Sales training ideas – 8 steps to a powerful sales presentation.

Coming up with good sales presentations is an art form but one that has some specific steps to it. So how can you come up with a good sales presentation? 

8 Steps to a powerful sales presentation 

1) Brainstorm for the basic ideas of your sales presentation and what you want to say.

Keeping in mind the ideas we’ve discussed, jot down some quick notes on what you’d like to say. Let your thoughts flow freely. Don’t worry about grammar, spelling, punctuation, the order of what you’re saying, or anything else. Just get all your ideas down. 

What do you want to get across about your product? Why is it the best? Start with your key benefits and expand upon them. How can you put yourself in the best possible light versus the competition? Examine your weaknesses. Examine the competition’s weaknesses (study section IV on competition). Can you think of any articles, trade publications, etc., that you should take a look at to solidify your facts? Brainstorm and come up with some creative ideas. 

2) Put your sales presentation away and return to it the next day.

You want your subconscious to have some time to work on your presentation while you get a full night’s rest. Take a fresh look at your presentation ideas the next morning, add any new ideas, and remove any extraneous ones. 

3) Edit your sales presentation.

Go back and put the ideas in order. Try to keep your ideas short and to the point. Cut out any fluff or unnecessary wording. Give your presentation a little more structure. Look for places where you can use more powerful words. Look at ways you can strengthen your features, benefits, and competitive analysis. Are there some other ways to put your weaknesses in a better light? (Again, we’ll be talking about the competitive analysis in the competition section.) 

4) Prepare a final edition of your sales presentation.

Get a little more detailed. Check your sales presentation for proper grammar and write down the exact words you want to say. 

5) Have others critique your sales presentation.

Turn your sales presentation over to others. Have them read it first for content. Ask top salespeople and management you trust and respect how the presentation looks and sounds to them. Ask them what they would add. Have you missed anything? Is there anything they would remove? Practice it on friends and family. Don’t be sensitive or defensive about any criticism—remember that it’s all constructive and in your best interests. 

6) Review and make necessary corrections.

Think about the feedback you’ve received, make some final notes, and then put your presentation away for a day or two. Return to it and make any final changes. 

7) Make sure you have all the necessary ingredients of a good sales presentation.

Ask yourself the following questions about your sales presentation: 

• Does it grab your audience’s attention immediately with a strong opening line?
• Does it continue to hold them by getting them involved, giving them powerful statements, and using humor and stories?
• Do the words have enough energy, power, and overall impact?
• Are there questions or comments that you can make more powerful? You want something that touches, moves, and inspires individuals to want to own your product or service.
• Does it address all the prospect’s needs and concerns?
• Does it flow well? Is it easy to understand?
• Does it lead naturally to the close, or the next step in the selling process? 

Practice, drill, and rehearse your sales presentation, then get out there and try it.

Know your presentation thoroughly—to the point that if someone were to wake you in the middle of the night, you could recite it without a problem. 

Note: Don’t worry about your sales presentation being perfect, because it won’t be. If you wait until you have a perfect presentation, you’ll never get out there. With your best effort, put something solid together, prepare by memorizing and rehearsing, and then hit the streets. 

Note 2: If you can “borrow” a sales presentation from one of the top sales producers in your industry, that’s the way to go. It’s always better to use something that has been proven to work instead of reinventing the wheel. If that’s not possible and you need to come up with your own presentation, the format that follows will give you some guidelines. 

Follow the eight tips above you will be able to create some very powerful sales presentations.

Sales training ideas – 2 ideas for your sales presentations.

When putting together your sales presentations, you want to have as many things going for you as possible. Here are a couple of small ideas, but ones that can definitely add something to your sales presentations. 

2 Ideas for your sales presentations 

1) Use A Play on Words

Would you rather sip a martini with blue food coloring, or an Electric Lemonade? Would you rather have a problem or an opportunity? Would you rather be a housewife or a domestic engineer? 

How you word things and the spin you put on them can have an impact on how they are perceived. When creating your sales presentation, be sure to dress your product or service in its best “verbal” clothes. 

2) Have a Catch Phrase

A catch phrase, especially a humorous one, is a great way to make your sales presentation stand out and be remembered in a positive way.  

For example, a local sub shop ran a special on Wednesdays: If you simply ask, they will make your six-inch sub a twelve-inch sub. They called it “Give ’em six extra inches for free on Wednesday.” 

One of the salespeople we know in an unrelated business added it to his sales presentation. He had a special promotion for new customers whereby they could get twice the product for their money on their first order. When he was getting to the end of his sales presentation, he brought up a slide that said, “Get six inches for free.” He then explained the special at the sub shop and how he had adapted the “twice as much for the same price” idea.

