Heavy Hitter Sales Blog

Strategies for Answering the Toughest Questions

Harvard Business Review is arguably the most prestigious publication for business leaders and management thinkers. Here’s one of my recent Harvard Business Review articles titled “Strategies for Answering Your Toughest Customers’ Questions.”

 

One of the hardest things to do in all of sales is handle tough questions from skeptical prospective customers. After interviewing thousands of customers as part of the win-loss studies I have conducted, I can tell you with certainty that answering customer questions successfully is often the difference between winning and losing. Here are seven points to consider when answering questions: 

Clarify the question first. Customers ask two basic types of questions. Some are very specific questions about a feature or issue, while others are more general about a broad topic or your opinion. In both instances, make sure you understand the question before answering it. Either rephrase the question your own mind your own words and repeat it to the questioner aloud or ask the questioner to further explain what he meant before answering. Many times, salespeople are too eager to give an answer to a question that wasn't even asked. 

Show your domain expertise. If you intimately know your industry, company, and products and how they compare against the competition, you need not fear even the toughest question. Frame the beginning of your answers with statements that confirm your credibility like “Based upon my experience working with X, Y and Z companies” or  “I’ve been asked that many times over the years.”

Make sure everyone understands. Since most sales calls are conducted with groups of people, you should give a little background information with your answers to ensure everyone understands the topic of conversation. Don't assume everyone understands your company's buzzwords or nomenclature.

Provide an expert point of view. Never forget, your customer would rather do business with a trusted consultant who has intimate knowledge of the industry than an ordinary salesperson who simply understands how the product works. In fact, you are not actually there to sell anything. Your goal is to become a trusted advisor by intently listening to the questions the customer asks so that you can apply your expertise to solve the customer’s business problems or complete his initiatives. Ideally, once you have established yourself as an expert the conversation will flow into an off-the-record talk about the politics of his organization and his ulterior motives. 

Redirect inane and unfair questions. Don't get flustered when you are asked an inappropriate question. Simply redirect the question by saying something like, "The question you really should be asking is … " 

Respond with Metaphors. Metaphors are stories, parables, and analogies that communicate ideas by using examples that people can relate to and identify with. Metaphors enable complex concepts and theories to be explained in an understandable, interesting, and persuasive manner. The most important metaphors are examples about the customers that are successfully using your products and services. Instead of barraging the customer with point-by-point facts and figures, structure your answer in a logical way using an existing customer’s impactful storyline.  

Demeanor speaks volumes. The most powerful response to the most difficult question isn't solely the answer you give. It's also how you say it! Regardless of the question, keep a calm and confident demeanor. Most of all, do not get defensive. Stay positive. This is a critical lesson. When confronted by someone who disagrees with your opinion, it's okay to disagree without being disagreeable.

The demeanor and communication style used to deliver your answer should be collected and matter-of-fact. However, you want to build momentum as you make your response and finish on a high note. This is called a “build up.” Whenever you speak to a customer, you want to confidently peak during the final sentence of your paragraph. You don’t want your voice to trail off, signaling uncertainty or lack of conviction. 

Remember, behind every question customers ask is an ulterior motive. They may want to validate a bias or throw you off track. That's why you shouldn't be too eager to answer or say yes to every question you are asked. The first step is to quickly theorize why the question was asked. Then formulate your response strategy to demonstrate your industry and business expertise in order to command respect. Sometimes, it is best to address inappropriate questions by providing an answer that guides the customer to a different topic. Most importantly, maintain your composure at all times. So be sure to prepare your answers in advance to protect yourself from uncomfortable questions about your products, company, and competitors.

A critical aspect of every sales call is not necessarily what you have planned to say. Rather, it is how you handle the tough questions the customer asks you. Your question-handling ability is what separates you from the pack.

 

Other Articles You Might Enjoy:

Personality Study of 1,000 Top Salespeople 

The Seven Deadly Sins of Salespeople

 

7 FASCINATING FACTS ABOUT A SALESPERSON'S MIND

During the first four years of your life, 90 percent of your brain’s growth and development occurred. Your mind evolved as it interacted with the world around you and recorded strange and exciting new experiences. Now, it has been accumulating these experiences for decades. I’ve written extensively about how the successful salesperson’s mind thinks and processes language in my recent books Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology and Heavy Hitter Sales Linguistics. Below, are seven fascinating facts about a salesperson’s mind.

