Sales training ideas – Add personal information to add emotion to your sales presentation.

During the sales presentation many salespeople focus on general information that applies to everyone and lose sight of the individual. When the sales presentation is focused on information that applies to everyone, as opposed to the individual prospect, the prospect becomes detached and has no emotional involvement in the sales process. 

On the other hand, when we focus on the personal history of individuals and speak to their unique issues, they become emotionally involved in the sales presentation. Thus, you want to focus on the person you are facing and his or her unique situation. One way to do this is to bring the prospect’s family into the sales presentation.  

Think about the following for a moment: A child’s future, a parent being cared for in their later years, the death of a loved one. All of these are events that most of us will deal with in our lifetimes. These subjects create very strong emotional responses in most of us. Some of these, such as a college education, can be positive events; others, such as the death of a loved one or nursing home care, have negative overtones.  

What potential “family” benefits does your product address and how can you work these into your sales presentation? If you sell a product such as life insurance, the “family” impact is immense. Here is an example of bringing family into your sales presentation: “Mr. Prospect, as you know, the objective of this life insurance is to financially protect your family should something happen to you unexpectedly. Obviously, the grief is bad enough without having to worry about finances. Imagine your children going to college, your wife making the house payments, and weddings paid for all because you had the courage and foresight to protect your and your family’s dreams with the right life insurance policy.” 

Adding a statement like the one above will personalize the sales presentation and definitely add some emotion. At the same time, before you use a similar example, you need to know something about your prospect’s family. 

Following is another example of “family” emotion. Although this emotional picture was drawn with regard to an objection, it is a good example of bringing family into the sales presentation. 

One of us used to sell long-term care insurance for future use for nursing homes. A common objection during the sales presentation was: “If I become sick, my son (or daughter, granddaughter, neighbor, etc.) will take care of me so I don’t have to go into a nursing home.” 

This objection was easily handled by asking a few questions and allowing the prospect to draw his or her own conclusions. The first question was: “So if you require twenty-four-hours-a day, seven-days-a-week care, your son is going to care for you?”  

At this point, the prospect’s facial expression would start to change. The follow-up question was: “Let me ask you, with all due respect, do you think it would be fair to your son to ask him to do that?”  

Believe us, it created some emotion quickly! All at once, the prospect visualized the burden this would be on his offspring. 

In reality, people often do not picture the implications of long-term care. They don’t see it as something that might involve their relatives twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They imagine it might involve the relative helping them out of a chair from time to time or fixing a meal or two. They rarely see the real commitment this type of intensive care usually requires. 

Having been asked the right questions, the prospect began to realize the true implications of long-term care, namely, that the caregiver may need to give up his or her life and focus completely on care giving. Once that “emotional” picture hit home, the sales presentation and the sale became much easier. This is an example of educating the prospect, which is one of your jobs as a salesperson. 

Weddings, college, a new home, not to mention family—all have plenty of emotion attached to them. So make your sales presentations personal. Learn about the family and other loved ones involved who will either be using your product or service too, or will otherwise be impacted by it, then talk about that with the prospect during the sales presentation and bring it up again when closing the sale.