In last week’s post about sales call planning, I wrote about how a sales call plan can help those who pride themselves on being able to wing it become even more flexible and creative when the customer changes things on them. In this post, I’ll show how the idea works just as well for sales presentations, which after all are nothing but more formally structured sales calls.
Have you ever prepared for a one-hour presentation only to find out that someone is running late and now you only have fifteen minutes? I’ve seen people respond to this situation either by talking real fast, or by going ahead with their prepared remarks until they run into a hard stop, neither which is very effective.
They are incapable of flexing off their original presentation, because they are more focused on the content than on the plan. They are like the subordinate who encounters something unexpected and can’t improvise without instructions from above. They just have to show that cool graph they worked on for hours, and they have to talk about each one of the seven bullet points on each slide, because presentations are about content. Content is something you create beforehand and deliver faithfully.
A plan is less about content than about intent. An intent is a goal and a strategy to achieve it. In a sales plan, your intent is simple: what do you want the customer to do and why should they do it? During your sales call, your intent does not change, but your content almost always does, because the audience has a vote.
When you see your presentation as a plan, it forces you to have a clear idea of your intent: the what and the why, and a transparent structure for your presentation, which is your general strategy for achieving the intent. This way, it will be like having a map of the terrain in your head, so that if you run into a roadblock you can quickly figure out an alternative route to the same destination. The map is not the terrain, but it does give you situational awareness, so that you can have the confidence to flex and scale your content up and down as necessary.
Here’s a test you should be able to pass before any sales presentation: If I took away your slide deck, could you summarize your main point and supporting arguments in sixty seconds? Could you write down your key points on a whiteboard if the customer asked you to? If you can, it’s because you have a clear conception of the structure of your logic, and that will serve you well when you have to improvise. By having these guidelines clearly in your mind, you’ll be able to ensure that all your critical points are covered, while having the confidence to skip some information or slides that are not integral or important to your argument.
This is one of the benefits of the inverted pyramid presentation structure; journalists have learned to write stories in such a way fully expecting that an editor short on space may cut some out, or a reader with a short attention span will stop reading before the end. They make sure that their entire story is encapsulated in the first paragraph, with additional detail expanding the base of the pyramid. Your sixty-second summary is like the first paragraph of an inverted pyramid story. The great thing about building a pyramid from the to-down is that no matter when you’re stopped, it still looks like a respectable pyramid, instead of a pile of bricks with a flat top.
Take the same idea and apply it to your slide presentations so that they are easily scalable. Have an agenda slide up front, and then a slide containing each of your main points after that. The detailed supporting information goes in your backup slides, and you can always pull them up or leave them out depending on how much time you have. In fact, if you really want to prepare for the possibility of being cut short, have two versions of your slide presentation: the expected and the short one.
Here’s one more small hint: always prepare your presentation for less time than is allotted. If they’re interested, they’ll easily fill the time with their questions, and if they’re not, well, no one ever complained that a presentation was too short.
When you’re hit unexpectedly with a request to shorten your presentation, your attitude is critical. If you view it as an obstacle or an inconvenience, it will color the way you come across to the audience. If instead you view it as an opportunity to demonstrate your command of your message, that will also come across. (Some of my best sales presentations have resulted when things went off the plan, and customers have made a point of complimenting my preparation.)
Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying: I am not telling you to skip the careful preparation of content in detail; don’t use this as an excuse for cutting corners. But do keep the intent and the strategy uppermost in your mind at all times. That way you will be able to combine the wisdom of planning with the wisdom of knowing when and how to change your plan.
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.
If it doesn’t fit here, it won’t be clear
The first step in planning a strategic sales presentation is deceptively simple: knowing what your key message is. When you take the time up front to write a theme, it provides brevity, clarity and impact, which helps you and your audience. The theme gets right to the heart of the matter.
Have you ever come away from a presentation and had trouble figuring out or remembering what the speaker was trying to say? Usually it’s not your fault—the speaker probably did not have a clear idea in his or her own mind why she was there or why you should have been.
When that happens, a tremendous opportunity has been wasted by the salesperson, not to mention the valuable time of the high-level decision-makers in the room. How likely is it that they will be able to act on your message when decision time comes, or that you will be invited back?
The bottom line is that you want your listeners to be absolutely clear what you want them to do and why. If you’re not clear on that, why should they be?
The solution to this all-too-common problem is, rather than immediately creating an outline of your points or creating your slides, you should take a few minutes to crystallize a theme for your presentation. The theme is simple: what do you want them to do and why should they do it? To make it even simpler, complete the following sentence before every presentation:
You should __________, because __________.
