Part 1 explained the critical importance of anticipating all possible questions and objections that you might get before an important presentation, and if you go about it systematically you can make it almost certain that you will do a thorough job of it.
But if you’re not comfortable with “almost” bulletproof, here are four simple practices that will strengthen your presentation even more:
Talk to the people you’d rather avoid
There’s an old saying: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” which applies in the case of an important presentation to a client. In mapping the decision process for your sales opportunity, you probably have identified opponents or blockers. It’s human nature to shy away from those people and spend more time with your coaches and champions. Yet some of the most profitable time I have ever spent in preparing for strategic presentations has been in talking to those most opposed to my proposal. I say something like, “I understand you have some concerns about my proposal; I’d like to take a few minutes to understand your perspective so that I can do what I can to accommodate your needs.”
The important thing in that conversation is not to try to argue with them or change their minds; it’s simply to understand. You have nothing to lose by doing this, and you can often gain information and respect.
Rehearse realistically
Present to a red team, a group of your peers specifically formed listen to your presentation and think of the toughest questions they can think of, as if they work for the customer. Tell them to interrupt you if they hear an opportunity to poke holes in your presentation. Visualize your toughest competitor being in the room when you present, whispering questions into the ear of the customer.
Question your answers
If you’ve gone through these steps, you’ve done about as much as anyone possibly can to anticipate the toughest questions you may get. It should go without saying that the next step is to write down your answers. But that’s where most people stop.
The reality is that your answers are only going to provide fresh material for really skeptical audience members to attack you even further, so you need to think a step ahead. Assuming you hit them with your carefully crafted response—what would be their follow up question to that?
Expect the unexpected
I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but it simply means that you should accept the fact that the combined imagination of your audience will often trump your best efforts to anticipate their questions. Don’t freak out when something comes up that you haven’t prepared for. If you’ve effectively answered the bulk of their questions, you can build up a cushion of credibility that will help you withstand the occasional glitch.
Have you ever presented an important proposal that is a “slam dunk”, a “no-brainer”? I didn’t think so.
No proposal is perfect. Even if it were, no audience is perfect. Just as there are two sides to every story, every sales proposal, every important idea presented to a group for a decision, is going to face some sort of challenge or opposition, even if it’s just from someone who wants to look smart in front of the rest of the group.
That’s why I’m going to let you in on a big secret: many times your presentation does not matter.
We often treat presentations as the main course and Q&A as the dessert, so we spend far more time on the former than the latter. But there are probably more times when the presentation is just the appetizer or the setup for when the real business of deliberation is done—during the discussion afterwards. Your performance during this time can make all the difference in the world.
I personally witnessed a flawless presentation crash into an embarrassing failure when the presenter fumbled the first question from the audience. It didn’t help that the person who asked the question was the highest ranking person in the room.
On the other hand, I’ve also seen mediocre presentations turn into triumphs because the presenter was better at showing the quality of his thinking in the more free-form discussion format.
And it’s not just after the presentation. At one company I work with, it’s extremely rare for a presentation to run its whole length without the presenter being peppered with questions.
That being the case, how should it affect your preparation?
As I wrote last week, Abraham Lincoln was a big proponent of what I call outside-in thinking. He said that when preparing for a speech he would spend two-thirds of his time thinking about what the audience wanted to hear, and one-third thinking about what he wanted to say. It’s a great sentiment, but let’s see what it means in practical terms.
Use the first third of your preparation time getting into the mind of the audience, trying to see it from their point of view. Focus on the negatives for now—the positives come when you’re crafting the speech. What’s risky about your idea? What changes will they have to make? Who loses? Why not stick with what they have? What alternatives do they have and why might those appeal to them?
You also have to spend some time getting into the mind of your competitors, (and not just the external ones) and think about what they are saying about your solution.
By anticipating these questions and objections, when you use the next third of your time crafting your presentation, you can preempt a lot of them by taking them on directly. When you bring out and then answer the best arguments against your own proposal, you can steal the thunder of those who have been waiting in ambush, as well as presenting yourself as confident and open-minded.
After you’ve crafted the first draft of your presentation, use the final one-third of your prep time in back in outside-in thinking mode, going through each point and brainstorming possible questions your listeners might have about each. It’s impossible to be sure you’ve anticipated everything, but in part 2 we’ll discuss approaches that can make your anticipation as bulletproof as possible.
Only 9,999 more hours to go…
I’m going to start this post with a commonly accepted premise: to achieve mastery of a specific skill requires 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. That’s the idea first propounded by expertise expert Anders Ericsson and popularized by Gladwell, Colvin and others.
There are actually a lot of things wrong with taking that statement too literally, but the general idea is not controversial: you have to put in a lot of time, and do a lot of the right things, if you want to reach the top levels of performance.
The problem is that if you want to be a great speaker or presenter, you will probably never have an opportunity in your entire lifetime to accumulate that much time practicing the craft, unless presenting and speaking to groups is practically all you do for a living. Just looking at the math, if you want to put in 10,000 hours in the first twenty years of your career, you’d have to present at least two hours every working day—and doing the same presentation over and over doesn’t count.
Fortunately, the second part of the premise—deliberate practice—is much more important, and it IS something you can control: quality is much more important than time.
I don’t know who came up with the title phrase, but I first heard it from John Hensel, with whom I worked in sales training about 10 years ago. I liked the phrase so much that I “borrowed” it and continue to use it in sales training today.
Does your product create a lust for possession in the buyer’s mind? When a product is beautifully designed, uses amazing technology, and is obviously useful, customers will suspend judgment and line up in the wee hours to have a chance to be one of the first to own one and to show it off to their friends. If you’re selling something like that, all you need to do is to show it off and watch the orders come in. Steve Jobs knew that and that is why his presentations centered around the product itself—and why they were so successful.
The problem is that very few products (and I include services in this broad definition) actually work that way. They may not be exciting, they may be difficult to figure out, their benefits may not be obvious; most of all, they may not look that different from everything else on the market. They certainly don’t create lust in the buyer’s mind.
In fact, most products create the opposite effect: buyers are so wary of being sold that their critical faculties go on full alert. They automatically question all the good things that are said about it and search for reasons not to disrupt the status quo, not to spend money, not to take the risk, etc.
If you have the product with you during the sales call, you will always be tempted to bring it out and show it, or talk about it, too early, like a fisherman jerking the rod at the first hint of a nibble. The instant the prospect drops the slightest hint that they might have a glimmer of interest, like Pavlov’s dogs hearing the dinner bell, you can’t resist jumping straight into our pitch or your demonstration.
Once the product becomes the center of attention, its pluses and minuses become fair game. If you begin talking about the product before they’re thirsty, resistance automatically kicks in, you dig yourself into a hole, and there is definitely no “lust” for what you’re selling.
So, when is the right time to take the product out of the car? When the prospect practically begs you to see it. Just like plain old boring water tastes exquisite when you’re thirsty enough, your job as a salesperson is to make the buyer thirsty. When you have asked the right questions and guided the conversation so that the prospect has told you about their problems and opportunities and has told you that the status quo is too costly or risky to continue—that’s when their minds are receptive to finding out about what you have.
If you’re making a presentation, don’t show the “product” slides until the audience has fully agreed with your description of the need, and every eye in the place is off their devices and focused squarely on you, because they can’t wait to hear how you’re going to make their lives better.
That’s when you are allowed to go get it out of the car, and not a moment before.
