Control Your Sales Presentations To Groups

Selling is just like playing chess—the rules are the same every time but no two games are just exactly alike. And it’s a good thing, too, since we’d all get bored pretty quickly if the games ever started repeating themselves. One of the variations many salespeople encounter is the need to make a presentation to a group rather than to a single prospect.

It may be Mr. Big and his assistant, a committee of decision-makers and decision-influencers, or even the board of directors. When you make a group presentation, you’re generally working in a different physical setting that can range from chairs pulled around the prospect’s desk to a conference room with a table the size of an aircraft carrier. You might even have to make your pitch in an auditorium complete with podium and sound system.

Regardless of the setting, the basic differences between a group presentation and a one-on-one call deal with the distribution and control of your written materials and handling the very different dynamics of large group meetings. It’s important to remember, though, that all the other good sales techniques remain the same. Your goal is still to gather information about the prospect, for example, and you should still follow the five-page presentation format I introduced in The Dynamic Manager’s Guide To Sales Techniques, including asking questions at the end of each page. Your stage presence and enthusiasm level are even more important when pitching a group, though, as is your ability to gain their attention and hold their interest.

Handling your written materials is actually easier in many ways when you are working with a group. The best tactic to control the pace of the presentation is to hand out one page of the presentation at a time. You never want to distribute the entire proposal at the beginning for the same reason you shouldn’t just hand it to a single prospect: they’ll turn immediately to the price and fixate on it. Instead, hand out each page in its turn. In a small room with a limited number of participants, you can handle this easily yourself—provided you can walk and talk at the same time. With a larger group you may need some assistance, which can be provided by the group members themselves. If you don’t have a helper with you, just ask the people nearest to you to “take one and pass them on” to the people behind them. Your goal is to see that everyone in the group gets a copy—but that none have any page in their hand until you’re ready to talk about it.

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.

Finding The Sales Decision Maker

When someone walks into your store or calls to place an order, you’re sometimes dealing with the decision maker. Often, though, that person is simply carrying out the instructions of the real buyer. The sales manager’s secretary who orders “Top Producer” awards from a trophy store, for example, may decide what kind of plaque to buy, but the decision to make the purchase in the first place was made by the manager.  If you want to sell more, you have to persuade that person—the original decision maker—to buy them.

To sell completely new accounts, of course, you absolutely have to find the person who can say “yes.” When you approach a new potential customer on your own initiative, it’s very easy to get stuck dealing with an underling who may or may not be able to give you an order. You need to at least try to see the prime decision maker when you make your first contact. So how do you know who they are?

One way to find out, of course, is to ask. Before you knock on the door with a presentation, call the company and ask for the name of the president, the marketing director, the human resources manager, or whomever you think is most likely to be the person who controls the budget you want to tap. You can also find names on company websites or from services like Dun & Bradstreet. Their reports not only provide data like address and phone numbers, but also whether you are dealing with a headquarters location. Facts you can use include the number of employees nationwide and locally as well as annual sales, both of which can help you estimate how much potential the account has. You’ll also find the names of various executives, a.k.a. decision makers. One nifty feature allows you to store this company’s name online in a tracking folder and be notified of changes.

To carry your sleuthing a step further, type the executive’s name into Google. Do the same with the company name itself. If they’ve been in the news, you might learn that they’re just announced a new product that your product or service could help their sales force introduce. Or you might find that they’re active with a church, youth activities, or a local non-profit, which gives you a way to open the door by offering to support their favorite cause. Other places to check include your local newspaper’s website, which often contains a search feature that will pull up past stories about your prospect from their archives.

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.

B2B Sales Call For Doing Your Homework

If you’re in business-to-business sales, you know where you and your product generally rank on the list of priorities of most prospects. It’s usually way down there near the bottom of the list simply because a business operator or manager has so many situations clamoring for their attention every day.

Start with personnel (the biggest headache of all) and all the issues that go with it: hiring, firing, motivating, compensating, absenteeism, benefits, training, and on and on. Then there is the cost of goods if the business is a retail establishment or the cost of materials if it’s a manufacturer. These contribute directly to the profit margins, which are thin and getting thinner in most businesses today. There’s the “infrastructure” of the business—overhead items like rent, utilities, computer systems, debt service, and insurance. There are partners and shareholders to deal with, not to mention the most important of all, the customers. And then there’s that old bugaboo: taxes in all their myriad forms.

