CHAPTER
Preparing Successful Sales Presentations
Zig
In days gone past, a wise person said, “People don’t plan to fail, they just fail to plan.” I believe that would be applicable in the world of selling. If you’re going to sell right to the right people—and that is the basic game plan—then obviously you have to have a plan to do it.
Is a plan important? Let me give you a little analogy. In the National Football League, during the last two minutes of the first half and the last two minutes of the game, more points are scored than during any other 30 percent of the entire game. That’s because they have a specific game plan they follow.
A lot of salespeople miss sales because they do not have a specific plan of action. I’m here to tell you that a prospect is too precious to waste on an unplanned call. It’s too expensive to see them if we do not have a plan which will enable us to present our goods, our products, our services in the most marketable manner.
So let’s look at a plan for doing exactly that. Phil, when we talk about plans, you’re one of the most careful planners I know, so give us some help on this one, please.
Phil
To me, Zig, one of the most important aspects of our entire presentation is the presentation itself. Thinking through the benefits, thinking through the product, thinking through the values that we want to communicate to our prospect. If I don’t plan that presentation and write it out concisely and memorize it and get to the point where it’s reflexive, I’m not able to always present the same picture to each prospect.
You have told us many times that we should always make as good a presentation at the end of the day as we make at the beginning, and I think we can only do that if we have a planned, organized presentation.
Bryan
As has been said in many areas—and selling is no exception—preparation compensates for lack of talent. If we have that structure, that plan going out there, we know how to respond to the prospect’s questions or objections. Then we have a chance. But if we fail to plan, the chances are slim.
I don’t think we use our customer’s time wisely if we don’t have a plan, because if you and I sit down to have a conversation, it can go any way it wants to go, and I don’t have a plan to keep it on track. I’m not investing my time wisely with my customer, and he’s not investing his time wisely with me.
Janet
I think you should always tell your customer how long your presentation is going to take—this presentation is going to take thirty minutes or an hour—and you keep within the frame limits. If the prospect chooses to keep you longer with questions and so on, that’s usually a good sign, but I’m going to be careful of his time. When I say thirty minutes, it should be close to thirty minutes, not an hour. I’ll lose him that last thirty minutes if I haven’t prepared him for the amount of time that I’m going to take from him.
Zig
This is a little dangerous, but it really emphasizes the point. I’ve heard of one salesman who always takes his watch off and hands it to the prospect. He wears a Rolex, so that’s a significant gesture on his part. He says, “If I am here longer than ten minutes, without you specifically inviting me to stay, the watch is yours.”
Now you better believe he sells on a plan. By the end of the ten minutes, he instantly has a backup watch so he doesn’t overstay his visit, but by the end of about nine minutes, he says, “Well, my time’s almost up. The only way I’ll stay is by invitation to finish what I have to say.” By then, he’s strong in the interest stage of his presentation. His point’s been well made. The person knows he is a very aware of the importance and value of time, and he’s found it to be very effective.
Janet
You make your customer feel very uncomfortable when you’re not well-prepared and planned. I’ve been in front of salespeople, and I’m almost fidgety because they seem not to know where they are in the presentation; they’re lost, they’re fumbling, they’re not sure of themselves. In my mind, this creates the thought, “I’m not sure about buying from you either.” So most likely they’re going to lose the sale with me, or I would lose the sale if I’m not well-planned in that presentation.
Phil
Doesn’t it also say in the mind of many prospects, “That product probably is not that good. That company is probably not that good,” because psychologically that’s what’s being portrayed to them?
On the other hand, if we walk in with a planned, organized presentation, it gives the impression to the prospect—as it should—that I’m dealing with a solid company, a well-prepared salesperson who probably has an outstanding product. That’s again one of the benefits of having a well-organized presentation. It makes me be the real professional that I want to be.
Bryan
There has to be some flexibility within that organized presentation. If you’re out there making your call, whether it be a referral or whether it be a qualified prospect, you have to gather some needs. Oftentimes, you can’t control that, and that’s what Jill was mentioning earlier, controlling your time and that person’s time.