 

1. Do You Never Forget a Face?   Some people can easily recognize a face they have seen only once before.  Obviously, this important social skill is beneficial for salespeople who must meet with many different customers.  However, an MIT study found that this ability is an inherited specialized trait that is not linked to a person’s IQ in general. In other words, you either have facial recognition genes and the recognition ability or you don’t.

2. Does Rejection Really Hurt?   Okay, you have just been told by the prospective customer that you lost that big deal you were counting on. Obviously, you are mentally and emotionally frustrated but you are also in physical pain according to a recent Columbia study. They studied MRI brain scans of people who experienced emotional rejection and they actually showed that the person is was in physical pain thus proving that losing really hurts!

3. Do You Like to Doodle?   What do past Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Reagan have in common? Well, they all liked to doodle during important phone calls and meetings. Research published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology suggests that doodling actually aids memory retention and doodlers have an average of 29% better event recall than non-doodlers.

4. Are You Optimistic? According to a study at University College London, 80% of people are optimists by nature.  Their research suggests that optimistic people selectivity receive negative news. When hearing bad news, the brain scans of optimists showed very low activity in their frontal lobes as opposed to pessimists who had higher activity levels. So, if you are an optimist your brain is actually wired that way because you don’t “hear” bad news. In addition, optimists live longer according to one study of 100,000 participants. 

5. Why Are You So Nice?   A study published in the journal Psychological Science explained that “niceness” is tied to hormone receptor genes that emit oxytocin and vasopressin. These hormones in turn trigger the sensations of love and generosity within the mind. It turns out your innate nature to help people is really the result of a chemical reaction.

6. Why You Don’t Like to Read?   Most salespeople don’t like to read. You see, your brain was built to talk. It was not designed to read. While speaking comes automatically and is a natural part of the brain’s development, reading is a skill that must be learned. It requires three different areas of your brain to work together in close coordination in order to read.  All marketing departments should pay attention to this fact when creating sales training collateral!

7. Are You Humble?   Contrary to conventional stereotypes that successful salespeople are pushy and egotistical, 91 percent of top salespeople have medium to high scores of modesty and humility according to a personality study of 1,000 top sales performers I have conducted. Furthermore, the results suggest that ostentatious salespeople who are full of bravado alienate far more customers than they win over.

 

 Other Articles That Might Interest You:

Personality Study of 1,000 Top Salespeople

Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology: How to Penetrate the C-Level Executive Suite and Convince Company Leaders to Buy

Heavy Hitter Sales Linguistics: 101 Advanced Sales Call Strategies for Senior Salespeople

 

Game Changer Provides FREE B2B Contact Data

Wow! There is Revolution Happening in the World of B2B Prospecting Data Providers!

I remember when I was VP of Sales and had to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for prospecting lists. At the time there were a couple of main data providers and they controlled the prospecting data marketplace so they were free to charge whatever they liked. Worse yet, negotiating with them was a frustrating ordeal and even after paying all them all this money, my inside sales teams and field reps would continually complain about the quality of the contact information.  Well, I am excited to tell you that times have finally changed…

Where Can You Get Over 5 million B2B Contacts For FREE?

LeadFerret offers a free online B2B database with complete data for millions of business contacts. It’s 100% free, no gimmicks, no subscriptions, no need to upload your contacts to get contacts, and every record is complete, including the vitally important email address.

Ok, It’s Free… But How Accurate is the Data?

That was exactly the first question I had about LeadFerret so I conducted my own test. Of 1,000 random contacts I selected directly from LeadFerret, 83% were correct! This is an awesome accuracy rate that puts many other data providers to shame (and the price is right too!!!).

