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If you sell larger-ticket items or services, chances are you give sales presentations. And chances are you're doing it wrong. Here's a quick checklist to decide if your sales presentation needs work;

• Are your first slides full of company information?
• Do you use the same slide deck for every presentation?
• Are your slides full of bullets?
• Are your on-screen sentences more than 6-8 words?
• Does any slide require more than 5 seconds of reading?
• Do you spend time on demonstrations when a screen-shot would suffice?

Most of us are guilty of a few (or all) of these things. It's OK. You're doing things exactly the same way your competitors are. If your product/pricing/reputation are superior enough, you may make an average number of sales this way. If you want to provide greater value and a vastly more enjoyable experience for your prospects, we should explore some ways you can improve this process.

Your sales presentation should tell a detailed story of how your product/service will improve life for those involved. Does where your corporate office is located have any impact your audience? If it does fine, but ask yourself if every part of your presentation adds value. If it doesn't, ditch it. Does how many years you've been in business matter? Salesforce.com is one of the youngest companies in the CRM space yet probably the most respected.

My point is, get rid of the useless. It's your job to understand what will add value to your audience and deliver nothing more. If you haven't had enough dialogue to understand where the value lies, reschedule the meeting. If your slides are full of information easily found online or in your brochures, unplug the Internet and start over.

OK, plug it back in, you'll need it for research.

On the subject of useless, are their people from your company involved in your meeting that don't need to be? I have a competitor who regularly brings 6-10 people to every presentation, while all but 2 of them remain silent. It overwhelms the conference room and makes the prospect wonder if your bulging travel budget is reflected in your pricing.

So how do we do things right?

The next section will be broken into two parts. The first will focus on the technical aspects of delivering your presentation, the second will focus on what's in the presentation.

Discovery vs. Presentation

Always treat these as two separate steps. The first half of your presentation should not be spent asking questions to determine how the second half will go. That is a separate meeting involving the stakeholders to determine where the value is. Again, if you haven't done discovery, reschedule the meeting. You also need to make sure your team members understand this and show up to the dance armed with the information you've already gathered. Don't make the prospect repeat themselves and reset the foundation. It's a waste of time and cause for frustration.

Use an Agenda

It doesn't need to be on the slides or in the handouts (which you never give until after the presentation, right?) but you need to set one and use it. This should be a mutually agreed upon set of objectives between you and the prospect and should be addressed briefly at the beginning of your presentation so everyone knows what to expect, and can suggest changes if needed.

To present last? Or first?

In a competitive selling environment, when you present (relative to the other vendors) can be a major advantage. Most sales professionals don't think to suggest when they'd like to go, so the chances that you can pick your spot are pretty good.

So when do you go? Personally, if during my discovery I have uncovered that I have major unique advantages and a powerful story to tell, I like to go first to set the bar for the other presenters. If my discovery has not uncovered many ways were I have an advantage, or if I feel like another in is in the lead, I like to go last. When going last, I also lik e to make sure I show them a few things they haven't seen before.

Be cautious, while going last has it's advantages, you should be extra careful in excluding unnecessary information or education points, as they are probably already fairly well informed and tired of being in the conference room. Another advantage of going last is that they will typically ask more questions and give you more opportunity to show value. In the first presentation, they didn't know what to ask.

Finally, when presenting last you have a unique opportunity to determine how you stack up against the competition. By simply asking "considering all of the presentations you've seen, are there any areas where you do not feel we are the best solution, or any capabilities that we have not yet demonstrated?" You're the only presenter with this advantage.

In Person vs. Virtual

There are times when either is appropriate, and you're a professional who can distinguish which is best. However there are things to consider for each which may fall into the common sense category, but I will reiterate them just in case.

In Person

• Establish a time to arrive which will allow you to properly setup, grab a drink of water, test Internet connection, etc. Don't assume the contact knows you will arrive early. Also, always get a cell number for your contact - they are probably shuffling around before you arrive.
• In a conference room setting, avoid the 'us vs. them' seating arrangement. Get cozy. During discussion periods it should feel like a roundtable discussion. It truly makes a difference to the vibe in the room. You hope to be working closely with these people. Be a team.
• Don't speak from behind the audience while they look at the screen. There shouldn't be much there to look at anyway. You are the mascot, let them see your enthusiasm (If you don't have enthusiasm for what you sell, check out our job boards.) The prospect's eyes should focus on the screen for no more than 5-10 seconds, the rest of the time they are witnessing wisdom and value spew from your happy face.
• Don't walk around handing out business cards one-by-one while everyone is sitting down. This is just a pet peeve of mine. You can do that at the end if needed, but business cards are dead in my opinion. You're going to invite them to join your LinkedIn network tomorrow anyway, aren't you?
• Some of us have a tendency to focus eye contact only on the people you are familiar with. Don't do that. Anyone in that room can roadblock your sale. Spread the love.
• Use a presentation clicker. Nothing screws up your momentum like walking back to the laptop to change slides. Good ones aren't cheap, but they are worth it. Here are someoptions. There are also some cool iPhone applications that can be used to advance your PowerPoint slides from your phone (sure to impress the IT folks in the room).

