Appoint a Team Coordinator

Your team coordinator must understand the presentation’s objective and be directly involved with all phases of presentation development. This coordinator must hold a position of authority in the organization to ensure that all decisions carry the proper weight. The coordinator should not be one of the presenters.

The team coordinator:
-Is responsible to management for execution of all presentation related activities.
-Reports status to management as required.
-Runs the daily stand-up meeting.
-Develops and provides themes and strategy to management.
-Prepares the audience analysis and confirms attendees.
-Collects audience concerns and questions as they arise.
-Gathers information (SWOT) on the competitors.

12 Essential Steps For Leading a Major Team Presentation

The stakes are high. A billion dollar deal is on the line. Your company has been short-listed by the customer and invited to present your proposal face to face in a four hour meeting. There is a lot riding on this for both parties. The customer wants to know what it’s buying but also, who it’s buying in this deal. So, they want you and your management and technical team leaders to take part. You have 30 days to get ready.

Over the coming weeks, we will look at a series of 12 essential steps to help you plan and manage your team’s presentation. Because each presentation is unique, all 12 may not apply to your situation but most of them will.


1. Appoint a Team Coordinator
2. Assign Responsibility
3. Conduct a Site Inspection
4. Convene a Kick-off Meeting
5. Review Key Points
6. Prepare Storyboards
7. Conduct a Preliminary Storyboard Review
8. Begin Segment Dry Runs
9. Make Final Content and Lineup Decisions
10. Conduct Team Dry Run
11. Conduct Final Dress Rehearsal
12. Make Final Preparations

Getting this right is a lot like getting a team ready to compete in sports or an army ready for battle. If you think this kind of preparation is overkill, think about how much is riding on the outcome. Think about what your competition is doing. Think about what Napoléon Bonaparte meant by this great quote:

“From the sublime (victory) to the ridiculous (defeat) is but a step.”

Good selling!

The Engagement - Salesperson as a Human Search Engine

Many amateur salespeople spend a lot of time and energy memorizing product features and benefits. What would you say if I suggested that this, in many cases, is a waste of your strategic sales planning time? Why? People with ultra-deep product knowledge, when engaged with customers, tend to spend a lot amount of time talking about their product…what it does, how it works, and why it's good for the customer. This invites objections, resistance and continuations from the customer.

The skilled salesperson spends time asking questions about the customer's problems - understanding how serious they are, and how important it may be to solve them. This line of engagement leads to follow on appointments, creates value for the customer, and, is strongly linked to sales success. When working in the account, a salesperson can be most effective behaving like a human search engine...a Google salesperson. Think about how Google works? Google uses a proprietary formula to "score" the relevancy of websites for each search query. The highest ranking or "most relevant" websites for a specific query are listed first in the search results. A Google salesperson knows the kinds of problems her products can solve and searches for the relevancy of the customer's problem in relation to her solutions. A Google salesperson's proprietary formula is found in the quality of the questions she asks. The Google salesperson asks insightful questions that - 1). Help her surface problems, 2). Help her prioritize them, and 3). Help her understand all the impacts these problems have on the prospects’ business. Once the Google salesperson finds a problem that the customer now believes is painful enough to solve, then and only then, does she bring in the marketing experts and sales engineers to help the customer understand all the benefits of her solution and seals the deal. Want to sell more? Ask questions, talk less, and listen more. Be a human search engine.

Good selling!

Solution Selling: What Separates the Best from the Rest?

We have all heard the stories of the superstar salesperson. This person has the magic touch, the gift of rapport and the innate ability to close deals. But as Malcolm Gladwell describes in his classic book Blink, often, the superstar’s natural abilities gives them skills that they don't really understand, can’t explain, and definitely can’t teach. Gladwell gives dozens of examples, such as a tennis teacher who knows when a player is going to double fault before the ball is struck but can’t say how he knows it. The tennis player that swears up and down that his secret to hitting a cross-court winner is in the way he rolls his wrist when in reality, super high-speed film shows that at impact, his wrist does not roll at all! So what are some of the things top sales performers actually do that make a difference and that are teachable and repeatable? Let’s take a look a short list of fundamentals - a list that Neil Rackham calls First Approximations (with a few modifications and additions from me!):

Top Performers
-Plans the call in detail
-Gets down to business quickly
-Asks insightful questions
-Holds back on talking product features and benefits early in the sale
-Ends the call by agreeing on joint “next steps”

Average performers
-Plans a presentation
-Spends too much time in boring small talk
-Does most of the talking and asks unfocused questions
-Jumps in early with product descriptions and PowerPoint
-Often ends the call with no action or agreement

In sales, in sports, and in life...there are often a few little things that make 80% of the difference. Those things usually include some very simple, repeatable, and teachable fundamentals.

Good selling!

Discipline Is Key to Selling Expensive Things Successfully

Time Management

Two of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits are “Be Proactive” and “Put First Things First”. These are gems of time management for sales professionals. Successful solution sellers must be incredibly proactive and must be able to manage time wisely. Successful solution sellers are not stimulus - response account custodians. Successful solution sellers cultivate the ability to take charge, plan ahead, and focus their energy on things they can control instead of reacting to or worrying about things over which they have little or no control.

