How to Make Effective Sales Presentations

OME ? Business:Presentations

By Ferdinand M Ibezim

In today's highly competitive business environment, having a great idea, product or service to offer, plus effective and efficient backup and administration is half the battle. The other half is convincing decision makers, clients and vendors that what you have to offer shall indeed meet their needs and expectations!

No matter how good or important a message is, if it is not delivered in an interesting and effective way, chances are it would not be heard at all. To ensure that your presentations achieve desired objectives, please follow these steps:

Step 1. PREPARE FOR THE PRESENTATION

Preparation is the master key to an excellent presentation. The more prepared you are, the better the quality of your presentation and the more likely you are to achieve your sales presentation goals. The first stage in preparing for a presentation is to ask and answer the following questions:

A. What do you know about this prospect, customer or company?

B. What should you know?

C. What is the purpose of this presentation? Is it to create awareness about your company, about the product or to sell the product? Is it to penetrate the company, to increase your market share or prevent the competition from sharing

D. What outcome do you want to see? What would the ideal after presentation result or picture look like? Have a mental image of what you want to see happen.

E. Who will you be presenting to? What do they know about you, your company and your product?

F. Are they experts or novices in the subject matter or product?

G. What is their rank and status in the company?

H. What level of direct or indirect influence do they have in making buying decisions?

I. What are their needs, interests and goals? Who else are they listening to?

Who are they currently buying from or using?

Step 2. PRIORITISE YOUR PRESENTATION

Everything in your presentation may be relevant if you had all the time in the world to make the presentation, but not everything will be important. Even if they were all important, they would definitely not have the same level of importance.

In prioritising the information contained in your presentation you can adopt the ABCDE method for prioritisation.

A are the five star generals of a presentation. They are the must- knows. The deal sealers and breakers. They are the points without which you cannot close the deal. While it is your call to determine what these points would be for your presentation, permit me to point out that the profile of your company cannot be more important than the tangible benefits a prospect or customer will derive from your product or service.

B are the four-star generals of your presentation. They are the should- knows. After allotting time to the must-knows, the next on your list should be the points to

C are the nice to know. They are the three star generals of your presentations. They are the sweeteners of the presentation. The appealing things that speak more to the heart than the head. The appeals, rather than the persuasions.

D are aspects of the presentation that can be delegated to other sources. They are the two star generals. For instance, you can refer your prospect to your website or give him your company brochure containing the profile of your Directors rather including the profile in the body of your presentation.

E are the dead soldiers. They are things that should be eliminated from the presentation. They add no value to the presentation. Rather they present potential risks to you and your company.

Step 3. REHEARSE/PRACTISE YOUR PRESENTATION

Practice and rehearsals are the parents of genius. If you want to be a master of sales presentations, you must practise and rehearse before every presentation. Don't get so used to your presentations to the point of complacency.

Among other reasons, rehearsing and practising will help you prevent embarrassment, help with timing, help uncover black spots, anticipate likely questions, prepare responses to questions and objections, prepare for the unknown and build your confidence. Above all, a rehearsed presentation runs more smoothly.

Once you've created your presentation, practise it. Practise in front of a mirror, deliver the presentation to colleagues and run over your content, structure, and information until you have mastered it.

Step 4. DEFINE YOUR PERSONAL BUY-IN FACTOR

Why do you care that the prospect buys your product or service? If you were the prospect, and knowing what you know about your offer, would you buy the product? If your answer is yes, what are the features or benefits that will make you buy? What is the prospect losing because he/she does not use your product or service?

For your sales presentation to be real, you must be truly convinced that the offer you are proposing will really add value to the prospect. This conviction will engender motivation and stimulate your passion. Guess what, conviction, motivation and passion are infectious. You will transfer your personal buy-in to the prospect.

Step 5: ESTABLISH RAPPORT

The first thing you must win in every presentation is the heart or mind share of the prospect or customer. Winning the mind share enhances your chances of winning the wallet or market share. This is the emotional bit of your presentation. This is where you adopt the style of the motivator using your charm and charisma.

