Your business card can either help you – or destroy your credibility.

In speaking at different trade shows, I receive a great many different business cards from people in many different walks of life and business, and I’m constantly amazed at how many people have business cards that work against them in the selling arena.  Your business card tells your story in a very small and succinct way, and more importantly, it represents you after you leave.  Is it telling the right story?

First of all, let’s remind ourselves of why we use business cards:

Business cards identify us:  A business card is a very quick way to “place us” in the business world.  In a very small piece of heavy paper, we convey who we are, what we do, and for whom we do it.  We also let people know how to get ahold of us.  Go to a networking event, and you’ll meet a bunch of people.  You’ll also collect a bunch of business cards.  You may forget the faces – but the cards remind you of the people.

Business cards are the best leave-behind:  Salespeople love “leave-behinds,” those fancy brochures and packets that are supposed to remind our customers of why they should buy from us.  About 4 out of every 5 of those fancy brochures are in the trash before you make it out of the parking lot – BUT your business card is saved and filed.  That means your business card is usually your only meaningful leave-behind.  It’s also why you shouldn’t attach your card to stuff that’s likely to be thrown away.

Business cards give us credibility:  Business cards establish you as a “legitimate” businessperson.  They begin the process of establishing that you are what you say you are, and can do what you say your can do.  And, in sales, credibility is our main asset.  “Credibility” is that quality that allows people to believe what we say because it is we who say it.
Your customers want to buy from someone who has substance and stability.  Your business card needs to reflect thost qualities.  To do this, it needs to have a few qualities.  These qualities are:

Substance.  Yes, I know; I already said “substance.”  However, some business cards are substantial and some are not.  Here’s a hint:  Anything you run through your home printer isn’t substantial.  Leave the ‘micro-perfed’ blank business cards on the shelf at the office supply store.  Instead, invest in a commercially printed card of at least 12-point cardstock.  Heavier is better.  A good business card from a reputable printer only costs $100 or so for a thousand.  If a hundred bucks is too much to spend in order to protect your image, get out of sales.  By the way – if your company supplies you with cheap, flimsy, lousy cards – it’s still on you to get nice ones.  It’s your career.

Good Contact Information.  The primary purpose of leaving a business card is to help people to contact you, so why wouldn’t you have full contact information on your card?  Contact information includes your name, your title, your mailing address, your e-mail address, phone number(s), and fax number if you have one.  One element I’m seeing more of these days is a Skype username, as well.  The most common problem with business cards is in the e-mail address; let’s deal with that specifically.

The Right E-mail Address.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of half of the cards that I received do not have a professional e-mail address.  What I mean by a “professional e-mail address” is an address that is along the lines of yourname@companyname.com.  Too many people in this industry are still working with a ‘free’ e-mail provider such as Gmail or Yahoo, using an address like myadspecialties@gmail.com.   This pegs you as a small, and perhaps a temporary, player in your industry – and will work against you with buyers.  You need a website with your own domain name, and an email address that is personal and guided through your own domain.  It’s not expensive.  If you like free websites, a WordPress site is free.  Domain names are cheap, and can then be attached to your free WordPress site.  Email hosting isn’t expensive, either. Voila.  A few bucks and a bit of thought, and now you have a professional E-mail address.

For small business, the best marketing material you can have is a quality business card, passed across the desk to a potential customer in a sales call.  However, if yours doesn’t fit the above criteria, it can actually work against you.

For whatever reason, I have spent a lot of my time, particularly within the last three years, working with a lot of companies who have sales engineers – meaning that they hire people with engineering backgrounds to be salespeople.  When I tell people about this fact, they give expressions of horror or sympathy, because of what they perceive as the difficulty of training engineers to be salespeople.  What’s funny is, I love working with engineers.  Want to know why?

It’s simple.  Engineers know their numbers, and they understand repeatable processes.  Engineering is all about creating repeatable processes, and so is selling.  The only difference is that in selling, our processes aren’t 100% repeatable because we sell to human beings who have their own motivations.  That said, every new skill learned, every new technique applied, is designed to raise our percentages.  If a new skill does not raise our percentages, we ought not use it.  There’s a basic formula to calculating your chances of selling success, and it is:

(Quantity of activity) x (Quality of activity) = Results.