 

Other Articles You Might Enjoy: 

The Seven Deadly Sins of Salespeople

Why Did We Lose the Big Deal? (5 Questions for the VP of Sales)

A Salesperson's Most Important Competitive Weapon

Today’s customers are smarter and more sophisticated, and technology has become a way of life for them. For example, our cars have global positioning and mapping systems based upon satellite communications. The appliances in our kitchens turn themselves on and off. Our entire music collections are carried on digital devices the size of a deck of cards. We take pictures, play games, and send text messages to friends with our cellular phones. Over Nintey-five percent of all homes in the United States have personal computers. Via the Internet, customers can research products, prices, and opinions. Collectively, this has raised the level of sophistication of the customers we must converse with and sell to.

Perhaps the most interesting change is how people receive information. According to one university study, the world’s total yearly production of media content for newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the Internet would require roughly 1.5 billion gigabytes of storage. This is the equivalent of 250 megabytes per person for each man, woman, and child on the earth. Because of this information overload, customer attention spans are shorter than ever.

Information must now be packaged with the customers’ shortened attention spans in mind. For example, USA Today, the largest selling newspaper in the United States, was designed to stand out visually. The colorful newspaper always includes bold diagrams and numerous pictures so that time-pressed readers can pick up a story’s message with minimal effort. Even the racks used to sell the newspaper are colorful boxes with rounded edges as opposed to the black square boxes of other newspapers.

Shortened attention spans have changed the nature of information itself. USA Today distills and condenses the news into easy-to-read chunks. A paragraph is rarely longer than three short sentences. Every article is written with the reader in mind, using a “what’s in it for me?” style. USA Today’s style is best summarized by the newspaper’s tagline, “An economy of words, a wealth of information.” If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, USA Today is the most successful newspaper ever because newspapers everywhere have adopted its format.

But even USA Today has had to continue to change both their online and print editions to maintain readers… This Brings Us to The Main Point of This Article:         

Have You Changed The Way You Communicate to Connect with Today’s Customer Who is Smarter, More Sophisticated, But has a Shortened Attention Span?

Successful communication is at the foundation of all sales. “Sales Linguistics” is the revolutionary new field of study about how customers and salespeople use and interpret language during the decision making process.  The conversations you have with customers are quite complex, they consist of verbal and non-verbal communication that are sent consciously and subconsciously. Sales Linguistics will help you learn to say the “right” words at the “right” time to convince skeptical customers to buy.

You must be able to adapt your use of language to a customer’s thought process and personality. You need to understand the process of communication and how it determines the level of rapport that is established between people. Language can be directly linked to customer behavior. It can be deciphered to predict the future, determine truthfulness, and used proactively to influence a customer’s thinking and opinions. 

The salesperson’s most important competitive weapon is his mouth, and the winner is the salesperson who uses words to reduce the customer’s doubts, ease his fear and fosters his fantasy. That’s why it’s critical that you learn sales linguistics before your arch-rivals learn to speak more persuasively.

Click Here to Read More About Sales Linguistics

 

Closing Techniques Using Sales Linguistics

Harvard Business Review is arguably the most prestigious publication for business leaders and management thinkers. Here’s one of my recent Harvard Business Review articles about how to use Sales Linguistics to close sales calls. It is based upon my new book Heavy Hitter Sales Linguistics: 101 Advanced Sales Call Strategies for Senior Salespeople.

Remember the last time you were being pressured into doing something you didn't want to do? Whether the pressure came from a boss, colleague, spouse, or child, your natural response was to resist and push back. It's human nature to resist high-pressure tactics. So, how should the closing of the sales call be structured? The answer is to create a primary closing strategy, utilize fallback positions, and select the appropriate technique to deliver the close.

Your primary closing strategy should be based upon securing the main objective for the meeting. The objective could be to be granted a follow-on meeting, have the customer start a product evaluation, receive approval to conduct a site survey, or negotiate final purchase terms. You also need fallback positions, alternatives you prepare ahead of time to present should the customer reject your primary closing strategy.

Your primary closing strategy and fallback positions are based on choosing to issue a command or presenting foreground and background suggestions. A command is an instructional statement that creates a binary type of yes or no response from the recipient. It is typically associated with a hard close and "take it or leave it" mentality. Foreground suggestions (medium close) are explicit, but they deflect the source of the request from the demander. Background suggestions (soft close) lead recipients to believe they are acting of their free will when in fact they have been directed to follow a message.

