Episode 4: The Sales Process: The Presentation

Hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management. And to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate and keep together highly effective sales teams. Teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits along the journey. We also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive year is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, stronger sales teams is right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered B2B sales teams. Today, I'm refreshed. I've had a beautiful short break up on Australia's Sunshine Coast. We are one of the fortunate few who get to move between two beautiful places in this world, Melbourne and Noosa, who allow us to get the best of both worlds. If you haven't been to Noosa, by the way, it's an amazing spot in Australia's Sunshine Coast. Based in Queensland. Right? So look it up. Noosa N Double O S A. It's home to a world surf league event called the Noosa Longboard Pro and one of the most beautiful places you'll ever see. So little spoiler alert. Sometime in the next year or so we're going to be launching an epic sales conference right in the heart of Noosa and we'll fly in people from a very selected group of international sales leaders from all around the world. I'll give you more details when it's coming out, but man, it's gonna be so much fun, but also a place to learn so much when we eventually get there. But right now I'm locked and loaded and ready to jump into episode four of the Sales Process series around how we create a top shelf sales process, but one that actually works, right, for any B2B team. So a little check in for those who are new to the podcast if you haven't heard the previous episodes. But also as a really nice reminder for the rest of us, out there is the five steps of the sales process that we defined in episode one this year. So it was lead generation first base meet and greet and needs analysis Second base, the presentation stage Third base Closing is the home run and post sale account management or key account management Being the post game review today we're going to talk about the presentation stage. We've moved ourselves through a couple of challenges. Right. We're ready to stride towards third base with an awesome pitch. First, our soon to be happy new customer. Right. But if you haven't heard episode one, I'd really encourage you to just jump back to that. All of my episodes are really short and sharp and punchy. They're 20 to 30 minutes. We don't need to go longer than that. But you'll pick up some really great top line structural information that'll help you get more out of this episode. Okay, so how do we nail the presentation? I'm going to go through some structural norms today that we need to have embedded into our team or our teams. Right. And then I'll flow through into a couple of or handful, right. Key pieces of information and advice that I will have for you as their leader to stay on top of it. So me personally, I've been presenting in the B2B landscape for 20 years. I'm 40, Jenna, and it hurt when I hit 40. But I've had every type of presentation you can possibly imagine. I've traveled for a full day for the client not to show up. I've closed six figure and very close to seven figure deals on the spot. I've presented to global leaders of billion dollar companies. I've been scolded for being too young actually to be representing a company. Then by the end of that meeting and a couple of meetings afterwards, landing a seven year exclusive supply agreement, right, with that same customer. And surprisingly, I'd actually been physically assaulted in a sales presentation. I was thrown over a table, decent sized table, right. And he was a big boy. Because I was unwilling to provide better pricing for this customer. Right. Side note, I wasn't injured when the management team found out. There was a fair shock that went through the place. And it's actually fair to say that the business continued really well and at the existing pricing long after that. But hey, I don't recommend needing to get yourself thrown over a table to get a deal done. But in my experience, there are several really key structural pillars that are critical to increasing the success of your presentation stage. First one, you have to have nailed and understood the customer pain points or value opportunities for them. We've got to be so clear on what they're looking for or more specifically, what makes the opportunity a go or a no go for them. Is it return on investment, roi? Is it cost reduction? Is it opening up new customer markets for Them regulation, efficiencies in their business. Right. There are so many different goals that a business will have. We have to know this before we finalise our presentation. Right. So this requires discipline and often the courage. Right. To ask more questions in the meet and greet and needs analysis stage. It's so important and for me where the term don't be a hard working, underperforming salesperson comes from. Right. So understand the customer, pain points or value opportunities, number one. Number two, know the decision making process. So this is more than just the pain points or the value opportunities. It's all about knowing exactly what boxes, right. What criteria need to be ticked off to have a deal done. So projects will all have different criteria, Right. Tenders will have different criteria to large company deals, to small business deals. But for me, both understanding the customer pain points and also working out who's making the decision and when they're making decisions are really important to be done at the needs analysis stage. This is where I'd use the BANT or the PPVVC