“You should”__________: What do you want them to do?
Always remember that a sales presentation is still a sales call. Any good sales call begins with a clear purpose: why are you taking time out of your busy sales day to go on this call? What do you intend to accomplish? How will it advance your sale or your position within the account?
So, the first part of the theme is to spell out your purpose in specific, output-defined terms. In other words, don’t have something mushy such as, “educate them on the benefits of cloud computing”. How will you know they’re educated? Will you give them a test? A better way to write this would be: “Gain agreement to form a task force to explore cloud computing”. (Naturally, if it’s a closing call, your purpose should already be pretty clear.)
Just the exercise of forcing yourself to be specific will clarify your mind tremendously and will make the rest of the presentation go much more smoothly.
“…because________: Why should they do it?
This is where you state your value proposition for this particular audience—not the generic one that says, “We are the nation’s leading provider of blah-blah-blah…” Based on your work before the presentation, you should a very clear idea of the specific reasons they should buy your solution. Although it depends on the audience, very rarely will those reasons be based on product specifications. At senior decision making levels, the why is generally expressed in terms of business improvements, solving problems, or improving processes.
“…because you need it to meet your goals of increasing flexibility and lowering your IT costs.”
Even better: “…it is the only way you will meet your ambitious flexibility and cost reduction goals.”
When you write your theme, it is for your use only, to help you organize the presentation, so you don’t have to write it down in marketing language. For example, your theme could be: “Buy our solution, because if you don’t there is a good chance your project will fail.” That’s probably not something you would say in exactly those words, but it very easily could be the impression you want to leave in their minds.
Think of your theme as the elevator pitch for a very short building. If it takes you more than about 25 words to craft it, you probably lack clarity.
Tens of thousands of sales presentations are delivered to potential customers every day, but very few of them are strategic sales presentations.
A sales presentation is strategic when it delivers the right content to the right people at the right time to advance or close your sale.
Right content: The majority of sales presentations are really talking brochures, in which the salesperson verbally delivers content that is easily available to audience members on web pages or in promotional material. It usually talks about the features of the product or touts the virtues of the company selling it. Right content is about the customer: how their business outcomes can be improved through their decision to buy your offering. How will their current processes be improved, what problems will be solved, and what will be the financial impact of these changes? One simple test is to look at your content and calculate the percentage that talks about your customer versus about yourself and your solution. In addition, calculate how much of the content is specific to that one customer at that particular time. You can take this even further by ensuring that content is targeted to the needs and concerns of specific individuals.
Right people: Very early in the sales cycle, you may need an executive to be present to ensure the project receives the priority it deserves, and of course you want them there for the closing presentation. But be careful of imposing on their time when you’re not directly adding value to them. In the evaluation stage of the customer’s buying process, their presence may be unnecessary and even counterproductive.
It’s also a natural tendency to want to pack the audience with your supporters and avoid detractors or opponents. If you have identified opponents in the decision process, it is crucial to have them there when you present, even if it adds another level of stress. This will at least give you a chance to answer their objections. If you exclude them, they will just voice their objections when you’re not there. Or, if they feel the decision was forced on them, you’re going to have a tough time during implementation even if you do make the sale.
Right time: You have to understand where your customer is in their buying cycle and tailor your content accordingly. If they haven’t fully recognized their need, for example, it would be premature to focus on the superiority of your solution.
There’s a saying that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come, which implies that the idea will fall flat if the time is not right. If what you are selling is a radical departure from status quo or challenges long-held beliefs and attitudes, it’s unlikely that you will succeed in one shot. In such cases, the quiet behind-the-scenes selling and lobbying you do will shape the conditions for success.
Advance the sale: A sales presentation is still a sales call, and one of the most fundamental—and ignored—steps in sales calls is to specify up front your purpose for the call. The call purpose must be viewed within the context of the sales opportunity plan, and thus must include a measurable advance in the sales cycle. It does not have to be a close; in long complex sales cycles closing calls are in the minority. But it should add value to the seller and the buyer. (In fact, you could profit from changing the wording to “advance the buying decision in your favor”.)
For example, a purpose could be to “gain agreement on the cost of the problem”. This purpose adds value to the seller by increasing the buyer’s urgency to make a decision and potentially shortening the sales cycle. The buyer benefits by recognizing the scope of the problem and possibly by gaining insights that will help them improve the potential solution.
To ensure that your sales presentation is strategic, then, use this short checklist:
Do I have the right content that targets your listeners’ unique needs and concerns?
Are the right people in the room?
Is this the right time for this presentation?
Am I crystal clear on what I want to achieve and why?