Notice that I didn’t use variables like “luck” or “economy” in there.  Those are factors that might skew your results somewhat in the short term, but over the long haul, your success in selling depends entirely onhow much selling work you do, and how good you are at it.  Although that sounds simple, there are a lot of salespeople – and a lot of companies – that do not get it.  Salespeople will look forever for a “magic button” to improving their results without measurably improving their quantity or quality of sales activity.  Hence, with this in mind, let’s take an engineering-focused approach to a sales improvement plan for 2014.

Step One:  Optimize Quantity of activity.

You will notice that I didn’t say “Maximize” quantity of activity.  Sometimes, the “maximum” level of activity isn’t desirable; you then find yourself rushing through calls just to put up numbers.  You increase your Quantity, but you can actually decrease your Quality of activity enough that your results are worse.  Consider this:  Most B2B salespeople have about 40 hours of meaningful selling time to work with in any given week.  Let’s look at two simple ways to maximize your “Between the lines” time:

Cut the BS.  Look, I’m no saint when it comes to sales activity.  I have been known to make personal calls, pick up dry cleaning, etc. during that 40 hour window.  But whenever I do those things, I first consider the penalty for lost selling time.  Too many salespeople don’t.  Make a log, in fifteen minute increments, of how you spend your selling time during the week.  What can you cut out, and more importantly, what meaningful selling activity can you plug in?  Push as much personal junk off to the after-hours, and optimize your selling time.

Delegate.  Every task has a value, and every person in a company also has a value.  If the value of the task doesn’t match the value of the person, you have an inefficient allocation of resources (gee, that phrase sounds like the engineers are rubbing off on me, too).  Essentially, we want tasks delegated to the lowest salaried level that can carry them out well.  Hence, if your time is better spent outside making calls than sitting at your desk writing sales letters, perhaps you might work with your manager to find someone to write those letters for you.  Can a customer service department or inside salesperson process that order?  Give it to them, and get back to what you do best.  In doing these things, you will optimize your activity.

Step Two:  Improve Quality of Activity.

This step differs from Step One, because in Step One, there’s a limit to how much you can streamline your workday.  There’s no limit to how much you can improve your skills – yet I see salespeople who have been selling for 25 years and obviously haven’t learned anything new in the last 20.  This is a process ofcontinuous improvement, gang.  The selling environment never stops changing.  When you stop changing, you are giving up.

Get up to speed with technology.  I thought about putting this under step one, but the truth is that technology can improve your quality of activity much more than your quantity.  I’ve already made myself clear on social networking (and if you haven’t read those articles, they’re archived on my site in the blog section), but you should be using technological tools like Jigsaw and ReferenceUSA to find new prospects, Google News Alerts to keep up on current customers, and tools like Constant Contact to stay in touch.  If you’re not on game with these, all the Tweeting in the world won’t help you.  Selling in today’s world is a battle of information, and the salesperson with the most customer information usually wins.

Commit to a program of self improvement.  You should be a continuous digester and user of selling information; fortunately today’s technology puts more of this at your fingertips than ever before.  Commit to learning one new skill every two weeks.  Week one is to research and read about the skill; week two is to practice and adopt it.  Repeat the process every two weeks for the rest of your professional life.  Sometimes these skills don’t work in your environment; have the professional discipline to toss them out.

No Donut Calls.  The “Donut call” is the lowest common denominator of selling activity; it’s “Hi, here are some doughnuts.  Can I have an order?”  There’s no effort at relationship building here.  Don’t be that guy or gal.  Instead focus on building the relationship with every customer you have, and developing them to their maximum.

Well, this plan is simple to write, but it’s not simple to execute.  However, if you COMMIT yourself to executing these steps on a continuous basis, 2014 will be a lot better than 2013 – even if your 2013 was pretty good.  Hopefully that’s a repeatable process we can all get behind.

If your customers are constantly “beating you up on price,” maybe it’s not their fault.  Maybe it’s yours.  Bad selling reduces achieved price, and most of the time, salespeople don’t even know that they’re doing it badly.  Today, I’m going to show you six ways to increase your price through better selling.