Let's pretend I am a passenger in your car and I feel you are driving too fast. A command would be "Slow down!" A foreground suggestion would be "You know the speed limit is forty five miles per hour and police ticket a lot of speeders here." A background suggestion would be "A speeder was in a horrible accident last week in this exact spot." While the background suggestion may be more subtle in its delivery, it can trigger a more profound reaction.

In a sales situation, a command might be "We always recommend you benchmark the products you are evaluating." A foreground suggestion might be "Consumer Reports gave our product the highest rating and recommended it as the best buy." An example of a background suggestion is "One of my customers tried the other company's product and recently switched to ours."

After you have determined your primary closing strategy and fallback positions, select the delivery technique to be used during the meeting. Here are some examples, assuming the main sales call objective is to close the business deal:

Time-based technique. This technique incorporates a time-based deadline.

            Command (hard close). "This is the last time we'll be able to extend this offer and we need your answer now."

            Foreground suggestion (medium close). "My boss told me that this pricing expires December 31 at midnight."

            Background suggestion (soft close). "Think it over tonight and I will call you at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning."

 

Linkage. This technique connects different events, subjects, or ideas.

            Command (hard close). "If we give you those terms, then you must have our contract signed by the end of our quarter."

            Foreground suggestion (medium close). "I'll talk with my boss and if he okays the terms, could we have the purchase order by month end?"

            Background suggestion (soft close). "Our implementation team will be fully booked starting in September, so to complete your project by year end, we'll need to have the contract signed in the next couple of weeks."

 

Power of Print. This technique leverages a document or printed company policy.

            Command (hard close). "Our new price list is coming out in thirty days, and I can't hold these current prices for you after that."

            Foreground suggestion (medium close). "Here's our volume discount schedule. If you spend another $100,000, you'll receive an additional 10 percent off the entire order."

            Background suggestion (soft close). "Should I send you a formal quotation that details the purchase price and terms?" 

Always maintain control of the sales call so you can employ your primary closing strategy and be prepared with fallback positions should your primary closing strategy fail. You can sequence your primary closing strategy, and fallback positions with commands (hard close), foreground suggestions (medium close), and background suggestions (soft close). For example, your primary closing strategy might be based upon a hard close; first fallback position, a medium close; and final fallback position, a soft close. Or, your strategy could be completely opposite depending upon the circumstances and the type of person you are meeting with. 

Read More About Sales Linguistics Here

If Sigmund Freud Was Your Sales Manager

Here's an excerpt from my book Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology: How to Penetrate the C-Level Executive Suite and Convince Company Leaders to Buy.

 

Sigmund Freud is the most famous figure in all of psychology. If he was your sales manager I think he would ask you one very important question, “Why are you in sales?” While your conscious mind might rationalize that you got into sales through a calculated career move or even happenstance, Freud would probably argue that your decision to become a salesperson was made many years ago. This is because your subconscious mind has had a plan for your entire life. You are simply fulfilling your destiny.

Your subconscious mind knows you better than yourself. It remembers how you sought acceptance and recognition since the earliest days of your childhood. Today, it understands you crave adventure and excitement and that you could never be happy working a routine nine-to-five desk job. It also recognizes that you work in sales not because you have to, but because you have to be free. And this fundamental drive is at the core of the human spirit.

Sigmund Freud would acknowledge that you are a very rare type of individual. Most people don’t have the capacity to intentionally endure the emotional and mental stress that is a daily part of a sales career. They don’t have the self-confidence to attempt to accomplish difficult goals or possess the inward drive and perseverance to reach the pinnacle of success. In reality, most people can’t deal with uncertainty and don’t have the propensity to take risks. They are satisfied living average lives working at ordinary jobs because they are afraid to know the truth about themselves. While they shirk from the limelight because they fear their lack of courage will be exposed, you are on a continual mission to prove to the world you’re right.

Sigmund Freud would say your subconscious mind is smarter than you think. It recognized way in advance that sales was the only profession that was right for you. It determined that you needed to be surrounded by people like yourself—modern-day warriors who embark on daily battles to vanquish evil archrivals. It also realized how important it is for you to have earned their respect and admiration. 

