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I’ve given a million formal sales presentations and I think I’ve observed even more. The most important thing I’ve learned is that everyone is nervous when they present. Everyone.

Mark Twain said it best, “There are two types of speakers: those who are nervous and those who are liars.”

I have a few sales tips below that have worked for me and for others to control the jitters when speaking to customers.

The Underwear Visual
Sadly, the only training most sales professionals ever get about controlling nervousness when giving formal sales presentations is to pretend everyone in the audience is only wearing their underwear.

Have you read the statistics on obesity in America? Personally, I find the thought of visualizing most audiences in their underwear far more frightening than merely making a presentation.

8 Techniques For Controlling Nervousness When Giving Formal Sales Presentations
1. Where does fear of speaking come from? Us. We quite literally scare ourselves with the negative thoughts we have before we make an important sales presentation. Just as professional athletes can envision a successful outcome of a game, we can do the same when presenting.

2. Your nervous body symptoms, like a shaky voice or sweating, are hardly – if at all – noticed by your audience. Quit adding to your worries by obsessing about butterflies in your stomach that no one can see.  Butterflies don’t bite.

3. Everyone’s biggest fear is not public speaking. That’s a myth. Every person has a different hierarchy of fears. For some, public speaking is very displeasureable; for others, it’s enjoyable. You probably fall somewhere in-between.

4. It’s perfectly okay to speak from a lectern with notes or to carry your notes in your hands when presenting. You don’t have to memorize your speech. Scripts are bad, but notes are okay and can bump up your confidence considerably.

5. Accepting, even welcoming, nervousness when speaking can go a long way in actually reducing your dread of speaking. The fancy psychological term is paradoxical intention. When light shines on the anxiety bogeyman and he is welcomed into your thoughts, he cowers.

6. Preparing and practicing your speech can move mountains when it comes to reducing speaking anxiety.  I attended an event where George H. W. Bush spoke while he was President.  He mentioned that he had rehearsed his speech earlier in the day.  Excuse me here, but if the President of the United States feels it necessary to practice his speech, it confirms to me there is real value in doing this.  There are many executives in corporate America who think they are above practicing speeches.  Their speeches show it.

7. Nervousness can help you during a sales presentation because it brings energy to your presentation and causes you to think faster on your feet. It also causes you to hyper-focus on the matter at hand.  The nervousness monster doesn’t want you to know this; see number five above to see why.

8. Executives are frequently very poor speakers and get nervous too, just like the rest of us mere mortals. They get nervous because they know each word they use is weighed and measured. Please remember many -  if not most -  executives struggle with speaking; they understand your nervousness when you present to them.

Sales Blog Epilogue
Becoming a better presenter doesn’t happen overnight. You can’t take a one-day or one-week school and magically become Zig Ziglar. However, I can recommend that you give Toastmasters International a try. This is a non-profit international organization that takes people at all levels and, over a period of time, develops them into better speakers.

Further reading:

• Wrestling With Fear in Sales

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>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

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In 20+ years in sales I’ve observed the following powerless meeting agenda in 99% of formal sales presentations:

1. Prospect’s employees and vendor’s employees engage in introductions and swap business cards.
2. Room lights are dimmed and the vendor’s designated presenter begins the boilerplate PowerPoint presentation with the following attributes:

• A few obvious and poorly done modifications have been added to the PowerPoint to make it look “customized.”
• The first part of the presentation (about 80% of the total presentation) tells the prospect how the vendor is absolutely the most incredible company on the planet. They are bigger, better, faster, better trained, smarter…this is called sales hyperbole.
• The second part of the presentation (about 10%) discusses the features of the products or services being proposed.
• The third part of the presentation (about 5%) reveals the endless number of wonderful human resources available to the prospect.
• The final part of the presentation (about 5%) is Q&A.

3. Everyone thanks everyone and the prospect tells the vendor, “We will be in touch.”

Reality Check Time
Be honest with yourself. How often have you given, received or been part of a formal sales presentation that followed the agenda above? If you’re honest, it’s going to be just shy of every single one of them.