With all these matters weighing on the prospect’s mind, is it any wonder that it’s tough to get an appointment—especially one to ask a bunch of questions?

It’s even tougher when you factor in the competition—other salespeople. And I’m not just talking about your direct competitors. I’m referring to the army of salespeople peddling items and services that deal with all the above issues. Vendors, manufacturer’s reps, insurance agents; the list is endless. They all want a few minutes of the prospect’s time every day. If the prospect saw them all, they’d never get anything else done. If you want an appointment, you have to break through the clutter. You should pay the prospect for his time, not expect him to pay you.

These days most prospects expect the seller to have done their homework before they come in the door. They barely have time to do their own jobs, much less educate every salesperson who wants to sell them something. So, do the research first, then come up with a product or service that will meet the needs you think the prospect might have. Now, instead of calling the prospect and asking for some of their valuable time to educate you, you can offer to give them something of value—an idea to help their business in some way. Approached that way, the prospect is much more likely to give you a few minutes to make your pitch.

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.

The Sad Truth About Consultive Selling

Consultive selling, about which shelves full of books have been written and decades’ worth of seminars presented, is based on the principle that you need to understand the prospect’s needs before you can make a sale. Nothing wrong with that. But some practitioners of the approach believe the first step is to set up a meeting to ask the prospective customer a series of questions, the ever-popular “needs analysis” call. By answering those questions, the theory goes, the customer will tell you what they need or want to buy. Then you can come back with a proposal on the next call. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the intentions of that approach, but in my experience it seldom works out quite so neatly.

For one thing, few prospects will give you the time to answer your questions unless they’re already interested in your product, which sounds good until you realize that making presentations only to those people means you’ve eliminated a large group of prospects who won’t give you the first appointment. I’ll grant that pre-qualifying prospects this way may be a good time management method, but I can’t help but believe that the “not interested” prospects could be a very valuable source of new business.

And that number grows every day because the “needs analysis” approach is hugely over-worked as more and more prospects refuse to invest their time in it. Business operators are bombarded with offers to study their financial needs, manufacturing systems, advertising plans, and insurance programs. “It’s a valuable study without any obligation to buy” is an offer they’ve heard so many times that they’ve become immune to the pitch.

What can be even more discouraging is that, in many industries, the same prospect has undergone the consultive needs analysis multiple times with the same company because the vendor has such high turnover in its sales force. And they’ve gotten nothing in return except another proposal to buy which looks suspiciously like the last proposal they got from that company’s previous salesperson. In other words, fewer and fewer prospects are falling for the “needs analysis” gambit.

But what about those who do let you in the door to answer your questions? While generalizations can be dangerous, I don’t believe that they’re going to give you the best, most accurate information on which to base your proposal. They wouldn’t be seeing you unless they already had some pre-conceived notion of what they would like to buy from you. This, in turn, will tend to color the answers they give to your needs analysis questions. Not that the prospect would lie to you, it’s just that when someone already knows the answer, they tend to interpret the question to fit it. And their interpretation of your question may not be the same as yours, with some possible confusion over the answer as a result.

And that’s assuming they’re fully cooperative to start with. What are the things you want to learn when you conduct the needs analysis? Most of the questionnaires I’ve seen can be boiled down to two questions: 1) How can the prospect best use my product and 2) How much money can they spend on it? The variations on the first question will get some fairly accurate answers, but the second will often generate purposefully wrong answers because most people are pretty sensitive about giving out financial information to perfect strangers.

And that’s what you are, after all—a stranger. Since this is the first call on the prospect, by definition you don’t know them and, even more importantly, they don’t know you. All the prospect knows is that you’re there to get something from him (information and time) and he’ll get something in return (a proposal) sometime in the future. You should look on every sales call as a transaction in which items of value change hands. Even if a sale doesn’t occur, information changes hands—and that’s an item of value. In a solid transaction, items of equal perceived value are exchanged in a two-way process. On the consultive sell first call, though, the prospect gets nothing of value in return for his or her time and cooperation.