Even though your conscious mind may occasionally daydream about doing some other profession, your subconscious knows that you are very fortunate to be in sales. While others have chosen life’s mundane path, sales provides you the opportunity to fulfill your deep-seated drives to leave your legacy and become the hero who was able to make the family’s dreams come true. You should be thankful it selected a career that increases your self-worth and net worth at the same time. Most importantly, your subconscious mind purposely chose this line of work so you could measure the significance of your life. And as your subconscious mind already knows, you are destined for great things.

 

Other Steve W. Martin Articles You Might Enjoy:

Sales Linguistics: The Seven Languages C-Level Executives Speak

Personality Study of 1,000 Top Salespeople - Harvard Business Review

Click Here for 25 More Articles

Are Top Salespeople Born or Made?

Harvard Business Review is arguably the most prestigious publication for business leaders and management thinkers. Here’s one of my recent Harvard Business Review articles titled “Are Top Salespeople Born or Made?”

 

My last article on the "Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople" was based on personality tests administered to 1,000 top business-to-business salespeople. The test results indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers' selling styles, and, in turn, their success. However, the study also raises the perennial question, "Are top salespeople born or made?" In other words, must top salespeople be born with the prerequisite sales instincts, or can someone learn to become successful in sales without them?

Based upon my research, experience, and observations, I estimate over 70 percent of top salespeople are born with "natural" instincts that play a critical role in determining their sales success. Conversely, less than 30 percent of top salespeople are self-made — meaning, they have had to learn how to become top salespeople without the benefit of these natural abilities. In addition, for every 100 people who enter sales without natural sales traits, 40 percent will fail or quit, 40 percent will perform at near average, and only 20 percent will be above average (These figures vary by industry and the complexity of products sold).

Based on the figures above, the real question that should be asked is, "What determines whether or not a self-made salesperson will become successful?" While it's easy to recite a laundry list of general reasons for success (hard work, persistence, intelligence, integrity, empathy, etc.), my experience in the field and the research I've conducted indicates four key factors that determine the self-made salesperson's destiny. They are language specialization, "modeling" of experiences, political acumen, and greed.

Language Specialization. The first differentiating factor between the success or failure of the self-made salesperson is language specialization. While all competent salespeople can recite their product's features and business benefits, very few are mavens who can conduct intelligent conversations about the details of daily business operations. Every industry also has developed its own technical language to facilitate mutual understanding of terminology and an exact meaning of the words used throughout a business. The technical language consists of abbreviations, acronyms, business nomenclature, and specialized terms (for example RAM, CPU, and flash drive in the consumer electronics industry).

Successful self-made salespeople possess domain-area expertise and speak the corresponding business operations language, or have deep knowledge of the industry's technical language. These languages are the yardstick by which customers measure a salesperson's true value and greatly influence their purchase decisions. Lesser-performing self-made salespeople are not as fluent in these languages, so they tend to focus on likability and friendliness with prospective customers.

Modeling of Experiences. Modeling is the mind's ability to link like experiences and similar data into predictable patterns. Salespeople continually learn through the ongoing accumulation and consolidation of information from their sales calls and interactions with customers. From this knowledge base, salespeople can predict what will happen and what they should do in light of what they have done in the past.

Modeling can be thought of as the engine that drives sales intuition. For example, let's say a salesperson is asked by a skeptical, analytical, financial-oriented prospective customer how his product is different from his major competitor's. His answer would be based on previous experiences with similar circumstances. Modeling can be thought of as trying to find the what, when, where response — what you should do when you are in a particular circumstance where you have to act.

Successful self-made salespeople have an effective methodology to store and retrieve all the verbal, nonverbal, factual, and intuitive information that occurs during sales calls and sales cycles. This results in a greater proficiency to win business than less-successful self-made salespeople who do not learn from their past mistakes and instead repeat them.

Political Acumen. Unfortunately, many under-performing self-made salespeople take a textbook-type approach to sales and concentrate solely on the procedural aspects of the sales cycle. They don't take into account the human nature of sales and how people and politics determine the outcome.