Why Do Sales Professionals Continue To Use An Agenda Format That Is Unproductive?

• Too busy to prepare something better
• Never really thought about its ineffectiveness
• Lazy
• It’s what I’ve/we’ve always done.
• I’m comfortable with it.
• It’s what my prospect/sales manager/sales VP/president/CEO expects me to do.
• I’ve never been shown anything different.
• It’s in my DNA; I can’t help myself.

“Change Doesn’t Always Mean Better, But Better Always Means Change”
Here are a few ideas to put some boldness and creativity back into your formal sales presentations.

• Stop using PowerPoints. At least stop using them in the traditional sense. If you need them for a crutch, then only use them for graphics and major bullets. Promise me you will never use your company’s boilerplate PowerPoints again. Prospects hate them. Spend the time to create one just for the prospect you are presenting to if you’re going to use one.
• Throughout the presentation, keep it interactive. This eliminates the need for that awkward Q&A business at the end.
• Your first part of your presentation is to discuss what you know about the prospect’s business (about 30% of the total presentation). At this point they are much more interested in what you know about them than what they need to know about you.
• The second part of your presentation (about 30%) needs to focus on your understanding of the prospect’s pains and needs.
• The third part of the presentation (about 30%) covers possible solutions and their benefits to the prospect. These solutions must include TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and ROI (Return on Investment). At this point some information about you and your company (about 5%) could be included, but keep it short.
• The final part of the presentation (about 5%) should cover what the next steps should be.

In “Further reading” below I’ve provided a few posts for you to review regarding presentations. I would also encourage you to look into Toastmasters International as a resource for improving your presentation skills.

You’ll get a prospect’s attention during a formal sales presentation by being different. You’ll keep your prospect’s attention by focusing on them.

Further reading:

• 14 Fundamental Sales Tips For Better PowerPoint Presentations
• What are alternatives to PowerPoint? [Sales tips for presenting without Microsoft's PowerPoint]
• Better Techniques for Using PowerPoint [Sales blog post on the brewing revolution against Microsoft's PowerPoint]
• The Four Mandatory Steps of Customer Meeting Preparation [Sales presentation preparation sales tips]

>You can automatically receive Sales Tips Blog by Scott R. Sheaffer >by email< or >by RSS<.
>Follow >Scott R. Sheaffer< on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

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Are you satisfied with your sales results?
Kay Ray can show you and your team how to reach
your objectives and unlock the door to success.
thekayray.com

If you are concerned about reaching all of the decision makers at your customers and you want to stand out from the crowd, I have something you might want to try.

First, allow me to lay the groundwork for what I’m going to propose.

Sales Facts For 2009

• Prospects and customers are less willing to give us time.
• Reaching decision makers is more difficult than ever and this trend is only getting worse.
• Purchasing decisions are increasingly being made by groups of individuals, not lone decision makers.
• We can get lost in the “white noise” of increased competitive activity. This is especially true during a recession.

There is a technique you can use to address these trends that is literally in front of your nose at most offices.

The Scenario
You’ve been working for two months to put a deal together. You make a presentation to a group of four decision makers. One of the key decision makers was not able to attend your presentation. You realize the chance of scheduling a separate meeting with her is probably zero.

The attendees tell you to email your PowerPoint to the missing decision maker and they will “relate the information you shared during your presentation.” You know that using someone else to do your selling never works.

The Digital Proposal
Rather than using the feeble approach of depending on someone inside the prospect company to do your selling (and they won’t), use technology that is right at your fingertips. Video, or even narrated PowerPoint, is what I’m suggesting. These are simple and highly available technologies.

• Make a personal video targeted at the missing decision maker. Keep it very short, to the point and use his or her name in it. Cover only your key points and remove the blather about the history of your company. This does not need to be a studio quality production, incidentally.
• If you can’t put together a video, then use the PowerPoint you created for the meeting, customize it for the missing decision maker and add audio. Yes, you can record audio on PowerPoints.
• Email the video or narrated PowerPoint to the missing decision maker with any relevant supporting materials. Include a note about how you intend to follow-up. Be sure to call or send an email to let him or her know this “package” is coming.