Virtual

• Send the virtual conference details when you set the meeting, not the day before/of the meeting. They want to get people scheduled before calendars fill up. Don't make them send an update when you get around to setting up the virtual conference.
• Ask the prospect to test out the virtual conference tool in advance, even if it's one they use regularly - they are updated often.
• Ask the prospect to arrive a few minutes early so you can work through any technical issues without eating into your meeting time.
• If there are more than 5-6 people on the prospect's side, don't ask for introductions - it can be awkward. Instead, find out who is coming in advance and acknowledge them. You should get an attendee list in advance regardless.
• When introducing your team, give a title and why you have asked them to join. Having your team introduce themselves can also be awkward, just pause briefly for them to say hello if you are more comfortable with that.
• Your team should be accustomed to stating their name before they speak if there are more than 2-3 people. Otherwise the prospect can be confused as to who is talking. You can tell their voices apart, your prospect probably cannot.
• Invite prospects to use the chat box for questions so they don't forget them while you are talking. Make sure someone is watching the chat window.
• Use a headset. One benefit is that you have your hands free to run the presentation. The other (and maybe this is just me) is that it keeps me from wandering away. I used to have a bad habit of this, and have to trek back to my computer (sometimes rooms away) to change the slide. I still use a fairly long cord.
• No breaks in virtual meetings. It's just too difficult to manage. If someone needs to get up, they'll do it. If your meeting is long enough to require breaks, have it in person (and consider shortening it - studies show most people's attention span lasts about 15-20 minutes, especially executives).

OK, so now we've laid the groundwork for a professional, well conducted meeting. Before we move on to the presentation itself, here are a few more tips to keep in mind.

1. Practice your presentation. Because every presentation should be mostly unique based on the prospect's situation, this will not be a canned presentation you can give with no preparation. Every time I give a presentation, it is the first time I have given that presentation. As such, it's important to run through it once to yourself. Do it out loud. When you goof up, start from the beginning. By the end you'll be so comfortable with the delivery, it will flow with ease on game day.
2. Print your slides 6 to a page and keep them handy. I find it useful to know what slide is coming next before it appears so I can make an intelligent transition. Otherwise it almost seems as if you're just seeing the slide for the first time yourself as you gather your thoughts.
3. Kindly reject RSVP's. If there are people from the prospect's side that won't get any value out of the meeting, let them know and suggest setting up a separate meeting. This happens often with IT people are brought into meetings unnecessarily. Why do they invite them? Because your competition gives the dog-and-pony that includes every piece of irrelevant information they can fit on a slide. You tell a story about a brighter day for their business, only touching on technicalities if needed.
4. If you are not fully comfortable with speaking to groups, join a local Toast Masters group or volunteer to give internal presentations to your company. Practice is the only way to get over this hurdle (which is especially common among folks who transition from inside sales). Anyone who tells you to just "picture them naked", hasn't spoken in public.

On to the presentation.

Slides. Slides. Slides.

Even if you are excellent at solution selling and gaining buy-in from power, at some point you are probably going to have to put together a slide deck to educate a group on the value of your product or service. In a perfect world, slides wouldn't exist. A presentation would just be you, your prospect and your ideas. But they are going to want to see it, and slide presentations or virtual demos are the way they are used to doing so.

Believe it or not, this is the area where most sales people come up WAY short. Not everyone is great in front of an audience. Not everyone has the polished look or charisma of a news anchor. These things do not need to be disadvantages. Everyone can however structure a meaningful presentation, void of any fluff and full of value. To do otherwise, while unfortunately common, is a huge opportunity lost.

There's a common phrase involving PowerPoint and "death", which I dislike so much I can't bring myself to string it together here (I am allergic to cliche). But the fact is, most slide presentations bore the snot out of a large portion of your audience. Half of them were told to be there and would rather be doing anything else. They expect boring slide after boring slide. If you give them any reason to think your presentation is the same (bullets anyone?), you'll lose that group immediately. The other half will suffer through the typical presentation because regardless of your lousy slides, they need to solve a problem or harness an opportunity.

Here is a quick formula for a good slide deck;

• Less words
• Less bullets
• Less slides
• Less fluff (transitions, clip-art, facts)

And

• More Pictures/Diagrams
• More focus on the presenter and their ideas
• More 'story' telling
• More prospect

This is quite a bit different from what most of us are familiar with. Your company probably breaks all of these rules. Every presentation you've ever seen probably breaks all of these rules. That doesn't make it OK. If all you have to offer is bullets and drawn out text, what use are you? A document would suffice just fine.

Your value is your expertise and your ideas. As soon as you put them in a slide, they are no longer your ideas (in the prospects mind). They could have come from anywhere. There is no enthusiasm or emotion in words on the screen. The slide should be a representation of an idea, the good stuff should be coming out of your mouth.

You can read. So what?! Nobody wants to be read to. Never repeat the information on the screen verbatim (or even close). It's just dumb and I don't think I need to explain why.