Politics are based upon self-interests. Therefore, customers do not readily reveal the internal machinations of their decision-making. Political acumen is the ability to correctly map out each decision maker's influence and motivations. Successful self-made salespeople consider this their top priority. Political acumen drives winning account strategy whereas strategic planning without political acumen is a losing proposition.

Greed.  We normally associate greed with a corrupt character or miserly scrooge. While this may be society's definition, in sales, "greed" takes on an entirely different meaning. In sales, greed and self-respect are closely intertwined. Greed can be thought of as the desire to be fairly paid for one's time. Time is a salesperson's enemy because time is finite. Time is the governor that determines how many deals can be worked and where effort should be focused. Salespeople are on a mission to learn the ultimate truth, "Will I win the deal?" Greed compels the successful self-made salespeople to push themselves beyond their comfort zone and ask difficult qualifying questions while continually pushing for the close. Conversely, the lesser successful self-made salespeople do not possess this inward drive.

 Are top salespeople born or made? The true answer is that the overwhelming majority of top salespeople are gifted with innate talents. However, many others are self-made successes who have learned how to apply their language specialization and build their intuition. They know what accounts they should spend their time on and always navigate to powerful decision-makers in order to create the opportunity to persuade them to buy.

 OTHER ARTICLES THAT MAY INTEREST YOU:

The Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople

Four Critical Sales Kickoff Meeting Success Factors

Regardless of whether your company calls it the annual sales meeting, yearly sales conference, or once-a-year sales rally, the annual sales kickoff meeting is the most important sales meeting of the year. Let’s assume you are in charge of planning your company’s annual sales kickoff. You’ve picked the best location, chosen the right hotel, and are in the process of finalizing the meeting plans. 

There are four critical factors that impact the success of the meeting. You have to have the right theme for the meeting, build the best agenda, select the right keynote speaker, and capture the event so attendees can review critical sessions after the event. 

 

1) Selecting the Meeting Theme

The first step toward conducting a successful sales kickoff starts with choosing the right theme. With this goal in mind, here are important points to consider when selecting your sales kickoff theme. One of the most important factors to keep in mind as you choose your theme is the level of the sales force’s morale. All sales forces go through periods of high and low morale. When morale is high, you can be more creative and take bigger risks with the theme you choose.

Conversely, I wouldn’t recommend such an over-the-top theme during tough times. In this situation the theme should be more commonsensical like “Better, Stronger, Faster,” which provides a platform that meeting presenters can use to talk about changes and upcoming improvements. Click here for a detailed article about selecting a sales kickoff theme.

 

2) Agenda Structure

The structure of the meeting’s agenda is one of the key factors that will determine the meeting’s overall success. The main objectives of the sales kickoff agenda are preparation and renewed motivation. Remember, there are three objectives your agenda should reinforce: first, a renewed sense of pride in the company they work for; second, honest enthusiasm to get back into the field and ramp up the new year; and some positive thoughts and pleasant memories about the good time they had celebrating a career that is difficult and demanding but, ultimately, extremely rewarding. Click here for an article of best ideas on how to structure the sales kickoff agenda.

 

3) Select the Right Keynote Speaker

There are four main types of keynote speakers to choose from: celebrity, motivational, industry mavens, and sales experts. Celebrities (such as entertainment stars, sports heroes, business icons and politicians) will speak mainly about their personal experiences. Conversely, industry mavens are analysts and consultants who talk about current issues and future business trends. Meanwhile, motivational speakers exuberantly try to touch listeners’ emotions. And, finally, there are sales experts who share their specific sales-related wisdom and knowledge with the audience. So, how do you decide which one is right for you?

There aren’t any two sales forces that are exactly alike. Every sales force is unique in three different ways: complexity of the sales process, the average level of sales experience, and the state of morale. Perhaps the biggest mistake when selecting a sales kickoff presenter is picking one whose main message doesn’t apply to the products you sell or resonate with the sophistication of the sales force. For instance, even though a keynote speaker has successfully presented to Midwestern real estate agents in the past, he or she would not be a good fit for a Silicon Valley software company. Click here for a complete article about selecting a sales kickoff keynote speaker.

