Are You Ad-libbing your Presentations?
March 27, 2007
This week we will continue to develop our presentation process.
Many of the salespeople I work with do not have a sales presentation as such and tend to ad-lib each presentation they do. In fact by study 63% of all sales people do not have a structured approach to presenting to clients and prospects and in many cases their results reflect this.
The questioning process we have been working through over the last few articles can be used as a template for your presentation.
As I mentioned last time, the questions you ask need to follow a certain pattern. A good way is to think of yourself as a reporter interviewing a VIP which in fact you are – a “Very Important Prospect”. The sole purpose is to uncover the most driving need they have and find out what it is costing them not to fix it.
A formula I use is:
Explicit Need + Implication = Sale
No Need = No Sale
Now back to the questions. Remember it is important not to ask too many background fact-finding questions as the V.I.P. will loose interest and begin to classify you as just another salesperson, therefore focus on uncovering needs and implications. Another important lesson we can take from our reporter friend is to let the prospect do 90% of the talking.
The reason many salespeople talk too much is they feel they need to build credibility through talking about their company and what they themselves have to offer. This credibility issue can be overcome in other ways which we will look at in future articles.
They used to say that salespeople were born however it has been my experience that salespeople are created through attitude and skills development and by far the most important skill for salespeople is the skill of asking the right questions.
On the subject of asking good questions a friend of mine sent me an email joke –
Son to Father –
“Dad is a Ferrari a red car with a small horse?”
Father –
“That’s right, why do you ask?”
Son – “I think there is one trying to pass on the right”
In a sales situation the salesperson will uncover a need through good questioning and come up with what they believe is the obvious answer (a Ferrari) to the prospects problem without digging deeper. This usually results in a missed sale.
We need to examine each point the prospect raises to find out if it is a real concern.
Back to the joke –
You now scroll down and there is an actual photo of a red Skoda on the highway with a miniature horse with its head poking out the back window on one side and its tail out the other!
In my next article we will look at the biggest issue for most salespeople – closing.
Question of the Week –
On a busy street you are approached apologetically by a well-dressed stranger who asks for a dollar to catch a bus and make a phone call. He says he has lost his wallet. What would you do? If approached in the same way by a haggard-looking stranger claiming to be hungry and unable to find a job, what would you do?
Have a successful week!
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