You've done the cold calls, the direct-mail introductions, the networking, the follow-ups and the email blasts. It's all led up to this: the sales presentation.
Now's your chance to close up the deal. To lock up that big account. To return home to your office, triumphant and proud that your months of preliminary work have paid off. Only … what if you don't? There's a lot that can go wrong in a sales presentation, and there's a lot that can go right. Mark Graham, founder and CEO of Right Sleeve Marketing; co-founder and chief platform officer for commonsku, provided some helpful pointers on how to make sure you have a great, stand-out sales presentation.
Do Your Research
Every great sales presentation starts with researching your audience. Find out what you can about a company—its goals, its habits, its needs and everything in between. This research will form the backbone of your pitch, and is critical to succeed at point two, listed below.
Also, if possible, use social networks to research the person to whom you'll be presenting. Not for any personal details, such as favorite foods or movies, but for mutual connections you might share.
"It's always really important for us to do extensive research on the client, through Google and the social networks," said Graham. "What we're looking for, if say we're looking at the platform of LinkedIn, is to see whether we have any first- or second-degree connections that we're able to bring up and might serve to benefit our presentation," he explained, noting that the promotional business is particularly relationship-based, and that a shared connection can be very helpful.
Have an Angle
An angle, or hook, is what makes your presentation irresistible. (Hence, the word choice. They're "hooked" because you've gotten them so interested they can't say "no.") "Any great sales presentation or pitch always starts off with an angle," said Graham.
How you form your angle is up to you. Think back to your research, and how you can apply it into an irresistible point of conversation for your presentation. If you're still stuck finding something to talk about, try starting with a news article that would affect your client in some way.
"We like to look at, we love to mine articles, particularly ones that are recent, maybe within the last three to six months," said Graham. "What that allows us to do is focus on an angle.
"A product launch, a departing CEO, an appointment or a disaster a company might have faced, or, really, there's any number of things that you can evaluate in the press," he said. "Any good salesperson is going to be able to connect a macro-event that's been something that has impacted the company to a promotional need.
"The point is, regardless of what the thing is, there's often a way it can open up a conversation," explained Graham. "And we find, in our business, that if you can open up a conversation that focuses on some kind of strategic benefit to the customer, they're going to judge you as being someone that is more than just a product pusher, and chances are, the customer is going to think of you in a higher light than your competition," he explained. "So at our company, we always try to help our reps connect events that are happening in the press with a larger opportunity."
Make Customers Feel Special
Prefacing his advice by stating that, beyond the obvious slights of rudeness and lateness, there are few things you should truly never do in a sales presentation. Graham cautioned against relying too much on catalogs or stock samples. "Showing up with a bunch of catalogs is often not a good approach because anyone can show up with a stack of catalogs," he said. "Another thing I find that doesn't really work is if you just show up with a bunch of products that the other clients have seen, like samples you have just stuffed in the back of your car—that is often not a great way to impress." His reasoning wasn't so much that those tools are flawed, but using them as a blunt-force, repetitive-use sales tool is ineffective. Not only because it doesn't differentiate you as a seller, but it can also make your potential buyers feel like you're not recognizing their specific needs, just treating them like another generic customer.
"[Showing the same old samples over and over] suggests that all customers are the same, and the reality is that all customers aren't the same," he explained. "From a marketing perspective, if you want to put them in the same bucket, because that's more efficient from a business perspective, there's nothing really wrong with that, but customers don't want to feel like you've put them in the same bucket, like you're treating them all exactly the same," he said. "I think that's the thing that really resonates when you're doing great sales presentations."
- People:
- Mark Graham