Note: Obviously, you want to be careful with your catch phrases—you don’t want to offend anyone. The slogan above is good, but it may be too risqué for some audiences. Humorous, risqué, or borderline items work best with Driver and Partier personality types, and generally not as well with “Yes” People and Thinkers. 

Keep these two ideas in mind if you are looking to add more punch and pizzazz to your sales presentations.

Sales training ideas – A time for no sales training?

Happy Labor Day! Did you spend time with friends and family today? Did you spend time out of the office? If so, good.

Sometimes no sales training is a good thing. Yesm there are times when the best thing we can do for our sales careers is nothing, or something other than work or sales. You must have balance in your life to be truly happy and to be most productive in sales. It’s simple, if your personal life is in shambles, your work life is going to suffer. That’s also true with your health and the other key areas of your life.

I think holidays are subtle reminders that we sometimes need to take a break from sales and work, and focus on family and other things and yet, make sure you’re doing your best at work too.

The point: Have balance in your life, work when you’re at work, play when you’re at play, spend time on all the key areas of your life. Enough time in all areas but not too much in any.

John Chapin  www.completeselling.com

Sales training ideas – Making positive changes stick.

Okay, this is a bit more than most sales training usually covers however, making positive change is required in order to have a successful sales career.

Recently I got more organized and more into time management. What a pain in the butt!

Like most things that are new, and good for us, whether it’s new sales skills, a better way to run our business, or changes in our personal life, there are usually some growing pains and to keep the change can be difficult.

To keep the change, focus on WHY you are doing it. Also, focus on the end result. Finally, use any leverage you can to get yourself to stick to the new plan for 21 to 30 days. If you can get yourself to stick to the change for that amount of time, it will become a habit and thus part of the NEW you, and you will feel new strength and empowerment.

John Chapin   www.completeselling.com

Sales training ideas – A time not to tell the truth on a sales call?

Okay, all politically correct sales training will tell you to ALWAYS tell the truth. Also, if you know me, you know I’m very big on telling the truth to sales prospects and customers. At the same time, I recently had a salesperson tell me the truth about something and it seemed so ridiculous to me, I thought he had to be lying and frankly, it greatly damaged any trust he had established.

This happened when I was out buying a car. A salesperson at one of the dealerships showed me the list price on a car, the selling price, and then said, “We’re actually losing money on this car.” That simply sounded ludicous to me. I couldn’t believe he would actually think that I would buy that. The truth is: I didn’t, and I left and didn’t go back.

I later found out that if a dealership has a car for a really long time, say a year, they will sometimes sell a car at a loss to get rid of it as it costs them money each day they have it around. When it’s been with them for a year, they say the car had a “birthday” with them. I now know of one dealership that sold a Hummer at an $8,000 loss after they had it on their showroom floor over 300 days.

The bottom line: If something sounds like too much of a stretch, keep it to yourself unless you’re required by law to disclose it. If you have to disclose it, explain it well. All the dealer had to do was show me the original sales price and the deep discount, he didn’t have to throw in the part about “losing money.” To which my first thought was, “Why would a car dealership ever sell a car at a loss unless the thing was a complete piece of junk and really not worth the money anyway.” My second thought? “This guy’s lying to me. I’m outta here.”

John Chapin  www.completeselling.com

Sales training ideas – When do you drop your price and by how much?

Most sales training already pounds us over the head that dropping your price should be a last resort when trying to get a prospect to buy. You always want to build value to justify the higher price. That being said, there are times when you may drop the price a bit to make the sale. So when do you drop and by how much?

Yesterday I called my local pizza establishment to order some pizza. When the person came back with a price of $37+, which seemed high, I said, “How much! Can you break that down for me?” She then said, “Let me see if I can do any better.” Slight pause, “How about $33?” Huh? Do you mean they can give a discount if someone balks at the price? That the initial price isn’t a standard, set price?

Okay, selling in our businesses maybe different than the local pizza shop but one of the same results occurred: I lost trust thinking they were overcharging me to begin with.

The bottom line: Don’t play price games with people. Don’t go in 25% high so you can budge on price. Instead, give people your best price up front and be honest about it. When you go in high under the premise that you can always drop your price, you’re coming from a position of weakness, not good. If you go in 25% high and then drop it, the prospect will most likely think that you were trying to take advantage of her, again, not good. Have a set pricing structure and build the value necessary to equal that price. As a last resort, if you need to budge a little, that’s fine, people expect there to be some sort of wiggle room. Just make sure it’s a nominal amount, not anything close to 25, 20, 15, or even 10%.

John Chapin   www.completeselling.com

Sales training ideas – Phantom customer service.