methods. Right. I'll recap these because they're in the needs analysis. Yes, there are a couple of acronyms and I try not to throw too many in but I think for the very basic sales kind of training approaches, I'd at least try and work in a Bant method or broad understanding of it. Right. So the Bant method, Budget, authority, need and timing. Budget authority, need and timing. This is more simply how much do you want to spend? Budget, who's making the decision, authority and when and what do they actually need? Right, That's N N for need. Lastly, timing. So if you have interesting case studies or data that will support what a customer is looking for, slot that into the band process as needed. Right. Because what it'll help you do is really get some practical and realistic responses from the customer. Next one PP VVC method. Yeah, a little bit harder to remember, but again it's the philosophy that I'm hopeful that you can train into your teams. Pain, power, vision, value, control. Right. And lastly, spend. Right. There's an S in there, almost a silent S. Right. But pain, nice and simple. Power. Are we at the right level? Are we dealing with the right people who can make the decision? Vision? Does the customer know what they're trying to achieve and how we could fit in? Right, okay, sure. How we could fit in we're going to work through during the process with them. Value. Does the customer know what value they're going to get out of this? And then control, can we move the Buyer along the journey to a decision. So for me, the silence was making sure we spend time in each of those pp, VV and C methodologies. But the most important areas are vision and value. So if you don't want to remember each of the letters, just remember that we need to make sure as part of our needs analysis that we're clear that the customer knows exactly what they're trying to achieve and what they're going to get out of this. Because when they're really clear on what they need, we can then present to that. Okay, number three. So we've spoken about understanding the customer pain points, number one. Number two, knowing the decision making process, number three is all around your preparation. Seven P's, one of my favorites. Prior proper preparation prevents pretty poor performance. Right. And you can make a couple of those words a little bit more interesting, a little bit more fun. DM me. And I'll tell you them offline what that means. But certainly my early lessons were around preparation, but also when I'm presenting that you should spend about seven minutes per slide. Right? So the seven Ps, in fact we have seven Ps and then we have seven minutes. Right per slide. So six slides, you're going to spend seven minutes per slide. So that's a 42 minute presentation and six bullet points per slide. So really what this is saying, again, you don't have to remember the specifics, but it's spend the time preparing your presentation and make sure what's on there is clear and easy to communicate. If you write a novel on your presentation, the customer will spend time reading. If you write a couple of keywords, they'll read the keywords and then they'll listen to you. So you've got to decide is it more important that they read what's on there or that they listen to what's coming out of the mouths of your salespeople? Right. If you do want people to listen clearly to your slides rather than reading a novel, you can put all that heavy data into appendices and you can refer to them when a specific question comes up. So you might be talking about a technical product that you've launched to market. And a customer says, hey, can you tell me how does this product work in the wet? Does it work in bad weather? And you can say, right, well let's slip down to appendency one. And you can see that this has been tested to a rating of IP65 and it's no problem to perform in moderate areas of wet and rain. Cool. Last but not least, Team rules of engagement. Super, super important. Everyone needs to be on board with how you're going to present. So how we will present as a team, what are the key company value points, who's presenting, what we're presenting, what agenda we're going to run, how we're going to run a standard agenda, understanding who's going to be in the room, what scope we have to negotiate on the day, if at all, how we communicate our secret sauce. Right. Lots and lots of things you can put into the standard team rules of engagement. So I'd Recommend you pick 3 or 4. Right. That are really critical and that you know, that you can all present consistently around. Right. What it breeds is, like I said, consistency, right. And consistency for me is the backbone of plenty of success. So a great example of this is, and I remember this day firsthand, is I was sitting in a presentation. It was a decent sized presentation, it was about $100,000. One of the sales people in our team at the time was brilliantly technical man, he was amazing. He knew so much, so much about. It was renewable energy at the time, so much about it. But I'd never seen him present to a customer. And it was interesting. He went into the presentation, heavy, detailed presentation and the quote. So he went through the presentation in detail, but then he actually, he pulled out the quote and he went through line by line on the quote and everything that the quote meant, all the technical pieces of information. And this meeting must have gone for about an hour and a quarter before the customer politely stopped him. And I remember walking out of that meeting thinking, wow, you technically are amazing and really could be anything. Such a bright and hard working part of our team. But he just didn't know how to present. There was no