Sales Presentations For Dummies. Julie M. Hansen

Чтение книги онлайн.

      ✔ Reading cues: A cue is a predetermined body or eye movement, or sound that sends a signal to your teammate. Planning a few clear, memorized cues to use during your presentation can resolve much of the confusion and have you operating as a true ensemble.

      See tips on how to present as a team in Chapter 16.

      Fitting your content and your style to your medium is critical, as is improving your connection with your audience. Web presentations are typically live presentations crammed onto a small screen with understandably disappointing results. Remove the cloak of invisibility and increase the engagement in a web presentation through the following techniques:

      You can find out how to make your web presentation more engaging, interactive, and successful in Chapter 17.

Chapter 2

      Discovering What You Need to Know Before You Begin

      You have an opportunity to present your product or service to a qualified prospect, which is no easy feat in today’s competitive landscape. After you finish high-fiving yourself, your team, or your dog, what’s your first order of business?

      Whether you have 10 minutes to prepare or 10 days, the third option is the winning choice. In a competitive market, planning plays a more critical role than ever in the success of your presentation. Planning means gathering as much relevant information as possible about your prospect prior to your presentation so you can tailor your message to her specific needs in a way that motivates her to take action. Failing to gather the insights you need or ask the right questions with today’s savvy buyers can damage your credibility and leave room for your competition to slip by and win the business. Because planning takes time, isn’t fun or sexy, it’s tempting to skip this step and jump right into picking out graphics and themes or loading up the standard deck – even though neither option may be a good fit for the current opportunity.

      Planning a presentation is like building a house. You want to first make sure you have a design and a solid foundation that will produce the results you want. All of the cool videos and flashy graphics in the world can’t make up for faulty structure or inconsistent messaging. Without a plan, you may find yourself dodging the following landmines when you’re in front of your prospect:

      In this chapter, I show you how to create a solid foundation for your presentation. I help you determine what you must know before your presentation to successfully align your solution with your prospect’s goals, establish value, and overcome potential objections. I help you uncover the prospect’s challenge and define and quantify the impact on her and her organization. In addition, you discover how to prepare for a presentation that involves multiple decision makers by setting up and conducting discovery conversations and asking questions that produce valuable insights. You also find out how to keep everything on track – your team, your materials, and your technology – by creating a presentation planning checklist.

      Evaluating the Presentation Opportunity

      As a salesperson, you may have a knee jerk reaction to say yes to any opportunity to present your product or service to a potential customer. With the amount of time and energy that go into pursuing many business opportunities today, you need to make sure that the prospect is qualified and the opportunity is viable before you start to commit limited resources. Being a top sales performer requires being smart about where you spend your time and energy as well as having a clearly defined outcome.

      A prospect is someone who has expressed an interest in your product or service and seems like a good fit for your business. Whether you’ve had an initial conversation or meeting with your prospect or just been handed a lead, before you begin planning, make sure that you have thoroughly qualified your prospect. That means your prospect should meet the following criteria:

      Even if your prospect is qualified, you want to determine if the opportunity is worth all the time and effort you’re going to put into it. It’s always better to find out before you’ve spent two weeks preparing that your product or service isn’t well-aligned with your prospect’s needs. Here are two guideposts for determining if the opportunity is a viable one for you and your company.