You have to ask the questions that will get you back on task, as opposed to talking about football games or sporting events or the latest thing happening in local politics. To do that, you really have to be aware of the time, asking and structuring your questions so that you can accomplish the need development, get the needs out, and the buying criteria, as well as keeping on task. That’s difficult to do. The better prepared you are, the easier it is to do it.
Jill
Bryan, are you saying you need to have a memorized script?
Bryan
No, I didn’t say that. I’m saying you have to be prepared if you have some questions that you need to ask.
How far should your preparedness go?
Bryan
It’s to your comfort level to make the sale.
Janet
I think Bryan’s also saying when you are well prepared, it gives you the ability to listen to your customer. Many times, you’ll miss something your customer has said because you’re not well prepared and you’re not listening. You’re not able to listen if you’re not well prepared in your presentation.
Phil
As for Bryan’s point that it enables you to go in and out: if I have a planned, organized, and well-memorized presentation, then I can move right down the track. If the prospect takes me off the track with an objection or a question, that’s all right. I can detour, but I can come right back on the track to where I need to be. If I detour again, I come right back on the track to where I need to be. It keeps me moving toward the goal of closing the sale.
Bryan
You’ve often run into people, who, when you start on your presentation, say, “Time out. Bottom line, what are you selling? What do you do? Let’s get rid of all this stuff and get to the point.” The hard drivers out there do that, so you have to know your presentation well.
You have to know your visual aids well enough to turn to the part that they’re interested in and where they’ll say, “Now you’re talking my language. Now I’m listening to you.” As opposed to other things that you may use that they may think are superfluous and not important. You have to know it well enough to go right into it.
Zig
Psychologists talk a lot about the right brain and the left brain. If we’re thoroughly prepared and know every facet of the presentation, then we are utilizing that left brain of ours to its maximum, and that leaves our right brain free to be creative. We have confidence because of our knowledge, expertise, skill, background, memorization, and planning, and then our creative right brain can go absolutely free.
That’s what I like about what you all are saying about creative genius, that creative mind. Somebody once said that it was better to copy genius than to create mediocrity. The people who prepared the presentations have had a lot of experience. They might not have been geniuses per se, but they were production geniuses inasmuch as what they have prepared is obviously getting results or it would not be in the training program. So learn what has already proven to be successful. That frees your own creative mind to be more productive in the future.
Janet
Phil, you have some people out on the road that sell, and they make presentations constantly. How do you get them to learn the presentation? Do they write it out word for word? Do they learn it by idea, by thought?
Phil
Janet, we start out memorizing it word for word because that gets it totally ingrained into our consciousness. Then we begin to put our own personalities in it, so that from that point on, all we need is an outline of a word or a phrase. So I’m adapting it to my personality, but initially, we do memorize it word for word.
Janet
So no one presentation is alike. If I were to see any of your salespeople, would each presentation be different?
Phil
It would be slightly different, because each personality would be different, but having that presentation structured in front of them enables them to be reflexive, to listen to the prospect. And as Zig just said, at that point the creative right brain goes to work to develop solutions and sell products.
Not only do you need to adapt it to make it comfortable for you, but I think you also need to adapt it for your customer. If you’ve qualified this customer, then you already know what his needs are, what his hot buttons and his objections are going to be. You need to plan that into your presentation, so that when you’re talking to that customer, it’s not like a form letter, it’s like a personal presentation.
Bryan
I find out the buying criteria. If the prospect wants speed, ease, quality, and low cost, I don’t want to talk about the other benefits; everything I want to show that prospect during that call is going to be speed, ease, quality, and low cost. We don’t want to show something that he’s not interested in, and that’s the flexibility. That’s the left brain and right brain, understanding the procedure and understanding the response from the prospect.
Now that we have that, let’s say we’re in front of the customer. Now what do we do? Where do we go from there? What are some aids we would use?
