The sales presentation is your best opportunity to show and tell, but there’s more to it than just showing and telling. You also need to think strategically about the customers buying process and needs, your competitors’ offerings, and why your solution is best.

To plan and deliver winning sales presentations, try the following approach:

Find out in advance how much time you will have.
Have you ever had a key decision-maker leave in the middle of your presentation because he was out of time? You can’t hold someone’s attention when he’s looking at the clock. At the beginning of the meeting, ask how much time the prospect has set aside, then adjust your presentation to take no more than 60% of the allotted time. Why only 60%? Because your prospect’s decisions to act typically occur at the end of the meeting. Adjusting your presentation will allow enough time to resolve any remaining issues, and reach an agreement.

Check in.
Another good question to ask at the beginning of every sales presentation is, “since the last time we met, has anything changed?” If your competitor gave a presentation yesterday afternoon you may have a few new hurdles you need to overcome. The sooner you identify those hurdles, the more time you have to plan a response.

Take his temperature.
The next question you want to ask is, “Where are you in your decision process?” If he tells me he’s scheduled presentations with three suppliers and I’m the first presenter, I know the chances of this prospect agreeing to a decision at the end of my presentation are virtually nonexistent. For starters, it would take the prospect more time, energy and stress to cancel the appointments than to go ahead with them.

More importantly, the prospect wants to hear all three presentations, because from your customer’s perspective, comparison is necessary to recognize value. Never go for the close when you are the first presenter. You’re simply asking for something that you can’t get, and customers will think you’re pushy. Instead, come up with a legitimate reason to come back after the other presentations, when the prospect likely will be in a position to make a decision.

Try to be the last presenter.
The last presenter has a significant advantage, because he is closer to the customer’s point of decision. If I am the final supplier to present, and have shown why am I am the best choice, it’s only reasonable to ask for a commitment to buy. It also creates an opportunity to address any lingering concerns that may prevent a sale.

In one of the largest sales opportunities I ever worked on, I was the third of three presenters to a committee of seven decision-makers, the most senior of whom was the Executive Vice President, I’ll call him Mr. Burns.

Ten minutes before the conclusion of my presentation, the phone rang. Mr. Burns had a plane to catch, and his cab had arrived. As he stood up, I said, “Mr. Burns, before you leave, may I ask you one final question?”
I asked, “Now that you’ve evaluated all the options, is there any reason why my solution is not your best option?”

He paused, then said “Yep!” And out came his final concern about my solution. It was a concern I was ready for, but I never got a chance to respond because his comment triggered a firestorm of conversation around the conference table. Mr. Burns missed his cab, but several other decision makers drove him to the airport so they could continue their discussion.

A few weeks later, I learned that in the car on the way to the airport, a lower-level decision-maker had resolved Mr. Burns’s concern, and I won the sale.

This example shows that today, as much as 90% of the sale takes place without you being in the room. So it’s essential to make sure that the prospects championing your cause have the tools to sell other decision makers for you.

Start with a quick review of the customer’s goals and objectives. On a flipchart, list each of the customers buying criteria. This list is your outline for effective sales presentation. Next, show how your solution meets and exceeds each customer criterion.

Throughout your presentation, get a reaction from your prospect. For example, after demonstrating a capability you would ask, how would this be an improvement or how would this help. Interactive presentations keep prospects more involved and interested.

Communicate all your unique strengths.
Today’s customers want to know two things: can you do what we need done, and how can you do it better than the other options we are considering? It’s not enough to show that you can meet your customer’s needs. You must also have some reasons why your solution is the customer’s best choice. To ensure that my strengths are understood, I always prepare a flipchart titled “Why we are your best choice” which lists at least three reasons why I’m the customer’s best option. Often, I list seven or eight reasons.

The more reasons you have, and the more compelling those reasons are, the better your chances of winning the sale. In sports, when two teams are evenly matched, the winner is the team that makes the fewest mistakes, and executes its plays the best.

To deliver a winning sales presentation, you must do the same. When you implement these 10 tips in your sales presentations, you will win more sales

Those who want to establish themselves as experts in their field are encouraged to find speaking and teaching opportunities. Getting out in front of an audience is a time-tested way to demonstrate one’s mastery of the required skills and it is an excellent way to promote your enterprise and drum up business. Useful presentation techniques will make you feel more confident about your ability to communicate effectively.

Keep it simple and tell a story

The best speakers know that the more complex the topic, the more important it becomes to make that topic easy for an audience to understand. Distill a complicated message into fewer words. Include a personal anecdote or story that illustrates a key point you are trying to make. Stories and anecdotes make your presentation more compelling by placing the message into a context that is relevant to the listeners and helps them to make sense of the subject.