Why This Is Outstanding

• This will make you stand out from the crowd, for starters.
• It gets your voice in front of the prospect, making the points you want to make in the way you want to make them.
• It’s simple. You might already have everything you need on your computer to record a video and do basic editing. If not, see “Further reading” below for some ideas.
• Everyone is getting comfortable with short videos. You might even be making your own YouTube videos right now. Use this knowledge to create these videos and close more sales.
• While you could schedule a conference call or even a web conference with the absent decision maker, both of those options would still require him or her to put you on the calendar. Not being able to meet with you at a scheduled time is what caused the disconnect in the first place. This allows the no-show decision maker to view your material at a time of his or her choice.

Standing Out And Connecting
You will have to invest some up-front time to make this work. However, your second and third digital sales proposals will require a much smaller investment of your time, maybe even less time than trying to unsuccessfully chase down that critical decision maker.

The missing, yet critical, decision maker has never heard your voice making the points you want to make, in the way that only you could make them.  That is what makes this such a powerful selling tool.

Further reading:

• How to create web videos without breaking your budget

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©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

Below are 14 essential do’s and don’ts when putting together a successful PowerPoint presentation for a prospect. There are plenty of books, articles and sales blogs telling you how to use PowerPoint – most are bloated and don’t give you what you really need to know in a selling situation.

After creating, participating in and observing literally hundreds of PowerPoint sales presentations, let me give you some critical do’s and don’ts.

Do’s

1. In the opening slides of your PowerPoint, talk about the prospect. Let them know you are educated about their company and industry. This should represent about 50% of your slides. They’re going to buy from you for what you know about them, not for what they know about you.
2. Pose questions in your slides that will get conversation flowing and get you learning. Stop thinking of PowerPoints as a monologue. These questions should represent about 25% of your presentation.
3. It’s perfectly fine to brag about your company and its capabilities, but save it until the end of the presentation and make it no more than about 15% of your slides.
4. The last part of your PowerPoint should include a call to action and further discovery. This should represent about 10% of your slides.
5. Use less text and use bigger text.
6. Face your audience when speaking and gesture from your shoulders, not your elbows, when pointing to something on the screen.

Don’ts

1. Don’t make your audience suffer through enormous numbers of PowerPoint slides. Less is more.
2. Your prospect doesn’t really care about the last 50 years of your company’s history. Really. In fact, they don’t care about your company’s history at all at this point.
3. Cool it on jumping to a product or service solution in your initial presentation to a prospect. You don’t know what the solution is going to be yet.
4. Don’t read the slides. Make comments that add to the points on the slides.
5. If someone is not a good presenter, then pick someone else to make the presentation. You’d be amazed how many PowerPoint presentations I’ve observed where it was clear to everyone that someone else should be presenting. The most recent disaster I observed was manifested with this statement, “John should make this presentation because he could use the practice.” Don’t ever practice in front of prospects.
6. Absolutely do not use cornball graphics anywhere on a PowerPoint in a sales presentation. The biggest offenders are cartoon type graphics. If you remember nothing else from these sales tips, please remember this one.
7. For a million different reasons, please eliminate the cutesy animation.
8. If you don’t have a good handle on how to use PowerPoint (it’s not the least bit intuitive in my opinion), then take a course or get someone else to build your next presentation. Amateurish PowerPoints make you and your company look little league.

The Key Ingredient For An Effective PowerPoint Presentation
Here’s a fact. A great presenter can take an abysmal PowerPoint presentation and make it work. A poor presenter can take an effective and professional PowerPoint and make you wish you were getting a root canal instead. Apply my 14 points above, but know that the most important factor is in your choice of presenters.

Further reading:

• Better Techniques for Using PowerPoint
• What are alternatives to PowerPoint?

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