In Part 1 of this series we saw how important team presentations are for today’s B2B complex sales. In this part we look at how to plan the team presentation so that it is more than just a collection of mismatched parts bolted together.
The first thing to remember is that you are planning a team presentation, not a group presentation. Any collection of individuals can form a group at a moment’s notice, but it takes time and care to mold a team. They call it teamwork for a reason. That’s why there is a big difference between a group presentation and a team presentation.
A group presentation is a series of individual presentations that might or might not have a strong connection with each other. Each one could probably stand on its own. A team presentation, by contrast, is a single presentation with several participants. This is a critical difference, because it changes how you plan it, practice it, and deliver it.
Because a team presentation is a single presentation, there is one plan for the presentation, and one person is in charge. As the USA Olympic basketball team has demonstrated on occasion, even a Dream Team of superstars is going to lose if you just have a collection of individuals trying to do their own thing. People have to keep their egos under control and see their part as a contribution to the big picture.
It does not mean that one person writes the entire presentation for all the participants. They can still craft their own individual parts, just as long as they do it within the agreed-on architecture. Their specialized knowledge only makes sense within the big picture, and that is what the account manager brings to the table.
The good news is that most of the process that you use to prepare an individual presentation is exactly what you need for a team presentation. Because it’s a single presentation, the same principles apply. The additional complexity comes from meshing the individual contributions into a seamless whole.
Who does the planning? That’s up to the sales team. The Account Manager could decide on the overall structure and then ask participants to build their presentation to fit. However, best practice is to have the team come together for at least an initial planning meeting. This brings several benefits:
First, as the old saying goes, “none of us is as smart as all of us.” The combined input should result in a better presentation, especially as some team members may have specific information not known to the whole group.
Second, when everyone knows what everyone else is going to say, it helps them build references and links to other parts of the presentation. It also avoids the potential trap of having someone contradict a teammate.
Third, it provides a greater sense of ownership. Team camaraderie of the sort alluded to earlier in this section can’t be faked or just turned on for the presentation.
A team presentation is just an individual one on steroids
Everything you have to do for an individual presentation applies to team presentations, but the addition of others adds another level of preparation. Let’s review the required steps for a successful strategic sales presentation, and see what adjustments must be made for a team presentation.
Analysis: One of the benefits of a team sale is the diversity of connections, perspectives and information that each team member has. The challenge is to get all that information out on the table so that the team has the information needed for effective analysis. The important task here is to connect the dots between the various collections of information that each team member has.
During the planning phase, the presentation team should have a common document so that all members of the team can see it. Besides the obvious benefit of “being on the same page”, this process can often spark new ideas as knowledge is brought into the open and combined.
Shaping the conditions: The entire sales team should be working from a single opportunity planning template or document which details the buyer’s decision making process, with the relationships and influences clearly mapped out and understood by the entire team.
Core message: One of the most important reasons to have one clear theme in an individual presentation is to keep your presentation from being rambling and unfocused. Imagine how much more important that is with several people being involved.
It’s absolutely critical to have the discipline of one message that everyone supports and sticks to during their portion of the presentation. Buyers will get confused if they can’t connect all the threads, and even more so if presenters appear to contradict each other.
The reliance on a single clear theme was probably the most common denominator among the top team presenters interviewed for my book. One company called it the Central Question, another called it the Win Message, but nearly all insisted that this is the critical first step in all their team presentations.
Military planners use the concept of commander’s intent to ensure that subordinates can respond to the unexpected while still furthering the purposes of the operation. In team presentations, the one clear theme serves the same purpose. Because the presentation will never go exactly as it’s drawn up during the planning, it’s all the more important to ensure that when things go off track, the person speaking at the time can adjust and adapt, within the boundaries of the original intent.
Structure of the presentation: The main points that support the theme remain the same; the only difference is that each main point may actually be the complete presentation for individual team members. By having a clear structure, individual presenters see their piece as a part of the whole presentation. That main point then becomes their core message for their own specific piece, and the process is taken from there. This way, when the pieces are put back together, everything works the way it’s supposed to, as a seamless whole. It’s like the way Boeing built the 787, with different contractors working on a major assembly such as the wings and tail, working to exacting specifications so that when it was all bolted together the thing would actually fly.
It’s also important that each individual piece include references to previous and upcoming speakers, such as “As Chris mentioned, one of the root causes of the problem is the fluctuation in density from one batch to the next, and our solution addresses that by…”
Evidence: The supporting evidence portion is put together individually, and then brought back to the team. It’s not up to the team to parse the evidence, because the person putting it together is the recognized subject matter expert. However, it’s useful to have the team review what will be said to reduce redundancy or avoid contradiction.
Introduction and close: The team leader is probably going to be the person delivering the introduction. Besides the standard ingredients of an individual presentation, the team leader should also introduce the individual presenters and briefly explain their roles. The emphasis here is on brevity, because he or she will want to say a little more about each person just before handing off to them for their part.