One of the most common questions that I get sounds something like this:  “Troy, all this stuff you talk about is great, but in my industry, everybody just buys on price.  What do you do about that?”  I like to ask them to recite their teleprospecting approach; i.e. what are they saying to get appointments?  Invariably, they say something along the lines of, “We provide (such and such a product) at a (good/competitive/low/cheap) price.”  It’s not surprising that they end up with price, since that’s where they start.  In any endeavor, how you start will be a big determinant in how you end.

Here’s the truth.  As my Smooth Sailing Coaching clients learn, most price negotiation is initiated, and in many cases prolonged, not by the customer but by the salesperson.  Salespeople begin the price negotiation process by saying lots of anti-profit phrases, even when they don’t recognize it.  The “at a competitive price” word vomit is only the tip of an iceberg that has nonsense phrases such as “I want the last shot at the price” near the bottom.  Keep in mind – when you cut price, you ONLY cut profit; you seldom reduce cost of the item delivered.  Why do we do this?  Well, there are a number of reasons and none are particularly good ones:

FEAR.  Fear is the all-time biggest motivator for bad selling tactics.  Salespeople are scared of losing deals, of losing customers, of being rejected, of any sort of failure indicator.  This fear causes salespeople to go to the lowest common denominator to sell – and make no mistake, price is the lowest common denominator.

LAZINESS.  Hallmark Cards used to have the slogan, “When you care enough to send the very best.”  In selling, when you DON’T care enough to do your best job of selling, you dive to the bottom with price-selling tactics.  When you sell on price, you don’t have to do the hard (and beneficial) work of really discovering customer needs, of matching the right product with the needs, and then selling on the value generated. You simply do a comparison of product and then a comparison of price.  It’s easy and cheap in more ways than one.

IGNORANCE.  A lot of salespeople price-sell not because they’re bad salespeople, but because they don’t know any better.  If you don’t know or understand how value is generated, how needs are discovered, and how product solves needs, you will price-sell because that’s all you have.  That’s where the six ways to increase your price through better selling come in.

The bottom line here is the bottom line.  Your company must make a profit; you can’t lose money on each sale and make it up on volume.  Want six ways to increase your price through better selling?  Here they are:

1.  Ask your best/happiest customers why they buy from you and how they “win” with their purchase.
2.  Convert those answers into written testimonials.
3.  Convert the testimonials into case studies.
4.  From the studies, define at least three nonprice ways that your company helps its customers.
5.  Use those to develop teleprospecting talking points that really work.
6.  Look for needs in common with your best customers, and sell to those needs.

It’s really not tough, but it does require a mindset change.  Even if you sell a “commodity,” remember another one of my rules:  Everything is a commodity – until somebody screws up.  Even with pure commodities, there are people who do the job a little better, and a little worse.  “Better” can, and should, be monetized.  Anything can be commoditized through pure price-selling tactics, and anything can be rescued from commodity status through value-selling tactics.  It’s entirely up to you.

THE BEST STRATEGY TO HOLD PRICE:  Present a reasonable, profitable price in a strong, confident fashion (too many salespeople present price as a question, not a statement). Don’t encourage negotiation.

THE WORST STRATEGY TO HOLD PRICE:  Present a too-high, unrealistic price using the old “you can always negotiate down” strategy.  When you do this, you DEMAND that your customer cut your price.  At some point, you have to rebuild your price discipline and your credibility to hold price – why start with a price that kills your credibility?

Salespeople cost themselves millions, if not billions, of commission dollars every year through bad selling tactics.  Don’t be one of them.  It’s not that much more work to hold profit, but do it wisely.  Where you start can determine where you end.

There’s a sales lesson in the Winter Olympics.

Ah, the Olympics.  A wonderful time of year.  It’s a time when people suddenly become raving fans of sports that they either ignore or chuckle about for the 47 and one-half years between Olympics.  Sports such as….curling. Yes, curling, a sport that combines the skills of good janitors with outfits apparently designed by Herb Tarlek’s tailor.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not putting down curling or curlers. I like to bowl, which isn’t exactly known for great physiques or sartorial excellence.  What I’m commenting on is that, although curling is done in anonymity most of the time, during the Olympics it’s broadcast in prime time and watched by millions.  And there’s one reason for it, and it might be the most important lesson that any salesperson can learn.  I can sum it up in one word.