 

4) Capture the Meeting for Future Review

Based upon my personal experience, I strongly recommend that every sales kickoff be captured for future review. Let me explain why. The average person speaks about 125 words per minute. So, it’s nearly im­possible for meeting attendees to fully absorb the more than 60,000 words they hear each day. A post-meeting review of critical sales kickoff presentations should be available so the sales teams can revisit the key takeaways and important discussions at their own pace. In addition, some salespeople might not have been able to attend the meeting. Also, there will be new hires throughout the year who can view the sales kickoff recording as part of their on-boarding process.

The virtual sales kickoff should be accessible by topics and presenter as opposed to a lengthy rebroadcast that is watched in one long session. This requires that a virtual platform that provides intelligent on-de­mand access be used. Both the speaker and his or her slides should be shown simultaneously. Important presentation materials, slides, sales collateral, and training documents should be accessible for download. Viewers should be provided with interactive functionality so they can submit questions to meeting present­ers long after the presentation and be able to chat with colleagues who might be watching.

Providing on-demand access to the sales kickoff is an extremely economical way to reinforce the meeting messages, maximize the training investment, and extend the motivational afterglow. It typically costs 2% to 5% of the total meeting costs to record and post the meeting to a commercially available online virtual platform. You can expect ten times the number of meeting attendees to visit an online kickoff on average. For example, a meeting with 500 attendees would average 5,000 post-meeting visitors.

Want to learn more?  Please watch this free webinar:

 

The Virtual Sales Kickoff Meeting: Strategies that Produce Results

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Sponsored by Selling Power Magazine and ON24 Virtual Events and Sales Meetings

 

Top Five Sales Presentation Mistakes

I have probably reviewed more than one hundred corporate PowerPoint sales presentations in the past year alone. Not only do most look the same, they use the same terminology to describe their company’s unique advantages. You could take slides from one company’s presentation and insert them in another’s and no one would notice. They are all fact-based infomercials that approach customers in the same stimulus-response manner. In Pavolian terms, the vendors have rung the dinner bell so many times that the dog refuses to get off the couch to check his bowl.

Here are my top five corporate PowerPoint sales presentations mistakes below. I’ll use the USDA Food Pyramid to illustrate each of these points. The Department of Agriculture introduced the food pyramid in 1992 as way to show the recommended intake of the six different food groups. Last week, they replaced the much maligned pyramid with the “food plate” (seen in #5).

 

 

Mistake #1 - They are boring to look at and aesthetically unappealing.

 

 

Mistake #2 - They emphasize the wrong message because they aren’t customized to the specific sales situation (fats and oils must be the most important food because they are on top!).

 

 
Mistake #3 - They are too abstract to understand and don’t provide real-world customer examples.

 

 
Mistake # 4 They include overly complex slides that are impossible for salespeople to successfully deliver or prospective customers to follow. They have so many big-picture ideas and so much animation that only one person in the entire company can give the presentation effectively--its creator.

 

 
Mistake #5 - The presentation doesn’t have a logical storyline that builds credibility and momentum.

 

Perhaps the greatest single moment to influence customers during the sales cycle is during the corporate sales presentation. The direct approach to the customer presentation is to talk about me, me, me: my company, my products, my products’ features and functions. The indirect approach is based upon you, you, you: translating how you have helped other customers in the prospect’s situation. Describing how customers successfully use your products is more compelling than detailed discussions about how your products work. Compare this example to the ones above...

 

 

 

Other Articles That Might Interest You

How Ronald Reagan Would Change Your Corporate Presentation

Click Here for 25 More Articles Here

 

Top 10 Sales Articles by Steve W. Martin

Here’s a countdown of my Top 10 favorite articles…

10. Sales Linguistics: 7 Languages C-Level Executives Speak

9.  The 5 Truths About Selling to C-Level Executives

8. Thought Provoking Motivational Sales Quotes for the New Year!

7. The Bully with the Juice!

6. What Great Salespeople Say

5. Favorite Sales Manager Sayings and Clichés

4. Why Did We Lose? (5 Questions for the VP of Sales)

3. Why Does My Sales Manager Dislike Me?

2. How Ronald Reagan Would Change Your Sales Presentation

1. The Seven Deadly Sins of Salespeople

Click Here to see here to see my favorite articles countown 20 – 11!