Janet
I feel that in my presentations I need visuals. I used visuals all the time in presenting communication systems. I would draw it out for them. If I was planning a communication system, I would show them their entire bank facility, where everything was located, where it was going to go. It was very easy for them to visually see what I was selling.
It’s hard to sell wire when you can’t see wire. It’s hard to sell phones when you can’t see phones. So any visual aid that I could have in my hands to show them—and I had large visual aids, depending on the size of the room—I think is very important.
Be sure you plan for your audience. If I have a large audience, can everybody see my visuals? If I have one or two people in the room, what do my visuals need to look like? Is it something in front of them that they pick up, or is it something that I show them?
Jill
Visuals create ownership. If you show me where my communication system is going to go in my floor plan of my office, then it becomes my communication system. Another thing you can do, depending on your product, is have them hold it, touch it, feel it, and then take it away: “Thank you, I can take that now.” That fear of loss—that’s another way you can use your visuals.
Bryan
The best visual in the world is your product, whether it be a phone or a model or whatever. If you can show it, either actually or through literature or brochures, that creates the excitement, the ownership: I can visualize it now. I understand what you’re talking about. I see where it fits in the office. I see where it fits in my home, how I could use it, what colors it comes in.
It’s amazing what we do. We expect our companies to provide us with support material, literature, fancy brochures, and yet how often do we use them?
At the IBM national training center, there was always a standard routine that we did with the reps coming back after six months on quota. They’d been through months of training at the office. They would come to our training center for a month and then go out and sell. After six months on quota, they’d come back for a two-week course on advanced selling skills.
We would ask them, “Let’s see your sales aids. Let’s see your manual.”
They’d say, “I left it home. I don’t have one.”
We’d say, “Wait, wait. Why don’t you have one?”
“I’m 140 percent of quota; why do I need one?” That was a fair question.
Our question then was, “Wait a minute. You’re telling me that you’re 140 percent of quota?”
“Yes.”
“Are you telling me you’d be less than 140 percent of quota by using this stuff?”
So we really feel that the company should give us the brochures, yet sometimes we don’t use them, and that’s what we need to do. We have brochures that a lot of money has been spent on. Why don’t we use those to bring the customer into the call and make that presentation more effective?
One skill that I learned many years ago is to pull the visual aid out, put it into the hands of the prospect, get your pencil out, and then point as you’re making your presentation. It’s incredible: the eyes follow the pen to the content of the brochure. As Zig has taught us many times, we learn a whole lot more when we can see, hear, and do. So the prospect is not only hearing you make the presentation, but they’re seeing and reading at the same time, and their eyes are glued to it.
Bryan
I’ve seen a guy take it one step further. One time a fellow came into my office in San Francisco with his brochures, and he was selling training. Not only did he let me hold, feel, touch, and smell the brochure, he had underlined in yellow highlighter where he wanted my eyes to be drawn to.
Sure enough, that was his presentation. My eye was drawn to this portion, this portion, and this portion—one, two, and three. I remember that it was almost as if I was preparing the call three days in advance with him saying, “Now Flanagan’s going to look at point number one first, and then you talk about it. Then, you’re going to look at point number two, and you talk about it.” He used that technique that you just said, Phil, but he prepared it with underlining. Great technique.
When you’re using aids, there’s something that’s real basic, and yet I’ve seen so many salesmen show me their product, and it’s kind of beat-up and dirty, because it’s the same one they use all the time. Things aren’t all together and organized, and that’s something that immediately turns me off. That’s a basic thing, something we can’t forget. If I’m going to show him my product, it has to be great-looking. It has to have no dents in it, nothing like that.
Phil
That takes us back to what we were saying earlier about presenting a professional presentation to a company. On several occasions, we’ve gone in to make a presentation, and I’ve reached through to pull out an agreement, and I have found out that it is dog-eared. I put it back and go to the case and get a fresh-looking agreement, because that implies an image of professionalism. On the other hand, it can imply an image that I don’t care if I’m going to pull out a dirty piece of literature or something that’s not well taken care of.