Context.

What makes curling popular right now is the context of the Olympics.  Curling is like numerous other sports that are not sufficiently important on their own to gain a large audience – but within the context of the Olympics, they are important.

I was reminded of this a week ago, when I was speaking in Dallas.  I was asked how a salesperson can make “this product” important enough that the buyer will take the time to evaluate and purchase, instead of simply sitting on the proposal.  The answer is simple – the product itself is not necessarily important….but it might be important within the context of the buyer’s entire situation.  The problem is that the salesperson doesn’t know or understand the buyer’s entire situation –and by the time the proposal is issued, it’s too late to ask.

The problem is that we salespeople fall in love with our products and services. On the one hand, that’s good; we need to believe in our own ‘stuff’ in order to be passionate advocates for it, and for our companies.  On the other hand, that’s bad.  It’s bad because it gives us tunnel vision.

Our products are the most important things in the world to us, because they are the core of how we make our living.  We want to believe that they are just as important to everyone we deal with, hence when we go into meet with our buyers, we focus the conversation completely around our stuff.   We ask product-centric questions and give product-centric (or service-centric) presentations.  What’s missing from the dialogue?  You guessed it….

Context.

You see, our products and services are only important to our customers within the context of their own companies, responsibilities, and spheres of influence.  Notice that I didn’t mention “features and benefits.”  Most salespeople know the features and benefits very well.  What don’t they know?

• Most salespeople know nothing about the overall goals of the customer’s company.
• They seldom ask about their contact’s responsibilities.
• They never ask about the departmental priorities.
• Most don’t know what results the buyer is attempting to generate.
• And they definitely have no idea of how their product fits into the overall picture.

Yet, they fuss and get upset when customers don’t consider their products ‘important.’  The truth is that salespeople usually sell their products in a vacuum, as if no other priorities exist for their customers.  They don’t know anything outside of their product’s sphere, so they have no idea where it falls in degree of importance.

Would you like to change that?  You can.  Simply remember the word “context” and then ask questions of your customer that help you understand what the context is.

Ask “Big Picture” questions about the overall needs and driving factors of the company.

Ask about your contact’s responsibilities.  (Helpful hint:  Asking “are you the decision maker” is not asking about their responsibilities.)

Understand the Priorities of the company and the department.

Make sure you know what the Result is that the buyer is seeking.

And ask how important that Result is to your buyer, in the grand scheme of things.

This sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it?  Well, it is.  But it’s what salespeople have to do in order to earn our spot in the customer’s buying process. Face it – whatever you’re peddling (and if you’re just talking product, you’re a peddler), your customer can buy online without your intervention.  So, you have to do things and provide expertise that your customer cannot get online.  And understanding the context of your proposed sale is one of those things you need to do.

Context is everything in sales, just like it is in the Olympics.  Now, let me see….the Biathlon is on TV, and Curling is next!  I can’t wait!

Turnover is one of the least recognized ways that companies lose sales revenue.  Here’s why.

I answered the phone this afternoon, and an earnest voice said, “Hello, Mr. Harrison?  This is Chris (last name eliminated), and I’m your new representative with (Company X).  I’m calling to introduce myself, and to see if we could set up a time to chat, so I could learn about your business and we could see if (Company X) could do more for you.”

Company X is a vendor with whom I have done business for six years.  I’m loyal to them because they provide a service that helps me a lot.  I spend quite a bit of money with them, and I’m sure that when Chris looked at my account, he figured he had a pretty solid customer and a good sales call.  That’s why I’m sure that my response was a huge surprise to him (and it might be to you, as well).

“I’m sorry, Chris, but that wouldn’t be a good use of my time or yours,” I told him.  Chris was clearly shocked, so I decided to explain more fully.  “You see, I get a call just like this every six months from your company.  About every six months, more or less, I have a new rep who wants to spend time being a ‘resource’ to me.  I’ve had several of these conversations, and I just don’t have the time for another.  I’m already buying what I need from your company, so there’s no upsell potential for you.  I wish you the best, I have your contact information, and if I need you, I’ll call.”