The team leader may also take over for the close, or leave it to the last speaker to tie everything together. Since team presentations may be longer than individual ones, a brief summary at the end is a good idea.
Visuals: The only difference on visuals is just to ensure that the entire deck, if one is being used, should have a common look and feel. It should look like one presentation, not a patchwork.
They call it teamWORK for a reason
Most sales presentation training, including my own, focuses on individual presentations. Yet that has to change, because in all the research I’ve done for my forthcoming book on strategic sales presentations, I’ve found very little written about how to effectively plan, practice and deliver a team presentation. Unlike a group presentation, which is merely individual presentations strung together, a true team presentation is seamless and synergistic.
Part 1: Team Presentations Are the New Normal
The reality of strategic B2B sales is that they usually involve teams. This is a fact that has clearly emerged from my interviews with top executives in researching for my book. Everyone I spoke to said that the majority of presentations they attend at their level are conducted by more than one person, and some said all of them are.
It makes perfect sense, because strategic sales presentations nowadays are almost by definition going to be team sales. They are generally complex system sales, and systems have many parts which generally can’t be comprehended or explained in sufficient detail by one person. Individual parts of these systems require specialized knowledge.
In addition, they are not transactional sales; you are either establishing or continuing a close working relationship with the customer, and that relationship can involve multiple individual connections across various functions and levels.
Often, the customer’s senior level executive is in the room precisely because the decision will have a broad impact across various functions within the organization. As a result, there are various people in the room who have a stake in the decision to be made and who will be working with various members of your team if you are successful. They want to get to know your team and gauge their compatibility with them.
The age of the heroic individual salesperson is over. Even if one person has all the knowledge and expertise to handle the presentation alone, it’s not a good idea. If you’re a short-listed candidate making a closing presentation, you have most likely already passed two crucial tests in the buying cycle: the customer has determined that the need is sufficiently important to invest in a solution, and they have agreed that your offering meets their minimum standards. The key remaining question at this point is “Can you deliver?”
A team presentation goes a long way toward answering this question by addressing two important issues:
First, they want to know: “Are these people we can work with over the long term?
An effective team presentation lets the customer see how your team works together and lets them try the team on for size. Several executives told me they pay attention to how the team works together during the presentation as an indicator about how they will work with the purchasing company.
When a team presentation goes well, the impact can be impressive and immediate. An executive who sat in on a presentation by a PR firm told me their team presentation was so impressive that “the foot of the last guy was barely out the door and the President looked at me and said, hire them.”
What did they like so much about that presentation that clinched the decision? They became comfortable that the firm could deliver on its promises because each person who was responsible for the different aspects of the relationship had a chance to present. They were also impressed by the obvious camaraderie that the team displayed, and had the feeling that spirit would make them easy to work with.
Second, they want to know: “Are we trusting our critical project to just one person?”
Actually, it’s a bit more nuanced than that. They want to be assured that they have “one throat to choke,”—a single responsible point of contact and accountability—plus the depth of an entire team to support their needs. If you’re in charge of the presentation, the structure and delivery of your team presentation must convey both of those characteristics. Numbers also count in terms of reassuring them that you have the depth of capability and talent to handle their needs.
From a delivery standpoint, team presentations also help to add variety and maintain attention. Even the most dynamic presenter can get a bit stale after about twenty minutes, so it helps to have different speakers.
Of course, anything with such strong benefits is bound to carry some risk. Team presentations are much more difficult to pull off properly. Anytime you add moving parts to a system there is much more chance of something going wrong. Plus, any team is at the mercy of its weakest player.
In the next two posts, we’ll discuss how plan, practice and deliver a knockout team presentation.
Good presenters analyze their audience, craft a presentation that meets their needs, and deliver with confidence and polish. Great presenters do that as well, but they also spend far more time thinking strategically and carefully shaping the conditions for success. As I wrote in my previous post, negotiations are largely won or lost during the time leading up to them, and the same idea applies to presentations, whether it’s an internal presentation to get approval on a proposal or a sales presentation to a customer.
I first learned how to do this early in my banking career. Back then we used to have to present loan proposals to a committee. We would put together a presentation that described the customer’s business, how they planned to use the money, and why we believed they were a good credit risk. My first few presentations met with so-so success, so I began to step back and try to figure out how to improve my success rate. I quickly figured out who was the most influential member—based on expertise not rank—and began going to him with a rough outline of what I planned to present the following week. I would ask his advice on the best way to structure the deal. If the deal was really big, I’d go to another member and say, “Chuck and I think this deal would work this way. What do you think?” This did three things for me:
Objectively, it taught me a lot about how to put together a good proposal. Subjectively, it gave me a high-ranking ally on the committee. It also was a sanity check: if Chuck did not like the deal, I would “lose early” and pull it from the agenda, and I developed a reputation for only bringing in good deals.