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.

Golf Fans Celebrate US Open With Free Kindle Book - Grand Slam

Bobby Jones did it, Tiger Woods almost did it, but if the moon were full during the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship, could a werewolf win the elusive Grand Slam of golf? Find out in Grand Slam, a special excerpt from Weird Golf available for the Kindle.

This week, in honor of the US Open at the Olympic Club, Grand Slam is absolutely free! Check it out and tell your friends. It's a howling good deal.

Among many other books, Dave Donelson is the author of Weird Golf: 18 tales of fantastic, horrific, scientifically impossible, and morally reprehensible golf

Making A Sale On The First Call

One of the great myths about selling is that you need to make a series of calls on a prospect to determine their needs before you can make a proposal to them. If you’re selling anything less complicated than enterprise computing systems, this is time-wasting nonsense based on a misunderstanding of consultive selling. Why wait? You’ll speed up the prospect’s decision-making process and save yourself hours and hours of selling time (which you can use to make more sales) if you present a specific proposal on your very first call.

This suggestion invariably sends traditional consultive sellers into convulsions and they say things like, “How can you make a proposal without ascertaining the need?” “Won’t the prospect think you’re arrogant to come in with a proposal the very first time you meet them?” “What if your proposal is wrong?”

This response comes from a lack of understanding of my method. You’ll notice that I want you to make a proposal on the first call—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that call will be the first time you’ve visited the prospect. Nor does it mean that you haven’t done a needs analysis. In fact, the time and effort you put into needs analysis (before the first call) will dwarf that of a typical consultive seller who goes into the first call with questionnaire in hand. And your needs analysis will be more accurate, which will mean a more accurately targeted proposal.

Selling on the first call isn’t as simple as it sounds, of course. It’s not a matter of taking the same product to as many prospects as possible in hopes that you’ll stumble across someone that needs to buy something today. Nor does it mean that you ignore the prospect’s individual needs and try to sell them a one-size-fits-all product. To make a sale on the first call, you need to research the prospect in advance, ask probing questions during your presentation, and be ready to change your design or other elements of your proposal—on the spot. It takes preparation and a set of ears finely tuned to what the customer is saying.

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.

The Dynamic Manager Goes To Yonkers

The Dynamic Manager series will be featured at Books Without Borders, a day-long festival of books, authors, music, and other attractions on the Yonkers, NY, waterfront Saturday, June 9.

Books Without Borders will encompass the entire waterfront beginning at the wonderful Yonkers Riverfront Library and continuing past the Yonkers Metro North Train Station through Ella Fitzgerald Park and culminating at the picturesque Pier and Amphitheater on the Hudson River.

Workshops, Seminars and Panel discussions will be held throughout the day. Literary agents will hold workshops, authors will read from their works, and books--including The Dynamic Manager's Guide To Creative Selling, The Dynamic Manager's Guide to Marketing and Advertising, and the Dynamic Manager's Guide to Practical Management--will be on sale. To add to the festive atmosphere, face painters and clowns will be in the Children’s Book area and music will be provided around the event area.

I'll be there from 10 AM to 4 PM, signing copies of all my books. Come on by and get acquainted!

Books Without Borders was organized by The City of Yonkers, The Yonkers BID, The Yonkers Library System, The Westchester Guardian and Yonkers Tribune Newspapers, WGRN Radio, and author Dennis Sheehan.

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.

Make More Sales With On-The-Spot Thinking

Watch out for the impulse to “go back to the drawing board” when the prospect throws you a curve.

Inside, you’re dealing with your own desire to get out of a stressful situation when the prospect says that he or she has a need you haven’t anticipated or wants a different design element in the product you’re offering. You’ll want to retreat and regroup and come back another time with a different proposal, but resist the temptation. You are a professional, you know your product inside and out, so be ready to make changes!

Only after the prospect agrees that your product or service will meet his or her needs are you ready to bring up the subject of price and ask for the order. If you never get agreement on your product’s ability to satisfy the prospect’s needs, the price won’t make any difference, so don’t rush into it. Ask your questions, really listen to the answers, then ask the prospect to buy.