He said, “Well, I do appreciate your candor.”  I told him, “I’m not trying to be rude.  I’ll tell you what – call me on your one-year anniversary, and I’ll give you all the time you want.”  Chris was disappointed – but I meant what I said.  And I doubt, based on past performance, that I’ll get that call on his one-year anniversary.

Turnover in sales is a sales killer and a relationship killer.  Sooner or later your customers get tired of hearing, “I’m your new salesperson.”  Or, for those salespeople that jump jobs and are saying, “I’m now with a new company,” your customers get tired of that, as well.  In both cases, credibility and relationships are the victims.

The reason I wouldn’t speak with Chris was exactly as I told him – it wouldn’t be a good use of my time.  History shows that by the time he’s getting it figured out, he’ll be gone, and I’ll be getting a call from yet another new salesperson.  I like to train salespeople – but only when I’m paid to do so.

Here are the raw facts.  There is a learning curve for salespeople in any job.  Stats say that salespeople reach basic competence in six months, become profitable for the hiring company between month 12 and month 18, and don’t reach full productivity until year three or year four.  When salespeople change jobs inside that 3-year window (or worse, the 1-year window), that tells me that they don’t know what it’s like to reach full productivity.

Ultimately, excess turnover is a problem for our profession, but there are a few things that salespeople, sales managers, and company owners can do to curb it.

For Salespeople:

• Stand and fight:  There are many “stated” reasons for salespeople short-timing on a job; however, the main reason is that things get a bit tough and the salesperson bails.  Sales isn’t always an easy career – but the best, most successful salespeople fight through the problems and emerge victorious on the other side.
• Stop chasing shiny objects:  One of the biggest reason for turnover is that salespeople chase.  What do they chase?  Shiny objects. Or, to put it another way, the new opportunity that seems oh-so-much-better than the current job.  More money, better technology, different territory, etc.  I recently interviewed a guy who said that he was a ‘chaser of the best technology in my space at any given time.’  This was to explain six job changes in the last ten years, none of which produced significantly better results or income.  Don’t get me wrong; I know that there are times when the only way to advance your career is to make a change – but those changes should be infrequent and well thought out.

For Sales Managers:

• Hire smart:  Too many hires are simply future turnover in the making.  Sales managers, lacking a good basis or tools for hiring, simply do ‘gut hires’ that don’t produce results.  Lower turnover is the result of good hiring practices.
• Coach before firing:  Once you have hired someone, you owe it to yourself, as well as to your hire, to give them every reasonable opportunity to succeed.  That means that termination should be a last resort, not a first; the first resort is to troubleshoot and coach your salesperson’s performance.  Only when you can honestly look at yourself in the mirror and say that you gave them an honest shot should you terminate.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that both hiring and coaching are well covered in my Unconventional Guide to Sales Management audio course.

For Company Owners:

• Take a long term approach:  Building a quality sales force isn’t something that happens week by week, or necessarily quarter by quarter.  It’s something that happens over the long haul.  In the case of the sales rep that contacted me, I’m sure that ownership or upper management has set up a set of standards that basically wash out new sales reps after about six months, hence my frequent calls from new reps.
• Hire a quality sales manager:  Quality sales managers have the skills of coaching and improving sales performance; they are drivers of the sales effort rather than passengers.  If that’s not your sales manager, it’s time to rethink (and maybe invest in coaching or training for that person).

Turnover has many costs, but it doesn’t have to be a sales killer.  The right approach to building a sales force can greatly reduce turnover – which puts profit on your bottom line.

The most fun calls I get are calls from happy clients.  This is one such call.

Two days ago, I got an excited call from Jill Biesma of Environmental Advisors and Engineers, in Kansas City.  I’d just worked with Jill that morning, and one of the things we’d discussed was referral generation.  I have a lot of fun working with Jill; she’s one of those clients who is a blast.  She’s also someone that has a tendency to overthink and analyze.  In her capacity as an environmental engineer, that’s a terrific trait.  As a company owner who is selling and marketing herself, it can be more challenging.