Here are some tips for establishing rapport:

1. Remember that the first impression anybody will have of you will be greatly influenced by your appearance. Your dressing and grooming must be immaculate and suitable for the occasion and audience. Your dressing should project your profession and accentuate your personality.
2. However, you should also apply cultural humility in your appearance and comportment. Cultural humility means subsuming your culture to the pervading and dominant culture of your environment. It's about aligning yourself to the ways and etiquettes of your environment without compromising your core values, beliefs and principles.
3. Greet. Once you step into the room, greet the person or per- sons there. And make sure that your greeting is loud enough for everybody to hear you. If you are already seated in the room and the prospect walks in, stand up and greet.
4. Eye contact. Make eye contact when you are greeting and exchanging pleasantries. Plant a slight smile on your face.
5. Handshake. Don't stretch your hand for a handshake unless the prospect offers the hand. Shake firmly without wrenching.
6. Express gratitude. Thank them for inviting you to make the presentation. Remember they have other alternatives, and could have chosen to buy from your competitors without giving you the opportunity to pitch.
7. Pay compliments. Say something nice (but genuine) about the prospect or customer, about the company, about their achievements or activities or even about the layout of the office. Please make sure the compliment is genuine and say it like you mean it. Make it short.
8. Introduce yourself. Introduce yourself by name, designation/ role and company in that order. So, you could say, "My name is Jedidiah, Jedidiah Peniel (notice that you said the first name twice), I am the Managing Director, XYZ Company... However, if you go for a presentation with a colleague and you are leading the team, it will be more appropriate to introduce your colleague (name, designation/role) before introducing yourself.
9. Say something about your past success.
10. Express your faith in their ability to use the outcome of the presentation

Establishing rapport using the above elements will help you relax and make you likeable. The stiffness and tautness usually associated with making a sales presentation will evaporate.

Step 6: ESTABLISH BUSINESS NEED

Once you have established rapport, the next step is to communicate your understanding of their personal or business needs. For example, "We have gone through your operations and we observed that your business is losing a lot of money because of the manual payment system you are currently using." or "As a start-up company, we perceive that you may need some financial support to help you maximise the huge potential of your business." or "The greatest concern of every nursing mother who cannot do exclusive breastfeeding is how to ensure that the substitute is as good as the natural breast milk."

This is an important next step in your sales presentation because it assures the prospect that you have not come to waste their time. They will begin to think, "Well, if she knows our need or challenges, let's pay attention to her solution." Your understanding and communication of the business need will be bespoke and further enhanced if you have done a good research about the prospect, her business, company, competitors or industry at the preparation stage of your presentation. Present your findings, data and analysis at this stage.

If establishing rapport targets the mind, communicating understanding of business needs knocks on the door to the head.

Step 7: PRESENT YOUR SOLUTION

This is the persuading and influencing phase of your presentation. This is where you either win or lose the market share. How do you present your product or service in a logical, easy-to-follow-and-understand sequence? Here is a guide.

1. Make a claim about your product. Immediately after communicating your understanding of the needs of the prospect or customer, introduce your solution or product with a claim. For example, "We have gone through your operations and noticed that you are losing huge sums of money because of the manual payment system you are currently using. We have therefore developed the safest payment solution for your company." The word safest in the above statement is a claim word.

A claim is an assertion with which you introduce a product to a prospect or customer. Claim words include: fastest, newest, cheapest, best, oldest, biggest, most convenient, unique, bespoke, most cost effective, most recognised, fastest growing, highest. Remember that the claim you make about the product must speak to the need and situation of the prospect. For instance, if you are presenting to a prospect whose concern is durability, you may say, "We observed that you frequently change the batteries in your car. We have therefore manufactured or sourced the most durable or the longest lasting batteries in Nigeria".

2. Substantiate your claim. The next step about making a claim about your product is to show a credible proof that your claim is true. What evidence do you have to validate your claim? Facts are used in sales presentations to eliminate any doubt the prospect may have about your product or service. Note that sometimes, the prospect will not voice out her doubt about your claim. But if you do not authenticate your claim, the doubt may persist and you may loose the business. There are many things you can use to corroborate your claim. They include:

• Other customers' testimonials. Who like the prospect is using or has used your product? What has been their experience? Any evidence?
• Awards from credible sources. For example, "We have consistently won the Nigeria Standards Organisation's award for best quality."
• Comparative data and analysis. Do you have empirical data or evidence that shows how long other batteries last and how long yours lasts?
• Demonstration and sampling. You may also choose to demonstrate the working of your product to the prospect. For instance, if you made a claim that the screen of the phone you are selling is the most rugged in Nigeria, you may which to throw the phone on the floor to prove your claim.
• Guarantees. You may also use warranties and guarantees, including money back guarantees to back up your claim.

3. Talk about the Features of the product. The prospect or customer would like to know what the product does, how the product works, the elements of the products, the conditions and terms of acquisition, etc. Product features are characteristics of your product that describe its functionality, appearance, components, and capabilities.Be careful not to be too verbose in talking about the features of your product. Every feature you highlight should be linked to benefits for the customer. Features don't guarantee sales, unless those features enhance performance expectations. For instance, if you go to a car shop to buy a car and the sales agent shows you two cars manufactured the same year by the same maker, same colour and seemingly same functionalities. When you now ask for the price, he tells you that one is N12 million and the other one is N15 million. Then you ask why and he explains to you that the car with a N12 million price tag has six air bags, a manually activated child lock system, travels 200 kilometres per hour, etc. However, the one priced at N15 million has eight air bags, a child lock system that automatically activates once a child weighing less than 40kg enters the car and can travel 350 kilometres per hour.