You are the star

You are the speaker and the stage belongs to you. Do not allow slides to upstage your talk. How do you do that? By not posting your entire talk onto slides and using them as a crutch. Avoid presenting an avalanche of text-heavy slides that you read from. Instead, speak to and connect with those who come out to hear you.

On your slides include important charts and graphs, key statistics, major talking points and relevant visuals that support and advance your message. Practice your presentation often and get to know your material, so that you are not overly dependent on slides.

Engage and involve your audience

Most of all, give the right talk. Know what the audience expects you to address. The person who schedules your talk can help you choose a topic and give you the heads-up re: big questions that audience members may want answered. To keep your audience engaged, pose a question or two at some point in your presentation. Also, be willing to answer questions as you go along and make your presentation more of a conversation with the audience.

We deliver

While good content is essential, that alone will not win over an audience. Body language and delivery also matter. Audiences size up and judge a speaker within the first three minutes of a presentation. Be sure to project confidence, expertise, good humor and approachability. Smile, make eye contact and use a pleasant, yet authoritative, tone of voice. Show appropriate enthusiasm and passion for your subject matter. Let the audience know that you like being up there speaking.

How to get to Carnegie Hall

Practice your talk and practice some more. It takes a lot of work to make a presentation look effortless. Skilled presenters give the impression that their clever ad libs and convincing responses to questions are all ex tempore, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is, successful presentations are built on lots of preparation and rehearsal time. Wordsmith what may sound too complex or unclear. Carefully curate the text and images that will appear on your slides, so that they smoothly integrate with the talk. Anticipate questions that may be posed and formulate good answers. Read your talk out loud and record your voice, to make sure that you pace your delivery appropriately.

An effective presentation should inform, educate and entertain. Make that happen when you simplify your message and de-clutter your slides; interact with the audience by asking and answering questions throughout your talk; and practice a lot, so that you will be relaxed and confident as you present. Hit your mark and the audience will regard you as an expert. Mission accomplished.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

You set the stage for any negotiation with information. That’s called positioning. The way you present that information, and its content, shape the persona the other negotiator has of your negotiation power, resources, and abilities. #Disinformation plays a vital role in shaping that persona – using it strategically can help you negotiate better.

Disinformation is used in planning wars, corporate espionage, and in the planning stages of negotiations. Think for a moment about the term #FakeNews. What comes to mind? That phrase has become a form of disinformation.

The following is how you can use disinformation to improve your negotiation efforts.

Creating a Disinformation Campaign:

To create disinformation campaigns, start by disseminating information in small cycles first – you want the target to become familiar with it. That’ll make him more susceptible to believing it and the information that follows. Over time, expand it, its believability to the truth, and its cycles. To have the greatest effect on the target, have information disseminated in places that they frequent (e.g. social media post, news outlets, radio, etc.). Doing so will impact their belief as to the validity of the information (i.e. I see/hear it everywhere – so it must be true).

Psychology of Disinformation:

For disinformation to be viable, tie it loosely to the beliefs of your target. People become swayed more easily if they have a preconceived belief about something they accept as already being truthful. So, if you associate your disinformation with their currently held beliefs, they’ll accept your information more readily. The trick is to make your information just within the outer realms of their beliefs. That’s the setup to having them stretch their beliefs as you later present insights further outside of it. Your efforts should become geared to having them expand their beliefs to the point of easily accepting the new insights you present as the truth.

Combating Disinformation:

As you know or may have discovered, disinformation is a powerful mental tool. Thus, while employing it, you must be mindful about its deployment against you.

To improve your plight when disinformation is used against you, ask yourself the following questions.

1. Consider the originating source of the information. Ask yourself, what belief is this information attempting to form in my mind or in the mind of my supporters?
2. How was the information delivered? Did it arrive through a source that has proven to be believable in the past? Is that source being manipulated?
3. What new paradigms is this information attempting to create and who benefits from it?
4. To what degree are others attempting to alter my perception for the benefit of who they’re serving?
5. What happens if I ignore the information?

Posing such questions to yourself and your confidants will help you evaluate the information and its potential validity. I’m not suggesting you become paranoid. What I’m suggesting is you not readily accept information at face value as the truth. There are too many ways to get disinformation into today’s environment. Guard the door that keeps it away from you.

Disinformation is used in all realms of negotiation. And, there is a multitude of ways that it’s used. Therefore, the better you become at utilizing it, and knowing how to thwart its use against you, the better you’ll become as a negotiator… and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!