Bryan
Plus, you leave that with them as you sign that contract. As they press hard, three copies, third copy is theirs. They take that third copy, and that’s what they’re going to show whomever they need to justify it with, their spouse or whomever. If it looks crumpled or dirty, that doesn’t bring up the best image of you or your product to that person.
Zig
I think it goes a lot further than that, actually. If you show them a dog-eared agreement, that would be implying that you’ve been carrying that thing around too long since you got the last sale. They don’t want to do any business with you. Man, I’d have it brand-new and fresh and crisp for sure.
Phil
One of the most effective visuals I’ve seen is testimonial letters. I’m reminded of the story, Zig, of the salesperson that you worked with who used to roll out an adding machine tape, I believe it was, with the names of all of the people who had become involved in that product.
Zig
The fellow’s name was Ralph Beaver. He lived in Greensboro, North Carolina, and he was one of my first characters in the world of selling. He was a showman extraordinaire. He had written down all the names and addresses of all of the customers he had ever sold, and he’d been in the business twenty-five years.
When he would put on a demonstration, he would say, “Now here’s some of our customers,” and he would unroll it. He would just throw it out, and it would unroll, and he would say, “You might want to see if some of your friends are on the list.” He said it used to really tickle him to see them get down on their hands and knees.
That’s real showmanship. It is getting the prospect involved. It did arouse interest. It made a very effective part of the presentation.
Phil
As I recall, he also used it as a close with something like, “Would you like for me to go ahead and add your name to this list that we already have?”
Zig
Yes, he sure did. At the very end of it, he’d always use that one. He would say, “As you can see, I’ve added some blank space down here at the bottom, and we can include your name on this so you can join all of the others.” He kind of made a joke out of it, yet it was so impressive to see all of the other people. It was a very effective closing too.
Phil
Let’s talk about testimonials for a moment, if we may. We’ve just established that testimonials are powerful, but how do we get them? Sometimes it seems difficult for us to be able to get testimonial letters, and some salespeople hesitate to use them. How do we go about getting testimonials and then making them useful?
It’s as easy as asking. It could be as hard as writing it yourself and letting them type it on their letterhead, but the first step is, you must ask.
Janet
I like to get testimonials right after I’ve been to an account. Let’s say they’re excited, they’re enthusiastic. I’ll ask them, “I look forward to hearing from you, and if you would write me a letter about what we did today and how you felt about it and what you liked about it, just drop me a line.” Usually it’s on their business letterhead, and I rarely fail to get one, whether it’s good or bad. If it’s bad, I won’t use it, but if it’s good, I’ll use it.
But I’d always ask soon after you’ve delivered a product or when someone’s excited with you. They’re more apt to give it to you, rather than calling them a year later, and saying, “By the way, would you mind writing me a letter about how you liked your product?” It almost sounds like, “I really need that, so could you send it on?”
Jill
Not only do you want to ask them right then, but also write a follow-up letter: “I enjoyed coming out there. I enjoyed whatever it was.” At the end: “Look forward to hearing the results.” That’s just another reminder, “Oh yes, I haven’t done that yet.”
The testimonial will be lots better too when the prospect first starts using the product. Not that they enjoy it any less later on, but by then they’ve grown accustomed to it. With all that initial excitement and enthusiasm—that’s the best time to get that testimonial letter.
Bryan
That’s also when the people that are using the equipment may be giving the one-liners about why they like it. This person said, “It’s the most convenient thing we’ve ever used. Increased my productivity.” You wouldn’t get those earlier, obviously, or later on, when they’ve gotten accustomed to it and sort of take it for granted.
Phil
Then we put them in our sales presentation book, and as you said, Bryan, we highlight those areas that we want to make sure that our prospects see. Then we can just turn page after page for the prospect.