On Friday I called the car dealership where I placed a deposit on a car, but did not buy it, to find out where my deposit is. They’ve had it for 3 weeks. I got voice mail so figured I’d call back this week.

Well today, Monday, my cell phone rang. It was Brad from the car dealership. He said that he saw I had called in last week and was just following up to make sure everything went well. So far, good sales follow-up. I told him that I called to see where my deposit was and that I got voice mail and decided to call back this week. I then asked if he could get me answer to which he responded, “Um, who was your salesperson?” I told him and he said, “Oh, okay, I’ll have him get back to you.”

Now I’m not a big betting man, but I am occasionally, and I’ll bet you on this one that I don’t hear back from him AT ALL. If you want to bet, I’ll put a deadline on it, say Wednesday at noon, but believe me, that call’s not coming in. I’ll end up having to call back.

The bottom line: On the surface, Brad’s call looks like great customer service. Let’s face it, there is probably only a problem 5-10% of the time, if that. If there’s no problem, the customer thinks, “Wow, wasn’t that nice that they called to follow up.” So they’re good 90-95% of the time, but how about the times that there IS a problem, like in my case? What Brad should have done is gotten an answer himself or, made sure the salesperson followed up. In other words, he should chase the issue PERSONALLY and make 100% sure I have an answer.

Right now some of you are thinking, “Well, maybe Brad is chasing the salesperson to make sure the issue is followed up on”, to which I say, “Believe me, my phone’s not ringing!” I’ll let you know if it does.  Don’t hold your breath and don’t bet me on it.  :I

Another quick note, car sales training tends to carry a lot of gimmicks: the person with the hand on top during a hand shake controls the conversation, take a credit card number and get them to commit to letting you buy a car at the auction, etc. If you’re in the car business, stay away from these. They give you a bad name. Focus on truly helping the other person and don’t try to gain control, or “win” at the other person’s expense, if you do, your sales career will be short lived.

John Chapin    www.completeselling.com

Sales training ideas – 3 Important points to ensure powerful sales presentations.

During your sales presentations it is critical to keep the prospect’s attention and make sure they stay with you. You also want to have a sales presentation with plenty of life and energy, but what are the most effective ways to do that? 

3 Ways to add power and punch to your sales presentations 

1) Deliver Your Sales Presentation with Energy and Enthusiasm

A key aspect of delivering your sales presentation is how you deliver it. You want to infuse your sales presentation with lots of life and passion. In other words, deliver your sales presentation with plenty of energy and enthusiasm. 

If you deliver the most inspiring speech ever written in a monotone, uninspiring way, you’ll put people to sleep. If you deliver a less than perfect speech with lots of enthusiasm, energy, and voice fluctuation, you’ll capture people’s attention. 

You need to deliver the message properly in order to keep people interested. If you use weak, unemotional words to deliver your message, people will turn off quickly. On the other hand, if you use words with lots of juice and power, people will pay attention.  

2) Open Strong

The most critical first step of any sales presentation is to get the prospect’s full and complete attention. The second most important step is to keep the prospect’s attention. 

In order to get the audience’s attention at the beginning of your sales presentation, make an irresistible statement that hits them right in between the eyes. How? Give them a very strong benefit of your product or service.  

For example, at the beginning of a sales presentation on helping people cut taxes, the presenter might say, “In the next thirty minutes I will show you how to cut your taxes by 35 percent.” Obviously, that will perk up some ears and grab people’s attention immediately. After all, who doesn’t want to save 35 percent on taxes? 

A sales presentation for some type of investment vehicle might begin with, “Here’s a safe way to make 10 percent a year on your money—tax free.” Some people might be skeptical, but we can guarantee you that opening will get their attention. 

Note: Make sure any statement you make is grounded in fact and can be backed up with solid proof. Your next step will be to build credibility in the statement, your product, you, and your company. 

3) Make More “Hit ’Em between the Eyes” Statements at Various Points in the Sales Presentation

Just as you did at the beginning of your sales presentation, you want to hit people between the eyes again at certain points throughout the sales presentation just to make sure they are still with you. 

The average person’s attention span is short. If your sales presentation is monotone or otherwise uninspiring, you’ll soon have your target audience thinking about their vacation two weeks from now, walking out, or changing the channel mentally. One “hit ’em between the eyes” statement at the beginning won’t hold them forever, no matter how good it is. You have to sprinkle a few throughout the sales presentation. 

