Preparing For The Team Sales Presentation

Pre-call preparation for the team presentation is essential. You should each know what your respective roles are going to be on the call before you begin the presentation. Even if the presentation is one you’ve done together many times, rehearse it before you go into the meeting. This means everyone on the team, including your company’s CEO. And the practice must be a full dress rehearsal complete with the actual props you’re going to be using.

One of my most embarrassing moments occurred during a team presentation. It happened because we had not rehearsed with the actual materials we were going to use. There were four of us making a pitch that we had done many times together. Our presentations usually involved the top decision makers and were quite lengthy and detailed. We typically used a lot of boilerplate material, but the key points were always customized for the prospect we were pitching.

The climax of the pitch came when I would present our revenue projections for the prospect. I typically jumped into that page like a preacher at a revival, giving it everything I had. On this occasion, though, when I turned the page I saw the headings of the columns of figures carried not this prospect’s name but the name of the company we had pitched the week before. The figures were correct, but they looked like they belonged to another company.

We all saw the simple little word processing mistake at the same time and everyone in the room was embarrassed, including the prospect. But the damage had been done. This little mistake completely undermined the “personal attention to each client” benefit that was our primary selling point. It cost us a $6 million client. The material had been proofread by three people, including me. But we hadn’t used the actual materials in our rehearsal the night before. I’ll always believe that we would have caught the mistake if we had followed that simple little rule.

In addition to the pitch itself, you should also rehearse the answers to particular questions and objections that you expect to crop up. It’s important to know which person on the team is going to answer which question so that there’s no fumbling when it arises. If the prospect asks you about delivery dates, for example, you don’t want a long awkward pause followed by three people giving three different answers all at once. You also don’t want your team leader to “hand off” a question to someone who’s not expecting it.

You also need to organize your visual aids under the management of one member of the team. We’ve all seen blooper video where three outfielders collide under the same fly ball in short center field. You don’t want that to happen to you in front of a room full of prospects, so make sure each piece of equipment and each piece of hand-out material is one person’s responsibility. Your hand-outs, by the way, should be managed the same way they are in a group presentation—the one team member responsible for them passes them out with the order and flow you want.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Keeping Sales Presentations To Groups On Track

On very rare occasions a group presentation will turn ugly. No matter what happens, keep your cool. If you get a hostile question or comment, thank the person for sharing their thoughts with you, then deal with it just like you would handle an objection. If the whole room starts twitching in their seats, stop your pitch and ask them if you’ve said something wrong, then correct your misstatement.

The most common problem you’ll face with groups, though, isn’t hostility, it’s keeping them on the track you want them to follow. It seems like every group has a leader or a loud-mouth (sometimes it’s the same person) who wants to comment on every point you make, and everything everyone else says, too. Don’t take it personally, though, because this person probably acts the same way every time this group gets together. In fact, you can usually identify this guy before he opens his mouth because the rest of the crowd will start rolling their eyes when they see his hand go up the first time.

I wish I had a magic incantation for you to use in this situation, but I don’t. All you can do is stay pleasant and polite, not hesitating to change the subject back to your presentation before the loud-mouth can ask a follow-up question. Try to resist the temptation to put them in their place the way a stand-up comic deals with a heckler in a nightclub. Just grin and bear it and try not to lose your place in your pitch. Actually, the sympathy the rest of the group feels for you might well work in your favor

Another unpleasant situation is when the meeting degenerates into the dreaded “I Can Top That” routine. When the war stories start, everyone in the room seems to have a primal urge to contribute one. Each one has to be more horrible than the last one, of course, and the negative energy in the room just builds and builds. If it goes unchecked, you end up with an ugly mob on your hands.

Once again, the best tactic is to jump in before the momentum builds. The best rule of thumb is to interrupt after the second story is told. Don’t let the third one even get started. Give them a polite “That’s very interesting” and get back into your presentation. If you’re really good, you’ll be able to relate the benefits of your proposal to the problem that sparked the first story.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Sales Presentations To Groups

The dynamics of group presentations can be interesting, to say the least. This is a sales presentation, not a floorshow, so you want to encourage questions and comments from the group. In fact, you should plan to ask some questions of your own just like you would if you were meeting with the prospect one-on-one.

Your questions can either be thrown out to the group as a whole or addressed to one person in particular, depending on which is more appropriate. You will find that agreement questions such as “Do you like this idea?” don’t work very well in a group setting. There’s too much danger of the group splitting into factions or a particularly out-spoken member shooting you down before you get into your presentation.

Information questions, though, such as “Who is your biggest competitor?” can work very well. Many times, they’ll spark an intra-group discussion, which is a great time to listen closely and learn a lot. Watch the group dynamics to learn who the leaders really are. Obviously, you’ll want to listen to what they say about their business, their market, and their competitors as well as what they say about your idea, your company, and your competitors.

You should welcome questions or comments that come from the group, even when they break up the flow of your presentation. If the question is one you don’t want to answer yet, it’s perfectly acceptable to say that you’re going to cover that subject in a minute. Just make sure you do cover it before you end your presentation. If it’s a question about your proposal that indicates the listener doesn’t understand something, take the time right then to make it clear. If one person didn’t get it, there are probably others who missed it, too.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.