They can read. And they will. Text on the screen should not take more than 5 seconds to read. If they spend more time than that reading, they are not paying attention to you. Seth Godin, one of my favorite idea people, has said in his articles and books that you should never use more than 6 words on a slide. I tend to agree, but I understand this will be too dramatic a change until you get used to presenting in a different way. When you get good at it, you'll begin to see the beauty and you can shoot for the 6 word mark. There are exceptions to this rule, such as a quote, but they are rare.

Here's an example of old thinking vs. new;

vs.        

In the first example, not a single item on that list is going to resonate. It's all stats and every vendor who has walked through that door had them. In the second example, you reference emotion and then YOU tell the prospect about why your customer experience is so extraordinary.

Now, if you adopt this idea (which I hope you do), you may be inclined to use more slides. Don't. In fact, if done properly, you can probably give your whole presentation using just 5-6 slides. How different would that be from the 42 slide presentation your prospect just sat through?

If you still find yourself left with bullets, consider giving each item a separate slide. Then decide if an image or diagram can properly relay the message. If it is really important enough to leave in the presentation, give it the attention it deserves.

Images

A picture is worth how many words? Use them whenever possible to accent your point. A well thought out diagram is just as good. When using diagrams, make sure they are not cluttered or tough to understand. When choosing pictures, get good quality stock photos from istockphoto.com or stock.xchng. Do not use the lousy clip art provided with PowerPoint. It's worth noting though that Office 2007 does have some very well formatted 'Smart Art' for creating diagrams. Another great (free) resource is my.lovelycharts.com. You can read more about Lovely Charts here.

Content

Every slide in your presentation should tell a story about how the prospect's life will be better with your solution. All of them. You can use things like similar case studies, prospect specific samples or samples of previous work.

One thing that every presentation should also include are new ideas. Something that the prospect had not yet considered that your solution can help with. It could be simplifying a process, eliminating redundant solutions, impacting a separate business unit or simply doing something better than they had expected. We've all had those moments when the audience starts nodding in agreement and talking amongst themselves. These are the moments you should aim for.

As I mentioned, I build every presentation from scratch. I determine what I need to display to accentuate my message, and in what order. Then I go about creating my slides and putting them together. Make sure your progression of slides is logical. You wouldn't believe how many presentations are put together like Frankenstein's Monster.

I save all of my slides and add concepts that I may want to use later in a sort of master file which I call my buffet. Later,after I have conceptualized the presentation, I go through the buffet and look for slides with similar ideas that I can re-purpose. This saves me a lot of time and I often come up with better ideas for the presentation after browsing previous ones.

Design

Your company may have standard branding guidelines, or even templates for presentations. If they are trash, say so. A poorly designed template can distract your audience or give an amateurish impression. In addition, there may be extra information on those slides that doesn't need to be there. Is the prospect really going to forget which company is presenting to them on every slide and need to be reminded with a logo?

Don't be afraid of white space. Some people feel the need to fill every inch of the screen with something. This is not necessary and white space can dramatically enhance the aesthetics of your presentation.

There are many other concepts to consider in design such as alignment and consistency across pages, but we're not trying to turn you into designers. For more excellent information on slide design, I highly recommend a book called Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.

Conclusion

While there is a lot more that could be said on this subject, and I could probably write an entire book on it (I might), I hope I have given enough information for you to determine how you might make the presentation process better for all involved, and modify some of your current practices.

Here is a quick summary of the ideas we've discussed;

• Be prepared and conduct thorough discovery
• Eliminate the useless
• Plan for your environment (in-person vs. virtual)
• Give the audience less to read
• Bring the focus back to the presenter
• Use images and diagrams to relay ideas
• Focus on the prospect and how specifically you will help them succeed
• Cut WAY back on bullets and text
• Use a professional and well designed template

I thank you for reading and hope we can all help bring the art back to presenting. If you have found this information useful, please pass it on - or you yourself could be sitting through a lot more boring presentations.

Justyn Howard
www.passivepipeline.com

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Comments (4)

tamanna said:

	Great job, good advice!! The article is really good and provide in depth insight on how to deliver a sales presentation. I have read it all and it has included every minute details even required for making an effective and convincing sales presentation. I hope this gonna help many professionals including me in their respective jobs.Great job guys!!
	report abuse vote down vote up

March 02, 2009
Votes: +0

Ragul said:

	Great Content The featured content is very nice. I think you gave more advisory thoughts on things to be concentrated when we are doing a sales presentation.Thanks for the Great Content..
	report abuse vote down vote up

March 01, 2009
Votes: +0

Justyn said:

	@david11693 Thank you for your feedback. Being a "feature" article, this is a lengthy read. I felt that the subject matter was important enough to cover in depth and hope you found it useful. Come back and read the rest soon! Justyn
	report abuse vote down vote up

February 28, 2009
Votes: +1

david11693 said:

	comments on the above article i think this article is important but unfortunately i could not read the whole thing i highly suggest that you shorten its content maybe break it in to parts like part 1 and 2 the information in it is helpful and insightful
	report abuse vote down vote up

February 28, 2009
Votes: +0

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