Start with the benefits of your product or service then build them into short statements and questions with lots of punch. Questions are very important to keep your audience involved. In the example above, after the initial benefit of saving customers up to 35 percent on taxes, the next strongest benefit might be helping them to audit-proof their tax returns. Put this in question form: “Now, how many people would like me to show them how to almost completely audit-proof their taxes?” This is a very strong benefit that everyone will be interested in—made into a strong question that will perk people up again and get them involved. You’ll need several of these “wake-up” statements and questions throughout the sales presentation to bring people back into the room and away from thinking about what they’re going to do this weekend. 

Use these three points and you’ll keep the prospect’s attention while also creating a much more interesting sales presentation. 

Sales training ideas – 2 critical ideas for keeping control of the sales presentation.

During your sales presentation you will occasionally have someone try to throw you off track. The prospect does not care how you want the sales presentation to go—she has her own agenda. As a result, some prospects will try to control the conversation by asking you questions in an attempt to steer the conversation in the direction they want it to go. 

Some people are impatient and will try to get you to cut to the chase. They will tell you they have only a few short minutes and ask you to get to the bottom line. Or they will tell you they’ve already looked into the matter extensively and have learned everything there is to know, and now they would just like to know your price. 

Obviously keeping control of the conversation during the sales presentation is important in selling. So how can you do this? 

2 Ways to maintain control of the sales presentation 

1) Preparation

One of the most effective ways to control the sales presentation is through preparation. You must practice, drill, and rehearse your sales presentation, your closes, and your answers to objections. Write all this information out, memorize it, and know it thoroughly. 

The prospect, on the other hand, will not be as well prepared as you are. If the prospect tries to throw you off track with a question or comment during the sales presentation, simply acknowledge it, respond to it, and then return to where you were in the sales presentation. 

2) Questions

Questions are another highly effective way to control the conversation during the sales presentation. Questions can steer the conversation in the direction you want. Questions allow you to keep the conversation going on the same subject or take it in a completely different direction. Let’s look at a typical conversation:          

Person A: “Hi, how are you?”         

Person B: “Good. And you?”         

Person A: “Good. Hey, can you believe that game last night?”         

Person B: “That was unbelievable. How about that run back on the kick?”         

Person A: “I know, and how about that fumble in the fourth quarter?”

Person B: “Yeah, unreal. Hey, did you look at those numbers from the meeting the other day?” 

Notice how the questions in this example dictate exactly where the conversation is going. Each question either keeps the conversation on the same subject or shifts it to a completely different subject. 

If you are in the middle of your sales presentation and the prospect goes on a tangent, acknowledge what has been said, respond to it with an answer or comment, and then take the reins of the conversation and steer it back to where you want it. 

When someone asks for the bottom line, ask the questions you need answered in order to work out a price or take an order. For example, you might ask what features and functions are most important to them. You can then write these on an order form and continue with all the questions you need answered to fill out the form. 

If they push with, “Look, I just want the bottom line.” Say, “I understand. I simply need to get this information so I know what exactly to include in the price I give you.”  

Bottom line: by being prepared and asking questions you can make sure things go in the direction you want them to during your sales presentations.

Sales training ideas – The importance of having a powerful sales presentation.

You want to have a compelling sales presentation for several reasons. In addition to personal agendas, prospects also have their minds on other things. We all have things going on in our lives that are important. If your sales presentation is boring or you talk over people’s heads, they will tune out very quickly. What happens is the brain literally stops listening to you and jumps to the most emotionally charged item on its agenda. It may be an upcoming vacation, the boss’s demands, or another project the prospect is working on. You may also be catching someone who is in the middle of a bad day, or worse, some other highly emotional situation such as a divorce. If this is the case, you will often find yourself in a tug-of-war for the person’s attention. 

Let’s look at one “worst-case” scenario: the prospect is in the middle of a bitter divorce. In this case, a majority of his waking hours will be spent focused on the divorce. Let’s say that on the emotion scale, the divorce rates an 8.5 on a scale of one to ten. When you start your sales presentation, you will most likely have the prospect’s attention initially. The trick is to keep his attention during the entire sales presentation, or at least as much of it as possible. 

In order to do that, you will need to keep your sales presentation on a level higher than an 8.5. Now this may not be possible for the entire sales presentation, and it is likely that the prospect will think about his divorce occasionally, even if you are over 8.5. At the same time, if your sales presentation is consistently below an 8.5, you will get to the end and the prospect will have heard very little of what you said. 

Granted, competing with an issue at an emotional level of 8.5 is not easy no matter how good a salesperson you are. It is also a situation you’re unlikely to encounter with any regularity. At the same time, you want to get your sales presentation as close to an emotional and logical ten as possible. If you are able to get close to that level, assuming you are talking to a qualified decision-maker, you will more than likely make the sale, because you will obviously have a very compelling sales presentation.

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