When you are presenting your solutions or recommendations to your prospective client, there are ways to make that speech more compelling. There are 3 specific strategies that you should own to make your sales presentation more persuasive. They are:
1. Analogies
2. Authoritative Reference Sources
3. Third-Party Stories
Analogies answer the emotional need of “Do I understand?” “Am I buying in?” An analogy takes a complex idea and simplifies it into an everyday image.
Here is an example of using an analogy to help make your sales presentation more compelling:
I do a lot of ongoing incremental reinforcement-based training. I draw the analogy that it is kind of like working out at a gym. Working out for one week as hard as you can and never workout again is probably not going to get you to your fitness goals.
This analogy allows perspective clients to buy in at an “Aha” emotional level.
Authoritative reference sources help your perspective client understand that other smart people have decided that this solution is a good thing to do.
Here is an example of citing an authoritative reference to help make your sales presentation more compelling:
Per the America Society for Training and Development, ninety-four percent of what your students learn in a two-day seminar is gone one week later. Without doing ongoing reinforcement training, you will run the risk of squandering your investment.
Third-party reference ties into a concept called social proof; I.e. “If other people are doing it, it should be okay for me to do it.” This enables your prospective client to think, “People just like me took the leap and it worked out.”
Here is an example of using a third-party reference to help make your sales presentation more compelling:
We have a similar customer to you with about fifteen salespeople that did a lot of one and two-day training events, decided to move forward with us and have experienced tremendous results such as improved closing ratios by x% and higher revenue by x%.
When you think about presenting your solution and building a toolkit to be most effective, think about how you not only present your solutions, but how you strengthen it with analogies, authoritative reference sources, and third-party stories.