In any case, we’d discussed a way to broaden her contact base, and Jill began analyzing all the ramifications.  I reminded her that “Imperfect action beats perfect planning every day of the week.”  She laughed and said that she’d try this technique at a lunch she had planned for that day.

Afterward, she called me excitedly and said, “Troy, that was GREAT!  I used the technique that you suggested, and he named several names that I should meet and offered to set up the meetings himself!  It worked like a charm – and you can quote me on that!”

So, quoting her I am.  Why am I putting this up here?  Two reasons.  One, because she asked me to, which is always fun.  Second, because it might help some of you who are perpetual planners.  Pull the trigger and ACT.  And if you’d like to write your own success story, contact me today.

How can you put on a great open house?

I received a great question from a client last week, and although I first thought about answering it in “Hot Question” format, it demanded a longer answer.  I think many of you might be able to learn from it as well.  The question was, “Troy, my company is considering hosting an open house for our customers. An Open House as an employee morale booster or for client appreciation has undoubted value, but my question to you is whether or not you’ve ever heard of Open House events being worthwhile in a sales aspect?”

That’s an excellent question, and worthy of a HotSheet article.  An event for customers like an open house, or a customer appreciation party, can be a great way to build stronger customer relationships and employee morale and esprit de corps.  It can also be an expensive failure that leads to employees standing around, looking at each other, and eating expensive catered food while wondering when the customers are going to show up.  The difference between the two lies in understanding the two “wins” that must happen.

For a successful customer event to happen, two “wins” must be designed in prior to the event, and two questions answered:

First, how does the customer win by showing up?  Once upon a time, it was enough to put out free food and free booze to get people to show.  Yes, you can still get people to show up with those promises – but fewer and fewer people, and they are unlikely to be the C-level and V-level contacts that my client was targeting.   There has to be a ‘win’ or a gain for those contacts to show up – particularly if you’re trying to bring in prospects as well as clients.  We’ll get to some of those wins in a moment, but first, let’s address the next question.

Second, how does the company win by investing in the open house?  Open houses are fun, and it’s nice to show off your facility – especially if you’ve moved into new digs.  But to really win, there needs to be  a strategy behind the open house that helps customers enter into, or advance through, their own buying processes.  When it’s over, you need to either have new prospects, deeper relationships with current customers, or (ideally) both.

The order of those questions is no accident – if you’ve not answered the first question well, the second question doesn’t matter, because you won’t win without people showing up.
Here are some possible “wins” that will entice your customers to show up:

• Create an experience that they can’t get anywhere else.  Some of the best open houses I’ve seen have been “experience based,” where there are activities that encourage attendee participation and involvement.
• Give stuff away.  When I say “give stuff away,” I don’t mean promotional products, nor do I mean your products.  I mean have some door prizes that are well worth winning.
• Educate and inform.  Some successful open houses will have educational events that show how to use your products or services better.  For instance, if you’re selling industrial boilers, you might have a workshop on boiler maintenance.
• Bring in a great speaker.  Alternatively, a noted speaker and seminar can be an excellent draw, particularly for those C- and V-level people that my client was targeting.

Now that you have them there, it’s time for you to “win” as well.  Again, these are “wins” that should be articulated BEFORE the event.

• Key employees can meet your customers.  This can be especially important when the key employees are not necessarily involved with the customer contact.  For instance, if the only people meeting your customers are your sales and service people, it’s good to have your plant manager, general manager, etc. meet your customers.
• Demonstrate your products.  Product demos can be an excellent reason to have an open house, particularly if it’s difficult to demonstrate your products in the field (for instance, heavy machine tools, copiers, etc.).
• Plant tours.  This can work really well if your plant is particularly clean or innovative; customers enjoy seeing where their products are made or serviced, and a look ‘behind the curtain’ can be very enjoyable and build more identity with you.
• Close a sale.  Yes, it’s perfectly OK to sell at an open house.  Why not?  All the facilities to complete the sale are in one place, so don’t be afraid to allow customers to express interest and to buy.
• Meet new prospects.  If the “wins” above are solid, you may get prospects to come to your facility – even when they won’t take a sales call.

