If you or your staff are involved in sales presentations (to a group), as opposed to sales conversations (with one or two clients), my advice is - get good at them; because they are becoming more common.
Presentations for ‘big-ticket' sales are often made to a group - board, assessment panel, committee, user groups or stakeholder groups. Salespeople who have been successful at smaller sales are seen to have earned the right and are given the opportunity to go after the ‘bigger fish'. In reality, most are set-up to fail; because the rules of the game have changed. They have worked their way up to this point through a mastery of the sales conversation.
The sales conversation
This is an interaction between the salesperson and one or two clients or potential clients. For a skilled salesperson, this is a controlled conversation. To the clients, the process seems natural and unstructured; but to the salesperson, every piece of communication is very deliberately structured to give them the outcome that they want ... the sale!
The sales conversationalist builds the relationship with questions that allow them to identify the other's wants, needs and priorities - before they even mention the product. Everything they say about their product or service is based on the wants, needs and/or priorities of their client.
If they accidentally mention some aspect that is not relevant to the client, they will read the signals (generally body language) and change tack immediately.
They do not enter into the sales conversation with a set idea of what they'll say; but, rather, a comprehensive knowledge of their products and services that they will draw on, depending on the client's responses and reactions.
The sales presentation
Then they move on to the bigger sales - and they find that, rather than a conversation with one or two, it has become a much more formal ‘presentation' to a larger number. All of their sales conversation skills are of little use to them because -
- They are not able to qualify the clients with probing questions - they are put before a number of people and they're expected to start speaking about their offer immediately.
- Even if they were able to ask questions beforehand, they would find that the wants, needs and priorities of the individuals are very different. If they are talking to a panel or committee formed to assess the offer, they have probably been chosen because of their variant opinions. If they are talking to a user or stakeholder group, it is guaranteed that their views will clash!
So, in place of their conversational pre-qualifying, they need to do audience research. In place of their engaging banter, they need to create a presentation that will engage the whole group. It's not a performance, but performance skills are required.
How sales conversationalists are vulnerable
This is probably best illustrated by an example from my own sales career. Many years ago, our company sold large, expensive electronic communications systems to the health and aged care industries. On one occasion, the consultant in charge of the project was extremely frustrated because of the conflicting messages he was receiving from his clients who included health professionals, government bureaucrats and IT professionals - hardly surprising!
His solution was to call all of them together and have all three short-listed tenderers present their product to them. Some might say that that consultant was abrogating their responsibility - but it worked - at least for him, by transferring the heat onto the potential suppliers.
I was one of the tenderers and I soon realised that while my competitors were great sales conversationalists, they had little skill or experience in this type of presentation. The format terrified them ... and it showed! I won that project; but I learned a much more valuable lesson.
For every similar project I suggested to the consultant or project manager that the best way for them to make the final choice was to have the potential suppliers present to a user group. Most of them loved the idea - because it made their job easier. And at the same time, it made my competitors' jobs so much harder. For the next three years in that industry, I won every large project.
How was I able to be better than them? Two main ways -
- I developed my presentation skills - so I could appear confident in front of any group.
- I analysed the groups to identify what features of our products were seen as benefits to all individuals - and this was all I said about our products. I quickly identified that many features that could be seen as a benefit by some in the group, would be seen as negatives by others. (Think about IT and health professionals, and you'll get what I mean.)
I talked about the common benefits only. My competitors tried to mention all the benefits and, often as not, had the group arguing with each other.
Learn the principles of audience analysis and take the opportunity to practice the presentation until it sounds as confident as you feel about your product, service and organisation. Otherwise, just hope you don't encounter a market manipulator like me!