Creative sellers with open minds have an endless market for the things they sell. Some of us, though, actually have lots of ideas but are hesitant to use them because we’re afraid they won’t be good enough. The problem with that kind of thinking is that it puts the onus of judgment on the wrong person. The salesperson shouldn’t judge the merits of an idea—leave that to the prospect. If the customer thinks it’s good—it’s good! Put your idea in front of him or her using the best presentation skills you have, and let the prospect make the final judgment.

You’ll be surprised how often they decide they like your bright idea.

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.

How A Creative Sale Is Made

There are two kinds of salespeople, order processors and idea sellers. The first one serves a certain function in any business, but it’s the second one that will make the business boom.

Who are idea sellers? Salespeople who size up a prospect’s business and take them a proposal for a product or service to meet their needs. They plant the idea for the solution to a need in the prospect’s mind even though the prospect may never have acknowledged that need to start with. By doing so, the idea seller creates demand for his or her products.

Here’s an example:  Let’s say the prospect is an insurance agency and you, the idea seller, have a small business making gift baskets—those elaborate assortments of gourmet foods, trinkets, and colorful goodies that solve a lot of gift-giving problems. As a real idea seller, you will take a look at the insurance agency and think up ways they could use gift baskets to sell more insurance. They could buy a basket every week to award the agency’s top producer, for example, or send a basket to every new client as a way to say thanks. Maybe they could reward clients who go three years without a claim or send a gift basket to prospective customers as a door opener. In other words, there are lots and lots of ways the insurance agency could use gift baskets.

But if no one suggests it, the insurance agency probably would never think of it themselves. That’s where the idea seller steps in. You pitch one of these ways the agency could use the product and gives them a specific proposal (how many—of what—at what cost) on which to act. That’s idea selling in a nutshell. It’s very creative.

Gift basket makers are generally very creative people, so they should be very good at this. The key is to put some of the same wonderful creativity that goes into designing baskets into ways that your prospective customers can use them. I’m sure you noticed that the “ideas”  mentioned for the insurance agency aren’t different types of gift baskets—they’re different applications for the gift basket product. It’s conceivable, in fact, that the same gift basket design could be used in all four—or more—ways mentioned above. The creative part of the sales process is in finding new uses for the product.

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.

Winning A Sales Argument Can Lose The Sale

Traditionally, sellers walk into the prospect with a presentation listing the many reasons their product should be bought. They present their case to the prospect, giving arguments and evidence much like a lawyer in a courtroom. They then listen to the opposing case (the objections from the prospect) and rebut them as best they can. The whole process becomes about winning a courtroom debate with the prospect. Sound familiar?

Now, in my limited experience in a courtroom, there are basically three parties involved in a typical case: the judge, who hands down a decision based on the merits of the arguments which are presented by the other two people, the plaintiff and the defendant. What’s different about selling is that the “judge,” or prospect, also happens to be the “opposing attorney!” He’s responsible not only for making a decision, but for arguing against it. Not that he can’t be objective, but the odds aren’t with you. That’s one reason closing ratios are typically so low for many salespeople.

But losing the case—or getting a “no” from the prospect—isn’t the toughest part. It’s the fact that once this “judge” hands down the decision, it’s pretty final. There’s not really any appeal in traditional sales and it’s pretty hard to come up with a new case and get back into the courtroom with it. You usually give all your best reasons to buy during the first presentation. To get a second chance to pitch your product, you have to first overcome the prospect’s attitude that he’s “heard it all before.” You have to offer something new to get back in the door.

When you sell ideas (solutions to the prospect's needs), though, you’ve always got a reason for the prospect to see you again—because you can always come up with a new idea. Remember that an idea isn’t a product—it’s a use, a solution to a discovered need. So, as long as you can come up with different ideas, you’ll be able to get back in to see the prospect with them. You’re not coming back to make the same old pitch; you’re offering something new.

Of course, part of your presentation includes the reasons your product will satisfy the prospect’s needs. You do need to make your arguments. But if you structure your presentation the way I suggest, the prospect will focus on the desirability of your idea instead of on the reasons for buying your product or service. Your “arguments” will go unanswered. And you’ll have the opportunity to present them again as you come back over and over again with new ideas. Same arguments every time, just new ideas to get you in the door.

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.