consistency in his presentation. Well, there was, I guess he was going into heaps of detail, but no consistency across what the rest of the team was doing. And at this stage we had a really successful team, right. They were killing it. But he hadn't jumped onto that base level of presentation that the team had. He'd really gone out his own way and was suffering for it. Right. He didn't get the deal. What happened from here was I put this part, this person in our sales team together with a couple of other team members and we actually sat down as a group and went through what are the most important parts for an effective presentation. And he then spent. It probably took him about six months, right? And in about six months time he really started to get some great results. But two years later, he was the Number one, member of the sales team. By daylight, he was a long way ahead and it was all because he'd really committed himself to getting better at what he did. But he'd had some fantastic structures to help him along that journey. So I mean, for me it was amazing, right, to turn this around. I think territory grew by about $5 million in a reasonable margin environment. It was fantastic. But for me that the lesson came out of that, for me was that I needed to make sure all of my team were understanding how we presented as a business. Right. And so very quickly I built out those rules of engagement and we got lots more consistency and lots more insight and feedback into how we presented. Okay, so number one was understanding customer pain points or the value opportunity. Right. Number two was knowing the decision making process, who, what, when and how. Number three was preparation all about making sure your presentation was concise and exactly what the customer needed. Number four, team rules of engagement, understanding as a team, how we present and what's most important. So that's the preparation piece, right? Four parts of the preparation. Lots of information in there that should really help you build standards in your team. But all just the pre season, right, Compared to the main game, which is how you're presenting in the actual meeting. So I've been to thousands of presentations, phone on site, face to face video calls, and even via online forum. And I mean that thousands. What I'm about to go through is relevant to each type of presentation method and with a few tweaks, right. That I'll go through at each stage. But if you're multitasking, guys, now's the time to come back to me because these are some really great and concise tips to help you really nail the actual meeting. Okay. Number one, make sure whatever you are presenting makes the customer feel as if it's been created just for them. So a brand logo in the top corner is not doing that. Right. And you should have covered this off in presentation. But, but the best people that I've seen know how to balance the standardized presentation with a level of customization. So typically that's going to mean you've got two to three pages of customized information, you're taking along specific industry examples to share, or you're using data about the business in your pitch, right? So you've leveraged that thing called the Internet, social media, your networks, right. To really find out exactly what is most relevant to the customer. And of course you've rehearsed, right? You've rehearsed in the same format as you'd be presenting in terms of role play or with colleagues. You've really found a way that you're able to practise in an in situ environment as to what you're going to be presenting. Now, look, that does sound a little bit like preparation rather than the actual meeting, but I think it's worth mentioning now because it can very easily get lost in the transition from preparation to the meeting. It's really important that before teams go into meetings that they know what's customized, they know their examples. Right. And they know the data that's gonna be presented about the businesses in their pitch. Right? So all of this has to happen that five minutes before you walk into a meeting and do a presentation that you know exactly what you're gonna be talking to with the customer. Okay. Number two, get something into the customer sphere of control in the presentation. Right? Okay, that sounds a bit flashy, but what it actually means is make sure you're taking a physical product. Right? A company demo is there with you. If you're presenting online, clearly it's going to be a demo or links. Or maybe you've even emailed them some samples. Emailed. Maybe you've even mailed them some samples before the presentation. Right. Perhaps you're taking them on a site visit to another customer, you're giving them a phone number to call. Right. As long as it's something that's giving them real power in more than just the decision. Okay. They have the power in the decision, but actually give them some power to see and feel and have direct experience or even indirect experience with what you're offering. A fantastic example I've seen of this and today, a bit of a theme around renewables is it was in the solar industry and it was a business that had an online solar calculator, public knowledge out there for anyone to jump onto. And the team members, when they go through their presentation, they'd actually have the customer log on. It was a commercial business. They'd often pick their houses, right. Ask the customer for their address, or if they didn't feel comfortable doing that, they'd do it on top of their commercial premise, where they were sitting and the customer could actually design their own solar system. Really, really cool, right? Had such strong engagement in presentations that it also managed to move the