While selling is often described as an art, incorporating scientific approaches – like cognitive load theory – might reap more rewards.
Discover how leveraging cognitive load theory can transform your sales approach, making even the most complex decisions effortless for your audience.
What is cognitive load theory?
Cognitive load theory (CLT) is a term coined by educational psychologist John Sweller in 1988. It suggests that a person’s working memory can only hold a certain amount of information at any given time.
As such, overloading someone with information can actually be counterintuitive, as they can only take on so much (their cognitive load). By providing too much information (cognitive overload), you actually lose control over what your audience retains.
If you want to improve information retention, there are different types of cognitive load that come into play:
- Intrinsic cognitive load – The difficulty of information being presented, including any prior knowledge.
- Extraneous cognitive load – How information is presented and how easy or difficult that makes it to process.
- Germane cognitive load – The effort needed to process information, relating to intrinsic and extraneous factors.
Understanding cognitive load theory isn’t just important in education. It’s a game-changer in sales and marketing too.
Cognitive load theory in sales and marketing
In sales or marketing, it’s easy to forget that you’re delivering new information to your audience. That’s especially true for advanced manufacturers and engineering companies, whose products are more likely to be novel and unique. With less prior knowledge, the intrinsic cognitive load is higher for buyers.
All too often, this is paired with a high extraneous cognitive load. Your sales pitch or presentation doesn’t make it easier for buyers to process information. This can occur when explanations are too long-winded, slides are too busy, or products are too hard to visualize.
As a result, you get a low germane cognitive load. Buyers can’t devote enough of their working memory resources to process essential information. As a result, it doesn’t go to their long-term memory.
Improving cognitive load when selling
When it comes to CLT, the end goal is to improve your audience’s germane cognitive load. To do so, you need to find ways to reduce the intrinsic and extraneous cognitive loads.
Reducing the intrinsic cognitive load is tricky, because you essentially need to cut the amount of information you’re giving to potential customers. That can be difficult in a sales presentation, where you have lots of features and benefits to cover.
One strategy is to ensure your presentation is tailored to specific customers. For example, if your business serves restaurants, bars, and hotels, you can streamline your presentation by focusing only on hotel-specific information when speaking to hotel buyers. Check out our guide to dynamic presentations for practical tips on tailoring content to your audience.
Another great tactic is to improve prior knowledge, which makes information that follows less difficult. You can do this by making resources readily available to buyers. Of course, these assets will need to be engaging and easy to navigate.
Alternatively, interactive presentation software provides a powerful way to address intrinsic cognitive load without cutting information. With this approach, you can present all the necessary content in one digital experience while allowing buyers to control their journey in real-time. By tailoring the experience dynamically – based on their interests and needs – you ensure each customer only sees the information most relevant to them. This not only simplifies complex information but also enhances engagement and personalization.
For example, Wienerberger UK, a global leader in brick and building infrastructure solutions, faced the challenge of presenting a vast inventory of products with countless customization options. Delivering this information through a traditional presentation would have overwhelmed their audience, leading to cognitive overload. However, by leveraging an interactive sales presentation with POPcomms, they simplified the process dramatically. Buyers could navigate the content intuitively, exploring only the products and options relevant to their needs, making the experience both efficient and personalized.
“From first contact with a customer to getting information to them used to take a week. Now it’s done in minutes.”
Dan Cheung, Marketing Manager, Wienerberger
And what about the extraneous cognitive load?
When it comes to the extraneous cognitive load, there are lots of ways to make information easier to digest. These include:
- Using visual demonstrations and diagrams – 65% of people are visual learners.
- Visual storytelling – building a narrative that makes information more relatable to buyers.
- Incorporating 3D models to deconstruct complex products or solutions.
- Including interactive elements which engage and involve your audience.
- Adding central navigation pages to break complex content down into sections.
Boost your customers’ cognitive load with POP
If you want potential customers to take on more information and make your brand more memorable, you need to WOW them. POP specialises in making the complex simple for advanced manufacturing and engineering businesses just like yours. If you’d like to find out more about our interactive presentation software and how we help brands create engaging experiences, we’re ready and waiting. Book a demo today or contact us with any questions.
Help your buyers quickly make sense of complex products and information so they can make smarter, faster buying decisions.
Find out how you can use POPcomms interactive presentation software to support your buyers and sellers.
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