They Won't Buy If They are Asleep

Essential presentation skills for sales

Christmas was going to come early. I was about to see some I was going to have a chance to see cutting edge technology that a leading corporation would be unveiling. On paper it was going to be a great presentation and the excitement was palatable. The person presenting would be a software engineer who would talk about how this new technology was signaling the direction the company was moving. It was really an amazing opportunity for them as well to take advance orders and generate excitement.

Talk about getting a lump of coal in your stocking! In hindsight, I think I would have preferred to have oral surgery without an anesthetic. It would have been shorter and less painful.

The speaker spoke in a droll monotone and then started reading his Powerpoint presentation in the same boring monotone. Even the slides were boring, offering such enlightening insight as Why technology in your workplace? Call me naive, but I would think that information technology professionals would already know that. Within 5 minutes, virtually everyone in the room had tuned the speaker out and was no longer listening, by 30 minutes there was thought of forming a lynch mob to get him to stop.

As bad as the presentation started, it actually got worse. The slides didn’t even touch on the key information the attendees were looking for, which further alienated the entire audience. It was obvious that the software developer was presenting information that was important to him without a single thought about who he was presenting to. Eventually the gentle snoring that could be heard in the back of the room crescendos into one of the attendee’s literally falling into a plate of food that was sitting in front of him asleep. The attendee quickly raised his head back up with small bits of food still stuck on his face as the room stopped. People did their best to hide their laughter, but the damage was done. After all, everyone realized, this participant finally succumbed to the fatigue that everybody in the room had been fighting.

Unfortunately, incidents like this happen all too often- albeit less dramatically. Think back in just your own experience. How many presentations you’ve sat through where you had to fight as hard as you could to simply stay awake? We have all been there, doing our best to just keep our eyes open and not yawn rudely in front of the speaker. Although The most important problem here is that when this is happening, nothing is actually happening. The money you’ve spent, the time you’ve invested are all lost. In fact, the attendees are probably thinking that they will never put themselves through this again. The lights may be on, but the audience has mentally left the building. The truth is that, no matter how important the information you are presenting is, nobody can hear it if they are not paying attention. The truth is people will not buy if they are asleep!

So where do sales professionals go wrong? The mistake lies in their in thinking. Sales people are not just there to communicate information, they are there to communicate information in an entertaining way. By understanding this simple principle, sales professionals would be amazed at the dramatic results they would achieve.

Here are some simple, effective tips for improving your next presentation:

• Remember that people want to be entertained as well as be informed. Think about the reviews a dull movie receives. It’s the same with presentations. People will give you a lousy review unless you attempt to not only inform, but make the presentation fun and interesting at the same time. You can do that by focusing specifically on what the audience will want to know, eliminating fluff material that is not required and making the presentation interactive.

• Cut the fluff. Focus on what the audience wants to know. By eliminating the fluff such as ‘history of the company’ or ‘why technology’, you can really hit the high points of your message, which should how your product or service is unique and solves a problem that the audience is facing. It also makes your presentation much more powerful by making it precise.

• 3s a charm! What many people don’t understand is that the more information you give, the less likely the audience is to remember. The brain simply becomes overwhelmed with too much new information to process. According to a number of memory studies conducted, the optimal number for memory retention is 3. This is an important fact to remember for your presentation. You should have only present three fundamental concepts to your audience. By adding in more you start to dramatically reduce the effectiveness of your presentation. So when putting your presentation together, try and focus on the three most important points you want to convey, and at the end summarize them again. By telling your audience that if they take only three things away from your presentation that these are the things they need to remember- and they will.

• Use humor. It’s been proven that if humor increases retention by at least 70%. Humor engages people to retain what they heard. Think of something funny you saw recently and the impact it had on you. Don’t be afraid you won’t appear professional. Done properly and with good taste, you will actually appear more professional. Those who use this technique know that it is powerful and effective and are considered some of the best presenters in their fields.

• Never give a one-size fits all presentation. There is nothing worse than a canned speech that gets bogged down in details and ignores the audience. Focus instead on providing the audience with insight about how it solves a problem that the competition does not. Focus on what is truly be important to your audience and do not just give a ‘one size fits all’ presentation. For example, if you sell software, gloss over the obvious aspects of what your product does. Provide something that the competition does not, such as adding new functionality that solves a known industry problem. This will get the audience’s attention much more effectively – and keep it.

• Charts and graphs do not tell stories. Mark Twain once wrote that there were three types of lies – lies, damned lies and statistics. Instead of providing loads of meaningless numbers, why not tell stories that illustrate the numbers instead? Not only will it be more successful, it will bring the message home much more effectively as well. People would you rather hear how a company returned to profitability and increased sales by 27% in the fourth quarter then seeing a series of pie charts and graphs about how the software can work to help organizational effectiveness.

• Be charismatic. While that that may sound challenging, this can be done easily by simply controlling how you breathe. When you breathe deeply and control your breath, you are controlling the breathing of the audience and they will be mesmerized. Actors use this technique to create charisma. by simply standing on the stage silently. In addition, be sure to various your voice, varying the speeding of your delivery, pausing for effect, walking around the room, asking questions to people in the audience, etc. Although nobody could remember a single thing that the delivery.

• Remember the 4 Bs Be brief, Be bright, Be entertaining and Be gone. It is better to leave them wanting more than wanting revenge.

Remember that nobody will buy your product if you put them to sleep. By thinking about how you present as well as what you present, you will find that your presentations focus not on you but on your customer, become much more effective and result in increased sales. Plus, you will ensure that no one in your audience falls into their plate of mashed potatoes as well.

This article was co-written with Errol Greene. Errol is the manager of sales for Ports and Docks for Psion Teklogix.