Presentation

In this episode, we sit down with Stephanie Paul to discuss the magic of the story and how to use it to engage and influence any audience. Stephanie is an author and speaker coach who coaches executive sales teams, TEDx speakers, fundraisers, and other experts on how to become better storytellers and presenters.

This year, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the book, Dave will revisit each of the original 49 Sandler Rules and give updated takes on their relevance to salespeople and sales leaders.

In addition to following the basic principles of not presenting too early and ensuring that the presentation is delivered as one component of an effective professional sales process, there are four steps sales professionals can follow to ensure more effective presentations.

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Are your sales presentations more like a Gettysburg Address or a Gettysburg Oration? Few people know that President Lincoln was actually the secondary speaker at Gettysburg. The program for the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery, four months after the famous 1863 battle, listed Dedicatory Remarks, by the President of the United States after Oration, by Hon. Edward Everett, the main speaker. 

Do you know how to set meaningful expectations when you're presenting or selling to a group or committee; especially when you're not the one in the lead to win the deal?

Todd finally learned that he had lost the large deal. He was confused and thought his demo had gone well.  A month had passed since he was told by the prospect that he had “done a good job presenting his software!”  What could have gone wrong?

The next time a prospect or customer says or does something you don’t expect, disengage from the situation, set your initial emotional responses to one side … and get curious.

In this special bonus episode, Dave Mattson talks about a common problem with sales presentations. If you wait until the end of the presentation to close, you put too much pressure on you and the prospect. Learn how to prevent this pressure and succeed at giving sales presentations.

Has this ever happened to you? You’ve finally obtained the appointment. You’re looking forward to meeting with the prospect and asking the questions you carefully prepared in order to qualify the opportunity. You arrive at the appointment on time (or start the videoconference on time) . . . but before you can ask your first question, the prospect says, “OK, take it from the top. Show me what you’ve got.”

Rule 28. A sales meeting is your sales presentation. Master the skills that support a great sales meeting. Here's the bottom line, we want our sales meetings to be great, and we know they're not. And sometimes they're not because we're running from one meeting, we thought we had about a 30-minute window to get ourselves ready for a sales meeting which turns into a three-minute window and so we show up unprepared.

Before presenting your solution or recommendation, make sure you set the stage by putting your prospect’s PAIN in context.

When you are presenting your solutions or recommendations to your prospective client, there are ways to make that speech more compelling.

Traditional sales training says present, present, present and close, close, close – convince your prospect with a compelling presentation, show him enough value, and he will surely buy.  When I first got into sales I really sweated the presentations.  I practiced them over and over; used different visual props and brochures; tried a variety of persuasive arguments; and created notebooks full of evidence favoring my product and my company.  Ultimately it became apparent that no matter how exciting or compelling my presentation was, my close rate was mostly dependent on what happened before the presentation, not during it.

They say no pain, no gain. So, how can not finding a prospects pain cause you to lose business?

An unsure, passive voice can derail a positive opportunity with a promising prospect. Worse than that, though, is a call with no structure or plan that ultimately leads to no outcome. There are many techniques and tactics used to ensure that you receive the highest close rate possible during sales calls. One very effective and concrete method that should be used when engaging with a prospect is the Up-Front Contract.

How well can you run through your presentation? We all have our dog and pony show down and most of us love giving it. We are excited about our product or service and want to give all of those wonderful features and benefits. The problem is that there are very few prospects out there that need every one of our solutions.

When’s the last time you experienced pain? Jabbing, stabbing pain. Emotionally upsetting pain. Bet you couldn’t wait to get over it. You would have done anything for it to go away. Your doctor was your Superman, your Spiderman, and your Lord of the universe whom you depended on to heal your pain.

Knowing how your prospects view the outcomes they desire—solved problems or achieved goals—and the motivation for those outcomes will enable you to present your product or service from the most favorable position.

To understand how your presentations may trigger a prospect’s fight or flight response, you must first understand how the brain processes information.

People in pain want relief; don’t get in their way of getting relief.

Have you heard a prospect say this: “I need to confer with other managers here.” Or “I need more time to decide.” Or how about this: “Call me in about a month.”

Never be the rescuer in a group presentation, no matter how tempting. Delegate the role of rescuer to some other member of the group.

Know how the prospect makes a buying decision and you are three-quarters of the way to making a sale.

Purposely leave the conversation “unfinished.” Choose a relevant topic or two that needs “further exploration,” and suggest that it can be accomplished at the next meeting. Or, mention an idea or a concept you wish to share…during the next conversation.

Either you are in the race as a runner who passes the baton or you are a spectator. If you are in the stands watching, is there any possible way you can be on the winning team? Medals are not handed out to spectators.

Never assume you know who OKs the check being written; it could well be the person at the meeting who sat there like a bump on the log.

Have you ever given a presentation to a prospect who seemed ready to buy … but found that, for some mysterious reason, the opportunity went nowhere once your presentation was complete?

It may be tempting to use a familiar sequence of questions in an attempt to “script out” your exchanges with prospects ahead of time. But it doesn’t work – unless your goal is to get the person’s eyes to glaze over. Check your assumptions at the door, and focus on the motive instead.

Have you ever given a presentation to a prospect who seemed to be showing you nothing but “green lights” … until you came to the final page of your proposal? As a general rule, that’s the page with the price.

Have you ever had a series of good meetings with a prospect … gathered all kinds of information ... and given what you thought was a great presentation … only to receive a response like, “Let me think about it”? Or, “I have to share all of this with my boss”? Or, “We’ll get back to you”? And then you never heard another word?