customers along that buying journey a lot quicker. Right. They had control over more than just saying, yes, we're going ahead, or no, we're not. They actually had some control about how they designed the system. Super cool. And something you should really consider. All right. Number three, make sure there's an agenda for that meeting. Right. And confirm exactly what you're presenting with the customer and what they're looking for. So this is essentially an active confirmation step where by setting an agenda, you are confirming with the customer that what you are going through is what they want to know. Yes. The cautious side will say, well, what happens if the customer says no, that's wrong. Great part there is. Well, worst case, you can actually stop and come back without wasting a whole lot of their time. But for salespeople that are really experienced, and certainly as a leader, if you've managed to train your team on being able to think on the spot, is that they can pivot what they're talking about in that meeting to make sure that it's bang on point for the customer. So number four, rolling storytelling and social proof. Right. So rather than customers found a saving of 15% or they increase their revenue times two or something that is generic. Sure, it's positive, but generic and without some type of fact. Use specific examples. Right. Of brands they know and relate them back explicitly to their business. So that might be something like instead of saying customers found a saving of 15%, you might be able to say, look the automobile company up the road, called James's Automobiles. Right. They actually implemented our method. And what happened? The result was that their procurement team were able to find savings of 15% because they had a much more targeted approach to the suppliers they were going to work with. Right. Or an example around growing revenue. Right. Might be really specific about, look the fitness center up the road. It took on our new membership methodology. They used our marketing program, which allowed them to focus on a really specific market segment. And they grew their revenue times too, because all of their proof points were based exactly around appealing to that customer base. So they are very specific examples as to how people have managed to use storytelling or social proof to grow their brands. Okay. So number one, make sure whatever you're presenting makes the customer feel special. Number two, get something into the customer's hands or certainly into their keypad or their mouse. Set an agenda. Number three, role in storytelling and social proof. Number four. And number five is be really specific in how the product will benefit them. There's no dress rehearsal. Right. You get one chance to get across the reason to your buyer in this meeting. Sure, you might have second meetings, you might have more points of contact, but this is the opportunity to really communicate with a customer about the benefits they're going to get from working with your business or your product or your service or whatever your brand may offer. So your sales team needs to make sure that these benefits are clinical in terms of how they're presented to the customer. Number six, I've spoken a bit about objection handling. We need to try and bring forward objections, so the earlier they come up, the better you can handle them. So how do you draw objections out? For me, one of the most powerful questions is, how am I going? Right? And you can then follow that through with, is there anything we've missed? Is there anything that really insightful, Is there anything that's absolutely close to what you need or hit the nail on the head in terms of what you need that you'd like me to go through? Is there something that I need to explain more? Is there something that's not quite right? You can ask these questions in any way you like, but for certain, the earlier you get these out, the more likely you are to receive those objections, because the last thing that we want is to hear those at the end of a sales process. So objection handling or even micro closing, right? Which I personally call it, it's the most effective form of closing I've ever seen. And if you can run that through your sales presentation and get through as many objections as you can during this stage, then it allows you to be really deliberate at the end when you're looking to clearly understand next steps. Next step. Number seven, allow for question time. Very similar to the objection handling piece a minute ago in that by allowing the customer time to ask questions, you are far more likely to hear what they're thinking. Right? Far more likely to understand exactly what they need to move forward or what's getting in their way. Number eight, next steps. So important I mentioned that a minute ago, it is absolutely crucial that in any rules of engagement with your teams that the last question they are asking is, what are the next steps? Right? What does the customer need to be able to make a decision to move forward? Is it more dialer? Is it testimonial? Is it pricing adjustments? Do they need to go through the rest of their business to make decisions? You need to be really clear and your team needs to be really clear on what's next. A really nice way to do that is to summarise the meeting. So here's what we've gone through today. List your five or six key points and then move into, okay, so what's next steps? You often find that if you can summarise that meeting, it refocuses what the customer is thinking on and then gives you an opportunity to really think about what's going to be happening in the next meeting. Okay, so those eight steps are, number one, make sure you're presenting something