A well planned open house can be a great way to build stronger customer relationships, but it depends on the two wins.  Make sure both are solid, and it’s a good investment.

When I started out in selling, I thought that it was all about presenting.  I’d get up in front of my customers, give a great speech, and they’d be reaching for their checkbooks before I even finished.  Well, suffice it to say that I learned.  In fact, I’ve learned a lot since then.  When I speak, one of the most commonly requested topics is on giving great sales presentations – but I’m always a bit reluctant to speak on that topic.

You see, a sales presentation is only as good as the discovery and information gathering that preceded it.  That’s why much of my writing and teaching is dedicated to understanding your customers.  Still, there is a place for understanding how to give a great presentation, and as long as you promise to keep it in context, I’ll give you five great ways to optimize your sales presentations.  You promise?  Great!  Let’s get started.

Have the Right Content:  One of the reasons that so many sales presentations fail is that they have too much junk in them.  By “junk,” I mean “Anything that the buyer doesn’t care about.”  If you’ve done a good discovery, your buyer has already told you what they care about, and that’s where your presentation centers.  The best presentations simply have three elements:

1. The Observation of the current situation.  Recap the customer’s situation, needs, and desired result.
2. Your Plan of Action to address the customer’s desired result.  This should be your recommendation of products, services, and other actions.
3. The Advantages of adopting your plan.  Let the buyer ‘see’ the result of adopting the plan.  Use Achievement Statements and other verbiage to paint the picture.

Be Present:  One of my speaking mentors, Darren LaCroix, says that he always asks himself this question right before he speaks:  “Am I present?”  What Darren means by that is, “Am I in the moment and focused?”  If you want to use a presentation to persuade, your mind needs to be on what is being said and communicated, not on your weekend plans, your dog’s trip to the vet, picking up your dry cleaning, or anything else that isn’t presenting and selling.  If you are not in the moment, your customer will know – and they won’t be in the moment either.

Test Your Demos:  True story.  Yesterday I was interviewing a candidate who was anxious to demonstrate his marketing skills, and he indicated that he had designed a website (which, he said, was ‘pretty awesome’) for a small business he owned on the side.  He said, “Here’s the Web address; go see for yourself.” So I did.  And what I saw was, “This page is currently parked by GoDaddy.”  I looked at him, and he just chuckled and said, “Well, I guess I need to pay GoDaddy.”  Really?  Nothing looks worse than having a demonstration of any type that doesn’t work.  He’d have been far better off had he never mentioned the website – or if he’d cared enough to check its functionality before he came upstairs.  Full disclosure – I once drove 180 miles to try a demo with a failed piece of equipment that I hadn’t tried.  But I learned from it.

Use Visuals Appropriately:  I like PowerPoint.  I like it a lot.  I use it a lot.  I also like videos, pictures, and other visuals.  HOWEVER – when it comes to a presentation, it’s important to know what to use and what not to.  As a general rule, when you are one-on-one, limit your visuals; use them when you are presenting to larger groups.  In a one-on-one environment, the premium is on the conversation you are having, and any visuals you present can distract.  However, in a larger environment, visuals can help keep everyone up to speed and pace, and illustrate your points.

Give It the “So What” test:  When I was 16, I stood up in front of my speaking class for my first practice of the Original Oratory that I planned to give at a tournament that weekend.  About two minutes in, my coach shouted, “So what?”  Startled, I looked up at him, open mouthed.  He continued, “Who cares?”  By this time, I was dumbfounded – and speechless (for those of you who know me, that probably comes as a shock).  He finished, “What’s in it for me?  It’s all about me!”  He then explained that these four questions were likely what was in the judge’s mind (or the audience’s).  “Anytime you’re presenting a point,” he said, “Imagine your audience saying, ‘So what?  Who cares?  What’s in it for me?  It’s all about me!’”  Too often, sales presentations are about the salesperson and not the customer.  Hint:  the salesperson shouldn’t be doing the buying.  Give your presentation points the “So what” test, and you’ll be a lot more powerful.

Remember – it’s important to keep these points in perspective. Without a great discovery preceding the presentation, your presentation will fall flat.  It’s possible to ‘win’ the presentation and lose the sale, but it’s not possible to ‘lose’ the presentation and win the sale.

