Tips on giving Effective Sales Presentations
By Peermuhammad AmeerAli
Sales presentations could be as tricky as tight-rope walking. If you are adept at it, you not only achieve your objective but also you are likely to collect a lot of appreciation in the process. On the other hand, even if you slip up once, the fall could prove very damaging. That’s why professional salesmen always take extra precautions in the following aspects to make their presentation click every time they make it:
Critical planning is necessary:
Whether it is going to be a sales presentation for a single customer or in front of a group of customers, thorough preparation is mandatory to make it really successful. Planning involves an exhaustive study about the customers, their needs and wants, their financial capacity and allocation of budget and their freedom or restrictions in making the buying decisions. Armed with the details culled out of these studies, one can confidently prepare a convincing presentation incorporating all the relevant details that may be of interest and use to the customers.
Building a quick rapport :
While you are ready and the presentation is ready, if the customer isn’t ready, what is the use? So, quickly try to build the customer confidence within the first few minutes of the presentation. This may require good personal grooming to start with, to be followed by a cordial personal greeting which is considered most apt for the occasion, to open up a conducive atmosphere for a fruitful exchange of ideas and thoughts with the customers. The customer confidence is greatly bolstered if the salesman radiates good cheer, talks in ringing tones and displays professionalism in every aspect.
Talk to convince and stop to consolidate:
If talking is the main constituent of a sales presentation, then listening perhaps, is the most crucial aspect of a successful presentation, because only by listening can we ever know what and how much the customers have understood out of what we have presented to them. So the presentation has to, necessarily, be a two-way affair involving the customer also in the talking, so that the salesman knows where exactly he stands in his effort to convince the clients. Lecturing has to be avoided however much tempting it might be to the salesman. Customers have come to him not to listen to sermons. They have more urgent needs to satisfy, and if the sales presentation directly addresses their needs and offers solutions for them, then that is the ideal kind of presentation that is going to result in sales. So, more than too much talk, a focused presentation that convinces the customers of the superiority of the products or service, is the preferred one from the customers’ point of view. Hence a smart salesman should know when to talk, and where to stop, to collect the orders, for a happy ending for all concerned. Any unnecessary prolongation of the presentation is not only wastage of time, it could even prove to be counterproductive.
Focus on solutions not on problems:
The customer is well aware of his/her problems and it need not be further elaborated. What the customer needs is whether your company and its products could offer any solution to their problems or not. So, it is always wise to steer the entire presentation around problem-solving and troubleshooting, which directly addresses the customer needs and the latter is more likely to come to a quick buying decision if this approach is adopted. The customers are apt to take a favorable decision if the sales presentation answers the following questions :
i) What are the special benefits of your products vis-vis your competitors?
ii) How does your price compare with that of your customers, and if it is costlier,
how do you justify the difference in price?
iii) What kind of an after-sales service do you offer? Is it on par with the industry
standards, or more, or even less?
iv) Why should the customer buy your products or service immediately? Won’t
they gain time or savings, if they postpone their buying decision for the time
being?
v) Do the company’s products offer a long term or a short term solution for
their problems ? Naturally any customer would prefer only a long term
solution, even if it is going to cost something extra.
Audio-video presentation has become the order of the day:
So don’t be left behind by following the conventional oral presentation alone. The presentation has to be lively, informative as well as interesting. Otherwise you won’t have any takers. Nowadays sophisticated audio-video presentation gadgets are available in a wide range to suit different needs, to make even an ordinary presentation look like an extraordinary one ! So, it is wise to get this advantage too, to make your presentation tick with your customers. A word of caution here : audio-video gadgets are there only to support and supplement your oral presentation, and not to substitute it. People still prefer to listen to fellow human beings and get convinced, and rarely are they convinced by any recorded presentations. So the gift of gab of the salesman still holds water when it comes to the crucial question of convincing an important customer. Even with the additional help of the audio-video support, the salesman should assume control over them and take full personal responsibility for convincing the customers. Only then does he do justice for his job.
No pushing only guidance all the way:
That’s how the customers want it. The moment the customer feels he is being pressurized by the salesperson into taking a quick decision, either he ducks under or outright rejects the offer. This could happen if the salesman is not alert enough to watch for the right type of go-ahead signals from the customer, and instead, in his undue haste to close the sales, he prematurely forces the customer to take a call, which is more likely to be negative only. There is no use later on complaining that the customer was not cooperative. An alert salesman always keeps looking for the ripe moment for closing the sales and if the customer is as yet not ready for it , the salesman senses it and does not force him to take a decision. Instead he offers more details or comparisons with competitor details or encourages the customer to feel and handle the product for himself, wherever this is possible, which are more likely to convince the customer, thereby removing even the last bits of doubts still bothering his mind, and now he is more prone to take a positive decision. This is the opportune moment to try for and successfully get a sales closure, and a professional salesman rarely misses it.
After-sales assurance:
In spite of all the deliberations after which a buying decision is made, still most of the customers have a lingering doubt whether they made the right decision, after all. Unless these inconvenient residual doubts are also not cleared once and for all, the sales presentation cannot be said to be completely successful. So, an understanding salesman keeps assuring the customer who has just made the buying decision, that he has really made an intelligent decision, and it is going to be justified by the continuous benefits he and his people are going to enjoy out of the product, for a long time to come. This last piece of assuring gesture goes a long way to ensure that the salesman really cares for the customer’s full satisfaction, and is sure to induce the customer to come for many more repeat purchases in the future. When this happens, it is proof that the sales presentation had been really effective in the true sense of the word.
Effective sales presentation is not only an art, it could even be a magic which produces sales after sales with every attempt, and even creates sales where the potential for none existed already.
Tags: effective, giving, Presentations, Sales, Tips