that makes the customer feel really special. Right. Number two, get something into their hands or their mouse or keypads to give them more control than just yes or no. 3, set an agenda. Number four, rolling storytelling and social proof. Number five, be really specific in communicating how the product or service will benefit them. Number six and seven, quite close. Try to bring forward objections so you can handle them in this stage rather than at the closed stage when you're not face to face. And you can do that by number seven, which is allowing for question time. Number eight. So important next steps, summarise the meeting and make sure we're clear on what's happening. Okay, so lastly, a little bonus on presenting via video. It's clearly becoming a lot more commonplace. Right. Covid has changed the way that we operate. So I just want to run through six or seven points that will help you presenting via video. First one, and it's on top of what we've gone through before, is get your software right. Right. We've got to make sure that the team know the platform that they're going to use. Is it Ms. Teams? Is it Google Meet? Is it Zoom? Right. Which personally I've had mixed experience on. Or something like Ringcentral. Right. Which is look it up. Ringcentral. Right. It's a newer technology. We have to make sure that our teams know exactly how to use the software, understand how to troubleshoot and understand how to physically and practically get the most out of that software. Next one, practice eye control. Right. It's all about where to look in the camera. The easiest, most effective way I've seen is look straight into the camera. Don't look at yourself in the screen. Very, very hard, but look into the camera backgrounds. So easy to get wrong. Right. Have something interesting, but. But don't go too far left or right. The other week I had a meeting with someone who had a guitar in the background. I said, hey, you play guitar? And he said, no, I don't. And I looked at it a little bit puzzled and I said, so why have you got a guitar in your background? This was a salesperson and he said, it gives me something to talk about. Cheeky, but made me smile. Next one. Presentation and rapport building are just as important in video calls as face to face. Really important that even though it's a little bit more awkward or a little bit less smooth, important to spend some time around rapport building. And building great presentations. Next one, be sure to stop talking and ask questions. It's a lot harder in a presentation environment to stop and ask questions, so you need to be more deliberate when you do so. And last but not least, it is so much harder to keep people's attention in video presentations, right? So you gotta step up your game in terms of quality of preso you your teams need to keep them interested, vary the stimulus that customers are receiving, use a different blend of voice and volume and pitch, use PDFs, use videos and even move between screens, right? So for me, I'll often stop presenting mid presentation, return to the video, check in and then keep going. Okay, so there you have it folks. That is a jam packed episode and we've built some team norms for how you present and provide a framework for effective presentations. We've only scratched the surface in presenting, so my friends expect to see more episodes in coming months around this. Next up though, is closing that point in time that makes even the most confident of salespeople a little on edge. Now that's coming up next week on the Strongest Sales Team podcast. But for those who want to dive deeper, I'll have a free how to guide for not only creating a sales process that teams will actually follow, but also more details on each of the steps. This will come out shortly. DM ME sales processtrongersales teams on either LinkedIn or Instagram to be put onto the mailing list for when it comes out. I'd also recommend you jump back to episode one of this year. I mentioned that earlier, but we really did. Or redefine sales processes into a really simple and repeatable program. The first six podcasts I've said are all clearly related. They're all interconnected. So important you get back to number one. All right, last but not least, today's health and fitness tip. Continuing on the theme of how to be active while at work. So any meetings where you're not an active contributor, I would highly recommend you put on the headphones and go for a walk. Right? Burn some extra energy. For me, there's no shame in setting a culture that supports when you are a listener to a meeting and don't need to be in front of a computer to see presentations. Right? That you are actively encouraging that people are able to get outside, get some fresh air and get some exercise. Right? As a leader, you clearly have the opportunity to do this. And personally I actually find that I'm often more engaged when I'm a little active during a meeting. So set the standard and let the team follow. That's it for today. Until next time. Keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Want to be kept up to date with any of our free materials to help help you build the best sales teams possible? Well, the easiest way you can do so is to follow us on your favourite social media channel. We're stronger sales teams on most of them, and if you DM us stronger, we'll send you right back some great resources to help you build your super powered sales team. If you'd like a little more help, please get in touch directly and book a free discovery call with me. I run a limited number of these sessions and they're free for my podcast listeners. I'd love to help you out. Until then, see you next week for another podcast of stronger sales teams.