Use this technique to win attention for your sales presentation.
Have you ever been on the receiving end of a sales presentation that made you wish you were almost anywhere else?
In the business-to-business software industry where I work, we’re guilty of heinous neglect of basic communication principles.
What’s so bad about our presentations? Nothing — if you don’t mind excessive length, jam-packed PowerPoint slides, lack of variety, droning voices, endless jargon and sound-alike marketing drivel, illegible views of software demos, and an avalanche of detail.
Please, Spare Me the Reruns!
Have you heard it said that in the moments just before you die, your entire life flashes before your eyes? If that’s true, I dread reliving any of the horrible software demos I’ve sat through – even if the replays would last for only for a few milliseconds.
I’d so much rather spend my last conscious time on earth remembering the parts of my life I didn’t hate.
This article helps you fix just one problem with sales presentations. But it’s the most important one: How to get and hold your audience’s interest. It contains a few tips I bet you haven’t heard before.
Why do so many sales presentations begin with the sales person talking about his own company? Probably because the presenter or her marketing department thinks it’s important to “build credibility” before getting into the details.
Sure, it’s important to build credibility for yourself and your company. But I suggest that first you make sure you’ve captured your audience’s interest.
How Does Hollywood Do It?
In the old days, Hollywood films consistently began with the movie title and opening credits. Then they segued into the action of the plot.
These days Hollywood films open with the action and eventually get around to the movie title and opening credits a few minutes into the film — after you’re emotionally hooked.
Why not do the same thing with your sales presentations?
Two Surefire Ways to Grab and Hold Attention
You have two simple and absolutely reliable ways to grab and hold the interest of any audience:
- Appeal to their selfish-interests.
- Arouse their curiosity.
Does this help you see why it’s such a buzz killer to open your presentation by talking about your company?
For a business-to-business sales presentation, here’s a great way to appeal to the audience’s selfish interest. This tip comes from a guy in Liverpool, England, named Andy Bounds.
Link Your Opener to Something They’re Sure to Care About
It’s a safe bet that everyone in a business audience will be interested in ideas to help improve her performance or increase her compensation.
Andy Bounds suggests that when you do your discovery research before your presentation, you ask about the metrics your audience’s employer uses to judge their job performance.
If you’re speaking to sales people, for example, it’s pretty easy. You know their pay is going to be based on revenue, quota attainment, gross profit or some similar metric.
Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker
A chief financial officer might be evaluated the value of the company’s stock, return on capital, revenue growth, earnings per share, free cash flow, or any of dozens of metrics.
A manufacturing manager might be evaluated on metrics that measure throughput, quality, and productivity of assets.
It can be a little more complicated if you’re speaking to a room full of people who have varying responsibilities. Maybe you’ll have to ask people in different roles about their performance metrics. They key is to understand them for all the decision makers and influencers in your audience.
A Stunning Revelation of the Obvious
Here comes the stellar idea. Are you ready?
Open your presentation on the subject you’re sure will be most interesting to everyone in your audience.
Talk about how your offering can help them win the game they play each day at work. Tell them how they can rack up a higher score playing by whatever rules their employer has set.
This approach appeals to both their selfish interest and their curiosity.
Once you’ve got their interest, you can hold it even as you get into the detail of your offering’s features and functions. You do that by consistently linking each feature or function back to the benefits they provide for your audience.
The more tightly you focus on benefits that improve their performance metrics, the less likely you are to lose them as you get deeper into the details.
Adult learners must be motivated to learn new things. They’re bombarded with details each day. To conserve their mental energy, they have to sort out what’s important from what’s not.
It’s your job — and your opportunity — to help them do that.
Your audience will rightly think that features are not important and not worth learning about unless they deliver benefits your audience cares about.
Even If You’ve Heard A Million Times That It Pays to Sell Benefits Rather Than Features, You Probably Still Don’t Do It Enough
You have to state the benefits explicitly because your prospects will not do it for themselves. They are too busy trying to absorb all the information you’re presenting to them.
You can expect a big improvement in your sales effectiveness when you consistently help people link features to benefits.
You’ll do even better when you focus on benefits that will help them achieve their job-performance goals more easily, predictably, reliably, efficiently or with less stress.
It is amazing how many people think they do this when in fact they don’t.
I have worked with dozens of smart, knowledgeable and highly experienced sales people and presales consultants who think they sell benefits over features but almost always emphasize features over benefits.
Take Time to Do Your Homework
Here’s an exercise from Sales 101. In my experience, it will make your sales team squirm. They will try to avoid doing it. But it’s worthwhile for two reasons:
- It will probably show you and your team how poorly prepared you are to sell benefits over features. (It may reveal that some of you are a little unclear on the difference between the two.)
- It will prepare you to do a better job in the future.
Here’s what to do:
- On a blank sheet of paper, make a table with two columns.
- In the left-hand column, list a product feature in each row.
- In the right-hand column, list the corresponding benefits in the same row as the relevant feature.
- Force yourself to keep going even after you’re tempted to quit. The more thorough your list, the more helpful it will be in improving your sales presentations.
This May Be Harder Than You Imagine
If you find yourself listing one of the same half-dozen high-level benefits for nearly every feature, it’s an indication that you have plenty of opportunity to sharpen your thinking.
For example, suppose that for nearly every feature you name, your first impulse is to list corresponding benefits such as these:
- “saves time, improves efficiency and productivity”
- “reduces cost” or
- “improves quality.”
If you can think of only a few such general benefits for most of the features you list, you’ll soon be thinking, “What’s the point of mentioning the same old benefits over and over again?”
Then you’ll be tempted to list all the general benefits at the beginning (or worse, at the end) of your presentation and be done with it. That way you can focus the rest of your time talking about features you love so much.
Be Sure to Link Your Benefits to the Specific Performance Metrics Most Relevant to Your Audience
The problem is that the benefits you’ve listed aren’t specific or detailed enough. And you haven’t linked them clearly enough to the performance metrics of the people in your audience.
If you need to think so hard about a specific benefit for each feature of your offering, imagine how hard it will be for your audience to do so without your help.
Andy Bounds runs an interesting web site that’s loaded with other practical insights about how to improve your business communications. It’s well worth a visit. You can also sign up for access to a lot of great presentations and for Andy’s terrific free e-newsletter. He’s an energetic speaker with an accent I love to hear.
Stay fresh.
– Scott Silverback