Have you ever been in the middle of delivering a presentation to a prospect … when you noticed that he or she seemed to have completely tuned out of whatever it was you were saying? If you were delivering the proposal in person, maybe you noticed that the prospect’s gaze was elsewhere, or that his or her body language was closed-off. If you were talking to someone via Skype or join.me, perhaps you noticed that the prospect didn’t pick up on your persistent verbal cues to join the conversation, or only offered short, polite responses.

Has this ever happened to you? You’ve had a series of great discussions with a prospect, taken lots of great notes, and you’ve developed the proverbial “killer presentation.” You’ve started to deliver that presentation, and you’ve gotten all kinds of positive signals from the prospect: encouraging body language, words of approval, that kind of thing. Things seemed promising. Then you got to the final slide, the slide everything else was supposed to justify, the price.

All prospects (and, for that matter, all salespeople) are unique. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to bonding with people and establishing rapport with them.

Have you ever had a qualified prospect pick your brain for information – and then turn around and buy from the competition?

Has this ever happened to you? A seemingly “hot prospect” asks you a question that seems to signal interest in working with you. (For example: “How strict are you with quantity discounts?”) You’ve been taught to respond immediately to “buying signals,” and you’re sure you just got one. So you answer the question – at length and with sufficient thoroughness to resolve all past, present, or future ambiguity on the subject. Your contact nods and smiles. Then, for some mysterious reason, your “hot prospect” disengages.

There's no denying that finding a job in this market can be tough. In fact, an average of 118 people apply for any given job opening and only 20% of those applicants are offered an interview. If you are struggling to make your resume stand out or to shine in an interview, you may be falling victim to some of the common job hunting mistakes. When it comes to tips and techniques to sell yourself in an interview, many of the tips and techniques taught by Sandler can be applied to a job search. Making a few tweaks to your process could help you land the job of your dreams

A recent Sandler Training survey revealed that nearly 70% of working Americans agree that the key to getting ahead in life is to learn how to sell yourself. What does that mean for recent graduates? Learn how to sell yourself early in your career to stay ahead and put yourself on the right career path. And there's no better time to start selling yourself then during your first professional, post-college interviews

Sandler Training spends more than 92,000 hours per year training companies and individuals how to strengthen sales, leadership and management skills.

Many salespeople are too eager to make presentations – are you? They view them as opportunities to establish the value of their products or services by demonstrating their unique aspects. You can't establish value, however, until you have determined which aspects, if any, are relevant to the prospects' situations.

Salespeople invest time developing their pitch, formulating questions, and preparing responses to expected questions and objections from the prospect. They rehearse, refine, and rehearse some more.

Clients and prospects tell on a regular basis about how they spend 5 - 20 hours a week preparing proposals for business they are "hoping to get;" however, most of the time their efforts are unsuccessful. Why are we compelled to provide proposals when our 'gut' tells us we are wasting our time? Let's explore some of the reasons we feel inclined to provide proposals: The prospect asked for it. 'If I don't provide the proposal I definitely won't have a chance at getting the business.

Have you ever killed a sale by bringing up an irrelevant feature to your prospect? Something you, or probably your marketing department, thought you prospect should know about before they signed up? At Sandler, this is known as "painting seagulls in your prospect's picture." Unfortunately, your seagull can quickly turn into an albatross. Traditionally trained salespeople who sit through hours of product training before being let out in front of prospects can't wait to share all their product knowledge when they get in front of anyone, qualified prospect or not

Make a mutual decision with your prospect. Sandler trainer Danny Wood discusses Rule #16: Never ask for the order, make your prospect give up.

Sales isn't for the faint of heart. You don't just encounter negativity on a fairly frequent basis. In many cases, it is your job to sniff it out and address it immediately. Sandler Rule #3: "No Mutual Mystification," deals with an issue that often plagues sales professionals –  "happy ears."

Why should we buy from you? What makes you different than my current _______? Why should I invite you in to see me? We are already doing business with you so why should we look at this new product /service? Sound familiar? A bit tired of hearing this? Get used to it. This is simply what customers and prospects say to sales people. And we can't fault the prospect/ customer for asking the question. They don't have time to waste, and they need a good reason to spend time with salespeople who know how to sell value-whether through a meeting or to view a new product or service

The prospect said no. That's the end of the sales process, and you've somewhat succeeded in a sense that you at least got an answer. It's not a "yes," but your job is technically done now, right? According to Sandler Rule #39, you should think again.

It may be in the salesperson's best interest to stop talking from time to time. Share your product expertise after you've qualified the prospect. 

If you simply differentiate yourself as saying you're "the best" sales professional out there, then you can look forward to clients and prospects who will wander around to see if one of the millions of other "bests" out there are cheaper. This rule is simple. See what your competition does, and then make sure that what you do is incomparable. Having a unique game plan will help set you on the path to one-of-a-kind success.

I propose a ban on proposals! I find them to be an enormous waste of time as no one has ever in the history of sales purchased anything solely based on the proposal. We unwittingly taught all prospects that they simply have to ask and we will provide them with all the information they need in order to deal with their problem

Whoever said talk is cheap didn't know much about sales. Talk-too much talk, that is-can cost a lot. This is a difficult lesson for many sales professionals to learn, and that's understandable. People in sales tend to have outgoing personalities. They enjoy good conversation, and the longer they are in sales, the better they get at making small talk, establishing an emotional connection with the prospect, and driving a conversation toward the specific end of closing a sale