Can you deal with today’s more educated buyers?

The Internet can be many things to business and to salespeople; it can be the enemy (in the case of the Internet replacing salespeople), it can be a crutch (for salespeople who substitute research for actual selling) and it can be a valuable lead generator and a tool.  But what if the tools used to generate leads end up costing you business?

It’s possible to use the Internet to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and I’ve just seen it.  I’m looking for a specific car –  a 1996 Chevy Impala SS in good condition.  I found one on a local dealer’s website, and the note on the listing said that it was in the body shop for paint.  I used the contact form to e-mail the dealer, and in it I said specifically which car I am interested in (including the stock number), and asking them to let me know when it would be out of the body shop.  That’s when my trouble started.

In the half-day since e-mailing, I’ve received two e-mails from salespeople and three calls (all from different salespeople, none of whom seemed aware of others calling me).  None were able to answer my question; in fact, none even seemed to be aware of my specific interest or my e-mail comments.  However, all were anxious to get me to “come in and have a look around.” I recognize that tactic; I used it in the early 90s when I sold cars.  The trouble is that it doesn’t work with today’s customer, particularly when the customer has already used your internet site to zero in on a particular product they are seeking.

When a new customer calls you, he or she has probably done their research before contacting you.  They know what you sell, they know what they are specifically interested in, and they probably have a general idea of the market price.  I thought I was the perfect buyer for this dealership – I’m paying cash, I know specifically what car I want, I know that I like those cars, and if the actual car represents acceptable value, I’d planned on buying.  But the experience of dealing with the salespeople has put me off.  Today’s buyer demands more.  Here’s what today’s more educated buyer expects:

• Be professional.  The ultimate in unprofessionalism is to have a prospect bombarded with calls from different salespeople who are racing to get them into the dealer (the same goes for salespeople who fight for the next “up” at the showroom door).  I see this particular issue in many industries – sales managers figure they’ll put the same lead out to everyone and whoever is ‘most aggressive’ will get the lead.  Don’t do that.  One lead – one salesperson is the rule.  If you have salespeople whom you don’t trust with a lead, you shouldn’t have them.

• Be respectful of the customer’s time.  These salespeople wasted my time by not acknowledging my specific needs.  Whether that is the fault of whoever passed the lead on or the salespeople not reading the e-mail, I have no idea.  And this illustrates an important concept – the internet places a greater value and importance on every member of the company, and every part of the process, working in concert.  When I filled out that Internet form, my simple expectation was that whoever received the form would read it, see my specific interest, and respond directly to my question.  When this didn’t happen, I became frustrated.  Why did I spend the time to fill out that form completely if all they were going to do was to grab my number?

• Listen to the customer.  Again, today’s customer is far more knowledgeable and specific than the ones I sold to in the 90s.  Listen to them.  Once upon a time, the philosophy was, “the customer doesn’t know what they don’t know.”  Today, that’s not true.  Whether B2B or B2C, the customer has knowledge.  Now, it’s perfectly permissible to probe their knowledge and to ask why.  In some cases, it’s the best thing; customers can reach wrong conclusions through the Net.  But, without understanding, listening, and acknowledging, the salesperson doesn’t have the right to probe.  Had any of those salespeople asked me why I was focused on this specific car, I’d have told them willingly – but without even knowing of my interest, all they did was upset me.

• Answer the darned questions!  None of these salespeople answered or even acknowledged my questions.  That’s amazingly disrespectful.  When each salesperson contacted me, I repeated my question.  I still don’t know when that car will be out of the body shop, because each of the salespeople promised to get me the answer – and three days later, none have.  After the salespeople found out that I wasn’t going to just “come into the lot,” they lost interest.

Today’s customer expects more, and that means that today’s salespeople need to be trained in dealing with a more knowledgeable customer.  Far too many salespeople aren’t.
The conclusion of my story is this:  I will buy an Impala SS – but I won’t buy the one at the local dealer, period. In fact, I’ll probably buy one that’s 500 miles from me.  I refuse to deal with people who can’t simply have a straight conversation.  Your customers feel the same way.