Sales Presentation Basics

[tconnor]

Sales Tips #250
Sales Presentation Basics

One of the biggest mistakes poor or new salespeople make is – they tend to talk too much. They launch into a ‘feature dump’ covering a litany of features and product or service characteristics. I recall in my first sales position years ago, we were trained by a national organization, a leader in its industry, to ‘memorize’ the sales presentation, and we were then instructed to go out and tell the company story (giving the presentation we had memorized). That industry for years had a 95% turnover ratio of new salespeople in the first year. I was fired after 6 months. No wonder. Don’t sell anything for 6 months and you might begin to think you should have taken up another career. Well, I went back into the same business and within one year was an industry leader. How? Simple. I changed my focus from a product focused presentation to a prospect focused one.

A persuasive sales presentation is nothing more than a conversation with a specific sales agenda. It is a process of discovering what your prospects want, need, and are concerned about, and then relating these to the particular aspects of your product or service that are a match for these needs and/or problems. This is a customer driven presentation.

Organization driven presentations are when a sales manager tells you to make sure you cover certain features with every prospect. This is especially true when new products are being introduced to the market place. The fundamental problem is that not all prospects are interested in the same features and don’t all buy for the same reasons.

If you have 4 sales appointments today to sell, each presentation should be totally unique. Oh, the structure might be similar and there might be some overlap in feature coverage, but the specific content or what you cover should be tailored to each prospect. Here are a few general rules to keep in mind before you give your next presentation.

A good sales presentation:

1. Is brief and focused.
2. Comes from the prospect’s perspective – not yours or the organization’s.
3. Is interactive.
4. Is a two-way conversation.
5. Blends the right amount of emotional appeal (customer benefits) with logical reasons to buy (features and product benefits).
6. Involves the prospect – allowing him to develop some ownership or comfort for the product or service.
7. Ties the customer benefits back to his Dominant Emotional Buying Motive.
8. Tests the attitudes or acceptance of the prospect with assumptive phrases and trial closes.
9. Approaches the prospect from his personality style comfort level.
10. Tailored, tailored, tailored.

An effective sales presentation is not an ‘unloading’ of information on the prospect. Remember, if a prospect knows what you sell and will see you, they have bought. If they don’t, it is because you have most likely missed something!!!