes your tool great—you also need to highlight why it’s better than tools on the market. 

Why should a customer choose you, specifically, over your competitors? What unique differentiator do you bring to the market that makes you especially valuable? 

3. Keep messaging product-focused

Even though one-pagers are a sales asset, they should involve close collaboration with product marketing. 

The idea is to avoid fluffy marketing speak, and high-level discussion of benefits like “save time and resources.” Instead, you’ll be super clear and specific on which features your product will use to solve pain points.

4. Think product education, not a hard sell

The B2B buying process has become complex and challenging. There’s a lot of money on the line, and products are so advanced that it takes a lot of information to even understand if they’ll be a good fit. 

Your customers need the knowledge to make an informed decision, not super-persuasive sales language. Show them you understand their problem, then how you’ll solve it, with detailed information about your product.

Make your customers’ lives easier with a one-pager that can quickly inform their entire team. 

5. Customize to where your prospect is in their buyer journey 

Tailor your one-pager to your prospect’s goals, pain points, and jobs to be done. 

But you should also customize it to where they are in their buyer journey—which as you know, isn’t just a linear funnel anymore. 

For example, a prospect wouldn’t need nitty-gritty technical details after their first discovery call. On the flip side, someone who’s almost ready to commit might need detailed run-downs of different plans, complete with pricing.

6. Optimize for share-ability

The whole point of a sales one-pager is to be a fast, accurate 101 of your offer. PDFs are consistent and easy to share one-to-one—but they’re also not editable, and quickly get buried in inboxes. 

Consider a digital sales room like Dock as a way to store, share, and organize your one-pager PDFs (if not replace them entirely). Anyone at your client's company can visit their Dock workspace to view or download the documents, or anything else they need. You’ll be able to see who’s viewing them and when, and they can ask questions or get clarification from directly within the workspace. 

7. Ditch PDFs to elevate your one-pagers

PDFs are the standard for a reason—they look the same on all devices, and almost everyone is familiar with them. But in a modern, personalized, high-touch sales process, they have significant drawbacks.

If you want to edit or update them, you’ll need to start from scratch. That’s not ideal if you’re personalizing each one to your prospect and buying stage! And if the terms of your offer change as the deal progresses, you’d need to create an entirely new PDF—and you can’t stop your prospect from sharing an older, outdated version with their internal team! 

Instead, use a collaborative, client-facing workspace like Dock. It’s built as a centralized place for reps and prospects to connect and find all the information they need. 

8. Track engagement 

Another problem with PDFs is that they aren’t trackable. Once you fire them off, you don’t know who’s looking at them, or if it’s been totally ignored and needs a follow-up. 

But engagement can be a serious buying signal. If people are opening and engaging with your one-pager regularly, that implies the deal is being seriously considered. 

Using a sales workspace like Dock (instead of a static PDF) will give you the visibility into which contacts are looking at your sales content and when.

Or, if you’re really set on using a PDF, you can upload it to Dock’s Content Management platform and share it with a trackable link that gives you full content analytics:

9. Less is more

People will not read your one-pager if there’s too much information, or if it feels like a wall of text. Make sure your prospect can get all the information they need with just a quick glance. 

Limit your one-pager to a few key points that are relevant to your audience. Use plenty of headers and white space, so your one-pager is easy to read. 

One-pagers should also be responsive and mobile-friendly. This is yet another reason not to use a PDF! A tool like Dock is more dynamic and will make the contents easy to read on any device or browser.

10. End with next steps 

Leave no ambiguity. What do you want the reader to do when they finish reading? 

To move this deal forward, what exactly must happen next? This includes both a CTA and contact information for a sales rep or other point of contact. 

We suggest taking it a step further with a mutual action plan that outlines which actions that must be taken, what timeline to follow, and who’s responsible for each part.

Elevate your one-pagers with Dock

Even the best one-pager is only a static document. There’s no reason to constrain yourself to a static file in 2023.

With a Dock digital sales room, you can share everything that would go in your one-pager—but in a more organized, dynamic, and trackable way. 

You can create up to 5 workspaces in Dock for free—so it’s free to try. Or if you’d rather talk to our team, you can schedule a demo today.