It may seem that I got an unfair advantage over others who did not work the system before their presentations. In a way, that’s true, and if you’re a salesperson you want every unfair advantage over your competitors (within legal and ethical bounds, of course) that you can get. But keep in mind that the benefits flowed both ways. The committee members, who were my “customers”, got the benefit of sound proposals that met their standards and did not waste their time.
My banking days ended over twenty years ago, but I’ve applied those early lessons in my sales career…
Pack the crowd with your friends
Of course it’s important to know who will be in the audience and know what their stake is in the outcome, their potential objections, their history with similar decisions, etc. But you don’t have to passively accept the customer’s attendance list. One of the first mistakes that salespeople make in any complex sales cycle is to be so happy about getting their foot in the door that they don’t set certain conditions as the price for showing up. If it’s too easy to get that first meeting, you should remember Groucho Marx’s quip that he would not join any club that would take him as a member!
The more you know about how your solution will affect your customer’s cash flow engine, you’ll be able to expand the range of stakeholders who will benefit from your proposal. Make sure that they are invited to attend. As much as possible, talk to them before the presentation to understand their needs; it’s a great way to improve your proposal and to establish rapport (which also helps with pre-speech jitters). I once had a presentation set up with the Region President of a company in Detroit, and got his permission to reach out to some of the other attendees to make sure I could address their needs. That led to a conversation with his Director of Sales, which led to having dinner with him the night before, which resulted in a champion during the presentation.
But make sure your opponents are there, too
It may be counterintuitive, but you also want to do the same thing with your potential opponents. Make sure they all attend and try to talk to them before the meeting if possible. They need to be there during your presentation, because if they’re not, you won’t be able to answer their objections or concerns. They can wait until after the presentation and then do their internal selling against you and you won’t be able to do a thing about it.
By talking to them before the presentation, you have a chance to prepare for their concerns, and potentially to gain some respect. Simply ask them questions to sincerely understand their point of view and answer any questions they might have, but don’t try to “sell” them or change their minds, or you run the risk of entrenching their opposition.
When you have a good understanding of their objections, you can build “presponses” into your presentation: steal their thunder by bringing up the concern and answering it before they do. It will do wonders for your credibility.
Balance planning and flexibility
Of course, because people are unpredictable and circumstances change, you have to strike the right balance between planning and flexibility. Football coaches game-plan very meticulously, but quarterbacks and defensive captains still need to be able make changes based on what they see the opponent doing. I personally have never seen a sales presentation go exactly as planned, but the process of planning has saved me on numerous occasions. As Eisenhower said, “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”
Avoid drama
It’s kind of exciting to see yourself as the hero of the hour, standing in front of a skeptical audience and winning them over through the brilliance of your argument and the force of your personality, but the most effective persuaders in the long run usually do it without the dramatics. They understand that, in the words of Sun Tzu, the best general is not the one who wins the most battles, but the one who wins without having to fight battles.
Three guys walk into a bar…
So many jokes start off this way, but have you ever wondered why it’s three, and not two or four?
There is a well-known rule in presentations that good things come in threes. It doesn’t appear to be strongly supported by scientific evidence, but it has been so well woven into the fabric of literature, communication and rhetoric that it’s a good idea to pay attention to it. It’s the curious fact that our minds like ideas in threes. Stories tend to have a situation, conflict and resolution structure. The Declaration of Independence could have listed a lot of unalienable rights, but limited itself to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We never watched a program called the Four Stooges.
Speech expert Max Atkinson tells us that, “One of the attractions of three-part lists is that they create an impression of completeness.” In fact, his analysis of political speeches showed that three-part lists regularly trigger applause during political presentations. (By the way, where do you think the term claptrap came from?)
Three somehow seems right to our minds. Maybe it’s because of our working memory limitations: there’s only so much we can process in our conscious awareness at one time. Or maybe it’s because three is the perfect number for arriving at a happy medium; like Goldilocks, one bowl of porridge may be too cold, another too hot, but the third is just right. You can use this when presenting alternatives. Henry Kissinger said he always presented Nixon with three alternatives; his favored one was always in the middle and was invariably the one selected.
You may have five reasons why someone should buy your product. Should you tell them all five? Although research shows that it depends on the situation, the short answer is no. When the audience is not that intellectually involved with the situation, then more reasons tend to be better. However, when the audience members are involved and are engaging their central processing, you run the risk that the weaker reasons will dilute the stronger. If they are going to forget some of what you told them, there’s a chance that they will remember the weaker and forget one of the stronger reasons. For example, one of Churchill’s most stirring speeches promised the British people nothing but “blood, toil, tears and sweat”, yet most people remember it as “blood, sweat and tears”.
Sometimes, people tend to overstuff their presentations through lack of confidence. They worry that they might leave out one of the reasons that is important to someone in the audience. I have two answers to that. First, you should know your audience well enough to make sure that does not happen. Second, you can always have those reasons in your backup material in case they come up during the conversation, or in case the top three you chose need reinforcement. (I wish I had a third answer, but I don’t. It just goes to show, you don’t have to take this rule to extremes.)
