Crafting Effective Sales Presentations
Creating the "aha" moment for a prospect is hard work. Buyer personas, visions of success, and storytelling are the key mechanisms used in developing that "aha" moment. There are other considerations that are required to use these mechanisms successfully.
Taking into Consideration Attention Span
The blank stare. The nodding head (in sleepiness or boredom). The unstifled yawn. These are all the enemies of the presentation presenter.
What you don't know about attention span can kill your presentation.
We use the following truths to guide sales presentation development.
- You can't keep attention you have never captured.
Therefore it is critical that you open the sales presentation in such a way that you turn bodies in chairs into attentive participants.
- You have at most 20 minutes before a prospect's attention takes its own break.
That means that you need to be much more selective in what information you want to communicate.
- Once it is captured, a prospect's attention starts its decline in attentiveness.
For this reason, contrary to standard presentation procedure, you want to place the most compelling and important information early in the presentation.
The good news is that you can create effective 60 minute sales presentation experiences.
Read more about attention span in the
MarketSense blog.
Contact us to discuss how you can better gain and maintain your prospects' attention in your sales presentations.
Supporting Different Buyer Modalities
A good sales rep knows intuitively how to deal with prospects with different buyer modalities. But when the sales presentation doesn't support those different modalities, the sales rep will have to do all sorts of dancing around the slides to effectively communicate with the prospect.
A buyer modality is the behavior a prospect will exhibit in the buying process. Prospects with different modalities will approach your sales presentation with very different information needs.
Let's look at some examples.
- A methodical prospect likes the logical approach.
They need organization and detail. They want to know how your solution does what it does.
- A spontaneous prospect takes the active approach.
They care about the here and now. They want you to address their immediate needs in a relevant and credible manner.
- A humanistic prospect likes the relationship approach.
They value the quality of the relationship. They want the big picture view through the lens of others who have used your solution.
- A competitive prospect takes the goal-oriented approach.
They are explorers who need to seek and understand. They want to know what your solution can do for them.
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