Three Deadly Sins of Sales

Picture your last sales presentation or demonstration. How much of the material presented actually needed to be there? How long did it take to present? And what was your reason for presenting that way?

“It’s a technical presentation and they NEED to see it all” or “..they WANT to see it all.”
“It’s what Marketing gave us to present.” Our favorite:  “Stop me when you see something you like!”

In the age of information, it is easy to overwhelm your prospect with content not even relevant to the sale and actually make their decision more difficult.

Help yourself succeed by avoiding the most common Deadly Sins of Sales Presentations:

Deadly Sin #1 – Too Much Information
Dimming the lights and letting Power Point, (loaded with content your prospect is inclined to read), lead the way — takes the attention off you. Presenting features and functions is like explaining the material used in phones, rather than what a phone can mean to your life. What your solution IS and DOES, has much less emotional impact than what it MEANS to them. Rather than go through the engine – give them a test drive and ask them what they think and how they see this working in their world.

Deadly Sin # 2 – Not Presenting from the Buyer’s Point of View
Look again at your Agenda. Is it all about the customer and how their problems can be solved using your solution? Or is it about you: how long you’ve been in business, office locations around the world, etc.? Agendas set the tone and focus of your presentation. They work best when they alert your prospect that you are there to solve their problems first.

Deadly Sin # 3 — Not Telling Them What is Different about You
It is hard enough for prospects to make intelligent choices, don’t make it harder. If you cannot prove the difference between you and your competitor – how will your prospects? Make it easy for them! Spend time solving their problems, with clear and compelling reasons why they should choose you.

Exchange the 3 Deadly Sins for the 3 Ways to Win:

1. Keep your Presentation Simple and focused around three key relevant value propositions that are unique to your solution and important to this buyer. Highlight the unique value your solution and company alone can bring them. Make your unique value come alive in their world using tangible, concrete, simple and visual examples.

2. Know your Solution Story and be able to tell it with passion and proof. Focus the presentation on 3 to 5 problems/challenges you know your solution can uniquely solve. Use Customer Stories that highlight the before and after contrast as proof that your solution works.

3. Present from your Prospect’s Point of View, so they can imagine how your solution will benefit their business, financial and personal life. Build your Agenda around their needs, pains and desires. Seek to understand how your solution would work in their world. Ask for their feedback whenever you notice a peaked interest.

Follow this simple formula and your conversations will help both you and your buyer WIN!

Simplifying the Team Sell

Long gone are the days of simple salesman/client relationships. Today’s client is represented by a management team and/or buying committee, while the salesperson has their own management and sales team. Alliances, partners, and competitors extend the sales cycle and add to its complexity.

An inappropriate purchase can literally bankrupt a company. An extended period of implementation can cause a company to lose their competitive edge, or make them late to market. Either may be fatal to an organization.

Given this complexity, the prospect seeks simplicity from the sales team. However, what happens instead is they make the prospect’s life look even more complex by giving out too much information that doesn’t even relate to the needs of the prospect.

Why? Either the sales team doesn’t know the prospect’s needs, or they are so enamored with their own product they feel compelled to show every feature. There is no excuse for either mistake, and in today’s competitive environment, you’re only allowed one.

Recently in one of our messaging workshops, a participant mentioned he had a presentation scheduled Friday, but was not aware of his prospect’s specific pains. With the help of the group, we identified the top 10 reasons why most prospects consider buying this solution. Within minutes, he converted this list to a fax correspondence and called the prospect. He asked him to prioritize the list and add any other needs that may apply, to maximize the use of time available during Friday’s presentation and demo.

The next day he received a voicemail from the prospect stating how flattered he was by this concern for his needs, as opposed to a “typical” presentation focused on the sell. He added that he would be meeting with the team to ensure the list was a consensus of those who will attend Friday. What a great atmosphere for a salesperson to enter. And to think, all he had to do was ask.

An over abundance of irrelevant information will bore and discourage your prospect, because they are not interested in what the product is, they want to know what it does that will make their life easier.

What if you called a shuttle service for a ride from your hotel to the airport, and prior to scheduling your reservation, you had to listen to all the features of the shuttle vehicle, including; model and year, trunk capacity, wheel span, head room dimensions, sound system specifications, engine cubic inches, etc? Sound bizarre? Well, that’s how it sounds when salespeople recite features and functions that have no relevance to the prospects’ immediate need.The cure?

1. Use “Big Pictures” to visually connect your prospects’ dilemma to your solution.
2. Dramatize their pain. This emotional anxiety motivates people to take action.
3. Articulate the benefits of your solution, highlighting financial, business, and personal value.
4. Use Customer Stories that prove these benefits and values with added credibility.

In addition, be aware of your words, voice, and body language during your presentation, as well as the different learning channels present in the audience.

Keep it simple, valuable and engaging – and it will sell.

Technicians – The Trusted Advisors

In a typical sales process (especially when selling highly-complex or technological solutions), the salesperson addresses the prospect’s needs, pains and desires, explaining how his solution will solve their problem. He then introduces a sales engineer or sales technician who gives the prospect a quick demo of how the product works.

Finding balance
What the technician says and how he says it can either strengthen or undermine the relationship with the prospect. Technicians, who focus only on the features and functions, make it difficult for prospects to connect their needs to the product.

Technicians who focus on the prospect’s needs first, supported by a quick experience of how these features / functions can improve lives — move the buying decision faster. Too much focus on emotion comes across as “fluff” and short on substance. Too much proof confuses the customer and extends the sales cycle.

Present only the features that address your prospect’s immediate needs. Show them why your product is the best and only choice. This combination will move the buying decision in your favor — fast.

Trusted advisor
Technicians are in the best position to be the trusted “buying” advisor to the client. A good technician is a lot like your doctor.  He asks questions before prescribing any treatment, asks what you think, and how to move forward. It’s never a monologue from the doctor, but a trusted dialogue with you, his patient. When the technician and salesperson realize this, they can work together to present and reinforce the values to be discussed, making winning the deal.

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Kevan Kjar, Senior Consultant Corporate Visions

Let Your Client’s Product Sell Your Solution

Ann Taylor, the women’s clothing retailer, was looking to experience some revenue uplift from its online channel while decreasing administration costs through an e-commerce system upgrade. Greg Miller and his EasyAsk team, (a year-and-a-half into the sales cycle), were being undermined by a cheaper competitor. From the buyer’s perspective, both companies had similar dynamic search and navigation systems – except one was cheaper. In reality, EasyAsk had a differentiating merchandising and analytics benefit that easily warranted the extra expense.

Greg used a number play to explain how EasyAsk understood Ann Taylor’s business challenges. Greg asked, “What do 10, 5, and 1 have in common?” Ten (10) e-mails currently needed, plus five (5) people to make one (1) change.

For contrast, Greg shared a success story of one of EasyAsk’s customers using another Number Play: 34, 18, .3. Their conversion rate is now up 34%, with an 18% increase in order size, taking only .3 (1/3) person to do the effort.

In the past, we would leave a demo or presentation meeting with some open items. This time, the last thing the CTO said was, “This is great, I don’t think we’ll have any problem implementing.”

Greg concludes, “The difference? This time it was all about them. We had set the bar so high that our competitors were now chasing us.”