Bryan
The benefit there is that if we have that book with those testimonials, and somebody wants speed, ease, quality, we don’t tell them about all this. We go right to the speed, ease, quality page: “This person also wanted the productivity that this product features. Read about what he says right here.” That way you can flip right through it and hone in on that person’s specific criteria.
Janet
Or industry. That’s another big one. Who else in my industry—? Many times, as a part of selling, or even closing, if I have a testimonial letter, I say, “By the way, I’d like for you to call Mr. Joe Jones at ABC Company. He’s in the same industry you are, and I know you’d have a wonderful conversation with him. See what he thinks about us, because I have that testimonial letter here, and when you call him, I know the kind of feedback you’re going to get.” So many times it works in that direction also.
Phil
Another way I’ve seen testimonial letters work is when I’m sitting down planning the presentation. I think ahead of the needs of the prospect and the objections they’re going to raise, and I can say, “Oh, I have two or three testimonial letters that speak to that objection.” So when I deal with the objection, I’m able to go right to the testimonial letter and talk about this company, which had that same concern. They used the product, and this is what they’ve said about it.
Janet
I’ve also tried using an evaluation form. I’ll come up with three or four basic questions that my customer has to verbally fill out and ask him if he would answer them in letter form and send it back to me. This is also a form of getting a testimonial letter, but it’s an evaluation form for me also.
Zig
What we’re doing here is getting our prospects involved in our business, and that is very important if we expect to be successful in that business.
Phil
Zig, in so many years in the cookware business, you used aids and got prospects involved in using the equipment and demonstrating and cooking the meals yourself. That is the epitome of the use of the visual aid and getting your prospect involved with the product at the time of making a sale.
Zig
Absolutely. When I put on a demonstration, I finally learned to utilize the people who where there and let them help. I’d let them put on the food. I’d let them turn the roast. I would let them make the tea. I would let them cook the carrots.
I would let them do those things, and the more involved they got, the more they saw how easy it was. It wasn’t some magic that I had. The sales percentage increased rather substantially as a result of it.
There’s always that unspoken fear that the prospect is not going to be able to use whatever it is that you’re selling. So when you put them behind the wheel, when you let them operate that machine, when you let them use this piece of equipment, then they know they can do it, because they’ve already done it.
Bryan
We teach that in effective business presentations: one of the vital skills is audience involvement. In this case, it may be prospect involvement, that shared ownership which Jill mentioned earlier, the fact that, “Yes, I have touched it. It is not as bad as I thought it would be. It isn’t that heavy. It’s nice. It feels good.” With all the things we can do to get them involved to share that ownership, we can act on the as-if principle, as if they were owning it right now. That’s key.
Janet
I think in presentation skills, eye contact is vital. I say talk to me, not at me. Many times how do we use those skills in a presentation? Are we actually talking to our customer so that he becomes a part of it, or are we just simply talking at him?
Jill
Or, talk to me and not to the visual aids.
Zig
That’s one reason why a smart salesperson, unless they have a serious eye problem, will never wear dark glasses. There’s a certain element of distrust if you can’t see the whites of their eyes.
In the world of selling, as you know, there’s the statement “I didn’t trust that fellow. He never would look me in the eye.” Well, I’m here to tell you the biggest and most effective con artists I’ve ever known in my life could look you dead center with those dark browns or those baby blues, and charm the ears off of a billy goat and lie to you like you can’t believe it, but the bottom line is this: if the salesperson will not look the prospect in the eye, the prospect simply does not trust them.
They don’t always buy if you do look them in the eye, but they’re far more likely not to buy if you don’t, so make that a point. Unless you have an eye problem, make certain that you have glasses that are clear when you’re talking with your prospects.
Janet
I think we also make the point about being excited about your presentations, whether it’s the beginning of the day or the end of the day, because that presentation is your involvement with the customer. Be enthused about it. Be excited. Make it a fun experience for the customer, because if you do, they’ll remember you when you walk out, compared to someone else who didn’t.