My question is, if you do not have kids or relatives weighing below 40kg will you pay an extra N3 million for an automatic child lock feature? If you don't plan to use the car for racing, will you pay an extra N3 million for 350 kilometre/hour feature?

So, you can see that as good as the features may appear, because they do not confer any real advantage to you, you will not buy it.

4. Communicate or show Benefits. At the end of the day, prospects and customers evaluate your presentation by asking, "So, what is in it for me? How would this product, service or offering help me or my business?" People are interested in what the product will do for them. Benefits can be both practical and psychological.

Benefits should be specific statements, not generalisations. Emphasising benefits increases sales.

5. Communicate or demonstrate advantages. Unless you are a monopoly, your prospects and customers will usually evaluate your presentation, product or service against alternatives. What are the performance characteristics of your product or service? The chances of making a sale are increased by describing the product's advantages. Examples include: better than others, faster than others, more cost effective, or uniquely different.

6. Close your presentation. Remember how we closed debating contests in school those days? "I hope that with these few points of mine, I have been able to convince, not confuse you that... thank you". Then you bow and take your leave. When some preachers want to close their preaching, they ask the congregation to close their eyes, lift up their hands and pray. By the time the congregation opens their eyes the preacher is gone. In closing a speech, you may wish to use a famous quote from a very popular person.

In closing a sales presentation however, the above techniques are not part of your options. The first rule is that you must never allow yourself to run out of allotted time. Don't close with an apology.

Don't end abruptly. There should be a cue that suggests that you are about close.

You close a sales presentation by highlighting the major selling points you made in your presentation. You close a sales presentation by recapping the major benefits and advantages of your product or service and what they mean to the prospect; without starting another presentation. The idea behind this strategy is to guarantee that as you leave them to take a decision, they remember the key selling points. Your closing should leave them thinking.

7. Respond to questions and deal with reservations, concerns and objections. If nobody asks questions or raise objections when you round up your sales presentation, please know that something is wrong. Nine of ten times that means that they just listened to you out of courtesy. If all you get after a sales pitch is "we will get back to you", please go knock on another door. If the presentation is so good that questions are not necessary the proof will be in the buying action taken by the prospect.

Questions, objections, concerns and reservation are part of the grease that lubricates the sales presentation. We will examine handling objections in greater detail in another article. For now, let's focus on the steps for handling questions after a sales presentation.

a. When a prospect is asking you a question or raising a concern, give the person all eye attention. Show that you are listening to the question. Don't interrupt or assume that you know what he/she wants to say. You may wish to jot down the question.

b. Repeat the question or concern you heard. This step is important for two reasons. Firstly, you want to confirm that the concern you heard is exactly what the prospect raised. Secondly, you repeat the question to the hearing of everybody in the audience so nobody repeats a question you had answered.

c. Thank the person for the question or concern raised.

d. Then respond to the question in a way that deals with the concerns, while highlighting the fact, features or benefits of the product that addresses the concern.

e. Confirm that you have sufficiently responded to the question.

f. Thank the person again.

8. Ask for a buying decision. The eighth and final step in a sales presentation is to ask the prospect to make a buying decision, take action, show some commitment or agree next steps.

A lot of unprofessional sales people, even after making a wonderful presentation and dealing with all the concerns of the prospect open a window for the prospect to change his or mind. How do the sales people do this? By saying things like, "Please when should I call you to find out if you are buying or not." or "Let me give you time to think about it; I don't want to appear desperate."

Common! If you have followed all the pre-presentation and presentation steps we have outlined and you are fully persuaded that you have touched the hot buttons of the prospect, the right things to say are, "Should I supply today or tomorrow morning?" "Please let me know if you have further concerns that I can address so we can sign the agreement now." If the prospect says he wants to think about it, ask him what might be delaying immediate decision. If he has to defer to a higher authority, fine. If he says he wants to listen to other presentations, fine.

The key point however, is that you should exploit the opportunity of every sales presentation to ask for a buying action. The risk of postponing the decision, especially if there are buying signals from the prospect is that a lot of things can happen that could make him change his mind when you leave.

Ferdinand M. Ibezim is the author of many books including: The Critical Pillars of Sales Excellence; The Critical Pillars of Making Quality Contacts and Connections; The Critical Pillars of Excellence in Life, Business and Career.

For more insights on selling and other business development related matters please contact Ferdinand at https://www.ferdinandibezim.com