Sales and the Perfect Presentation

Everything in life has a beginning, a middle and an end. A presentation is like that but a little shorter, this is how to make it perfect.

Presentation and Agenda

A sale to a big client is 80% meticulous preparation for the next steps in a sequence, for example the presentation, tight agendas, commitment to an agreed upon ‘perfect’ implementation and defining your role of quick responsiveness, working with the prospect to find satisfactory workarounds to complications and drawing upon and being able to influence and allocating your company’s internal resources.

The remaining 20% is your ability to fuck it up.

If the last mile of closing a deal is the salesperson then we want to improve our chances, the preparation for meetings is persuasive.

However: If you are selling cost savings, spreadsheet wizardry and some widgets this isn’t relevant to you. Nothing is, just price. I don’t recommend a life of selling the cheap stuff, or the good stuff for cheap, you’re putting a low ceiling on your earnings potential.

Some maybe helpful bullet points:

  • Professionally we are all sales people selling a piece of ourselves. Work is a large part of our identity, the way we see ourselves, the way we want others to see us, the way we imagine our future selves
  • Executives at large, ‘real’ companies hate Webex’s for complex meetings. So much of our interaction with a prospect at a large company happens in the seconds when you shake hands and look each other in the eye. Meetings on the phone are through the lens of  a camera. Physical meetings have intimacy and show a respect for the other side of a trade. Always push for a physical meeting and let them give you a reason ‘why not’ rather than you trying to infer one, for example ‘cos covid’.
  • Tele-meetings are ideal for transactions where time can be optimized but… Tele-meetings surrenders advantage to the prospect
  • A prospect has to have a sense that you are willing to walk away from the deal. Many ‘deals’ are really just the prospect persuading the vendor to come down to their price, in that situation they hold all the leverage and you are just trying to claw some dollars back
  • Every communication with a prospect has to be a station on an assembly line that moves them to a close
  • Pitches are a performance art. Big, profitable, sales are done in a physical meeting
  • Send a precise, bulleted, agenda in advance of the meeting. Solicit their input to add or subtract from the agenda. Also include who will be joining you and their title.  A well prepared agenda is a test you must pass. An agenda lacking exactness is directional, not precision. This means you are covertly plotting to rely on your personality and charm as a diversionary device
  • Wear a suit or formal business attire. This gives the presenter authority
  • Everyone participating on your side of the meeting should have a role that has been discussed and agreed to in advance. Someone has to take notes and make sure the meeting stays on point. Someone else might be an expert on a particular aspect, like implementation, software or development. When appropriate, hand over the discussion to them and they must know to return control back to you
  • Don’t go to a meeting looking for a friend. No matter how nice the other side appears, they are not being generous in their assessment of you, they are looking for flaws and leverage. It’s part of their vendor management, they are looking for tells that will also indicate if they can squeeze pricing or obtain concessions. It’s a poker game.
  • In advance, ask to use their projector and a meeting room so that it puts their skin more into the game
  • Too many people on your side of the meeting is a show of force and looks bad. If it touches many different departments then the meeting can be broken into its components over several days
  • Before the meeting, do a time check on how much time has been allotted. Get their agreement if it’s too long, too short or just right. If the meeting will run over an hour apologize for the length a promise to keep it especially tight
  • Projecting the demo, math or power points on a screen adds emotional connectivity. The participants become passive and are more willing to take a less challenging role, if you are going to use that type of a tool, interrupt it frequently with back and forth banter.
  • Never (ever) sit down when giving a demo. Stand up next to the screen.  If you sit down you’re too relaxed, drinking a beer and talking sports. You will wander off point. Use a remote control to your laptop for the presentation
  • People like visuals, the projector is a prop. The gestures you use also contribute to the messaging of your presentation. Be in control of yourself
  • If you must use your laptop without a projector, don’t get intimate with the prospect without first getting their permission. “May I sit with you?”
  • Paper handouts are like an AOL email address, don’t do it
  • Be tightly scripted. Be you, but not too much of you
  • The company you represent has to have an exaggerated presence in the meeting. Find a way to put gentle praise on it and seed it with positive reinforcement
  • Be particularly responsive to the non decision makers. They have influence because that can rally the people and departments that are not present in the meeting. If you shrug them off, they will reciprocate
  • Look for opportunities to say ‘I don’t know, let me get back to you with the answer’…and then do it within 24 hours

Conclude the meeting with several steps:

  1. Ask if anything has been neglected in the discussion
  2. Recap the agenda point for point with them, get their commitment that those items have been satisfactorily addressed
  3. Recap their key questions to you. Re-confirm that you will have answers quickly to unresolved questions
  4. Establish the next step in a closing sequence and get the date for action on everyone’s calendar at that time

The End?

A recap of where we have already been: Sales