Mastering these two time management habits help you rise above the pounding day-to-day demands that distract amateur salespeople. Being proactive doesn’t mean being pushy, or insufferably aggressive. It means recognizing your responsibility to make things happen in the market place. It means anticipating, identifying, and solving your customer’s problems and, generating a fair profit in exchange for rendering great service. Putting first things first involves making wise choices about how you spend your time. It takes skill and great self-awareness to be able to devote serious time to important, but not urgent tasks. Successful solution sellers do this as second nature. Important but not urgent tasks are things like research, account strategy, call planning, relationship building, prospecting, training, reading, and physical exercise. On the other hand, email, ringing phones, meetings, drop-by’s and unopened mail have to be managed…and sometimes ignored! That takes discipline.

Handling Questions

Steve’s Sales Coaching Tips



Presenting with Power and Getting Results! – Part 7

The question and answer period is an opportunity to build audience support. Don’t feel threatened. Look at questions as a way to uncover concerns and sensitive areas that were not obvious in your audience analysis. Good answers enhance and reinforce your message.

As you plan

Anticipate questions. Think of three questions you hope the audience won’t ask. Develop thorough answers to them. Minimize surprises.

Control the situation

State your policy on questions at the outset. Do you want the audience to ask them as they arise or hold them until you finish?

Stay on message. Henry Kissinger once walked into the White House press room and asked, “Does anyone have any questions for my answers? Wow!

With a large group, it helps to repeat or paraphrase the question. With any size audience, re-phrase negative or hostile questions.

In general, don’t answer a question with a question.

Identify the issue behind the question. What is the real concern? Probe and clarify before you answer. Besides, it buys you time to think.

Break complicated questions into parts before you answer. Answer the part you like best first.

Look directly at the questioner. Once the question has been asked, break eye contact and lock onto another person. This avoids one-on-one confrontation and signals to the audience that your answer is of interest to all.

Be sensitive

With a mixed audience, ask for general questions first. The detailed questions can come later.

Listen. Respond quickly, but be sure you know and understand the whole question before answering.

If you don’t know the answer to a question, say so and promise to find it. If you have informed associates present, invite them to answer but buy some time for them to think by discussing it aloud first.

Encourage the audience to discuss questions with you.

Handle objections

Find a way to agree with people who put questions in the form of objections. For example, “You’ve raised a critical concern to which we have given a great deal of thought.” Then humbly and respectfully set them straight.

Be tactful. Turn negativism into positive replies.

Even the most belligerent questioners are helping you. They have come out in the open, let you know they oppose you, and told you why. Seize the opportunity to answer them. Be courteous, humble, patient, and firm.

Never become defensive.

Remember:
Strive for question and answer sessions that generate lively audience response. Effective question and answer sessions can increase the audience’s knowledge, reinforce your main points, and ad to your credibility. Emphasize your advantage in every answer. Above all, be quick, be courteous, be correct, and be complete.

Good Selling!

Delivery Techniques

Steve’s Sales Coaching Tips

Presenting with Power and Getting Results! – Part 6

Your success is determined by how well you coordinate a mix of messages, spoken and unspoken. You are the presentation. Control the situation. Don’t get in the way of your words. Use any creative means available to tell and sell your story effectively.

Control and authority

-Exert some energy. Be yourself AND THEN SOME! Show that you are confident and excited about what you are about to say.

-Pause...relax before you begin.

-Don’t demand the attention of a noisy audience. Politely wait for attention to come to you. They will settle.

-Establish personal contact before you begin speaking. Lock onto a person in your audience.

-Make a positive first impression with a sincere smile and nod of acknowledgment. Excited about the subject? Well for heaven’s sake ...tell your face about it and smile!

The body

-Maintain a relaxed, natural stance. Avoid shifting your weight, leaning on the lectern, or fidgeting.

-Stand on the left side of your visual aid (from the audience’s perspective).

-Gesture naturally. Avoid forced movement. Spontaneity, personality, and feeling for the subject are the keys to movement. When you’re excited about the subject and intent upon reaching the audience, gesturing takes care of itself.

The eyes

-Maintain eye contact. Effective communication is a two-way street. The audience’s eyes give constant feedback as to how well you’re communicating.

-Concentrate on one person and hold them until you’ve made your point. Then move on to another. You will find this helps you focus on your message and avoid that glazed, faraway look that comes from scanning the audience.

-Key: Maintaining eye contact is the single most important thing you can do to improve your presentation style.

The message

-Learn to use the power of silence. Some inexperienced speakers feel the need to deliver an uninterrupted stream of words. They end up with “ums,” “ers” and “ahs.” Effective pauses show that you are in control of your message and the audience.

-Involve the audience. Make a provocative statement, or ask a rhetorical question.

-Personalize the talk to gain audience empathy.

-Don’t let visual aids compete with your for attention. Avoid fast slide show clicking.

Remember:
Don’t distract the audience. This is the all-encompassing rule of effective delivery skills. Make it easy for listeners to understand the message by working hard on how you say it.

Good selling!