When my presentation is planned, I can allow myself to have that enthusiasm and excitement, because I’m not thinking so hard about what I am going to say next. That’s there, so I can be excited about my prospect or my product and have that enthusiasm to show that. Planning has helped me in having that excitement fresh at the end of the day as well as the start of the day.
Phil
It always take me back to something I heard Zig say many years ago: enthusiasm and sincerity will sell far more product than any tool or any technique. That excitement does sell, because it’s the transference of feeling.
Zig
The first thing, of course, in a planned presentation is you have to get the favorable attention of your prospect. It’s easy to get attention, but it must be favorable attention. You have to do something to arouse their favorable interest in what you’re doing.
What are some of the benefits you can bring out almost immediately? As salespeople, we need to start off with the very strongest point or feature about whatever it is that we’re selling. We need to terminate our presentation with the next to strongest feature or benefit that our product or service has to offer.
The reason is simply this: a lot of times, they will not be listening to everything you say. Sorry about that, salesperson, but their minds will have a tendency on occasion to drift. When you open up, you generally have their attention, and as you start to wind up—“and the last point I really want to make”—I guarantee you the antennae goes up, and they’re listening. They might not always get what you say in between, but they will have gotten the two strongest points that you have.
The conviction step is actually the third step in a presentation. This is reinforced and enhanced tremendously by what we’ve been talking about here with a lot of good, valid testimonials and vivid demonstrations, which they were participating in. They’re convincing themselves when they participate. Testimonials from other people who have no ax to grind but are simply sold on the product will many times be more convincing than the salesperson will be.
Then you have to arouse the desire of that individual to own what you’re selling. How do you do that? Basically, desire is aroused by letting that individual understand, not what the product is, but what the benefits are. They do not buy what the product is; they buy what the product does.
Probably the oldest example or illustration of that is this. Last year, in excess of a half million quarter-inch drills were sold. Yet nobody wanted a quarter-inch drill. What they wanted was a quarter-inch hole. I’m not interested in four tires, a steering wheel, or an automobile body. I am interested in smooth, safe, efficient, comfortable transportation. A lady doesn’t want a bunch of paint in a little round tube or a bunch of liquid in a bottle, but she does want a far more attractive appearance and a very pleasant odor that will almost require an insurance policy when she wears it.
Finally, of course, we have to close the sale. I have had some people say, “If you do everything else, the close is automatic.” Don’t you believe it. A lot of people hesitate to make decisions. We have to prod gently, and we have to use our techniques and procedures in helping them to arrive at the decision which is going to be in their best interest.
Later on we’ll give any number of closes, but we absolutely must develop the conviction and the closes if we’re going to be effective in closing.
Finally, here’s a story about a man who came home one evening, and his little seven-year-old son was doing a little work out in the backyard. He was building a fort. I guess all kids like to do that. There was one heavy post the youngster was trying to move. That youngster was struggling and straining. He was trying so hard to lift it.
His daddy watched him a couple of minutes, and he said, “Son, use all your strength.”
The little boy looked at him. He said, “Daddy, you’ve been watching me. You know I’m trying. I am using all my strength.”
The daddy said, “No, son, you’re not using all your strength.”
“Yes, I am, Daddy. I tried hard.”
“Son, you didn’t ask me to help you. You didn’t use my strength.”
As salespeople, we need to use all the strength available. That strength is the knowledge, the background, the experience, the expertise, and the support materials, which our company can provide us, and which we can learn through books, recordings, and seminars.
We do not have time to have all of the experiences. We must use the successful experience of others. The exciting thing is, when you’re using other people’s experience, you really are only using successful experience. When you try to have it all yourself, then you have to include in there part of the success and part of the failure.
If you’re going to sell right to the right people, use the strength that is available. It is amazing how much there is there. When you do that, you’ll be far more successful, and you’ll be using one of the most important aspects of The Secrets of Successful Selling.