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3) Presentation (step three of the sales cycle)
We like to say that this is where the sale is made! What we mean by that is during the actual presentation is where you address the intellectual and emotional parts of the sale, as well as actually present your product or service. The emotional build is accomplished by using tons of names and painting word pictures in your presentation. The intellectual sale is made by discussing the prospect’s needs and matching those needs to the product or service demo.
Most companies not only don’t follow a scripted sales talk, but they usually do their demo backwards! They usually start with the product demo and fumble around. Then, as they’re leaving, they usually realize that they have a few names in common with the prospect!
If you do your Presentation correctly, you will set up a no-pressure, great product demo that is completely tailored to your prospect. You’ll also, more than likely, know within a certain level of confidence, whether or not you’re going to make a sale (at the close!)
The Presentation is the part of the sale that comes right after your first contact (where you sit-down with the prospect.) The Presentation is composed of seven sub steps. They are: 1) Rapport, 2) Buying Atmosphere, 3) Qualifying, 4) Procrastination, 5) Need 6) Temperature Questions, 7) Product or Service Demo
Here’s the Presentation part of the Sales Cycle. YOU MUST DO THESE IN ORDER to prevent any pressure!
1: Rapport
Even though the importance of rapport is discussed throughout this entire training system, we ALWAYS lead off with rapport in our presentation portion of the sale. You should feel absolutely comfortable talking with your d.m. for 10 to 15 minutes about PEOPLE you know in common. Please skip the small stuff. It doesn’t matter that you both play golf, both went to the same college, both have blue eyes, etc. ALL that matters is that your prospect knows many of the people you’ve already sold! TRUST ME!
I have sales people ask quite often how many names you should use. My answer is always, “As many as you need!.” You can always say something to your prospect like, “I don’t mean to name-drop, but I just wanted to make sure we’re not a fly-by-night company.” Besides, if you studied your profile information well, you should be able to mention some names that genuinely ‘click’ with your current prospect.
2: Buying Atmosphere
There’s an entire section devoted to this in a different part of the manual. However, the buying atmosphere is where you let your prospect completely off the hook. People truly like to buy, but most people HATE to be sold. You let your prospect off the hook by saying, “Joe, I’m going to show you my product. If you like it, GREAT! I’d really like to work with you. If you don’t like it, that’s fine too! Whatever you decide is fine by me!”
Now you wouldn’t believe how many sales people have told me this is the dumbest thing they’ve ever heard; all I can say is to try it! You’ll like it! And besides, who wants to be a ‘pushy salesperson.’ By ‘letting your prospect off the hook,’ you’ll actually encourage him to make a buying decision!
The Critical Questions
Steps 3 and 4 are what we refer to as the critical questions that cause sales people the most grief (when they don’t ask these or ask them incorrectly). Numbers 3 and 4 are in essence your attempt to ‘pre-beat’ the two biggest objections EVERY sales person gets in EVERY type of demo: 1) making sure you have a qualified (or ‘real’ d.m.) and 2) making sure you set up the presentation so the d.m. will make a purchase decision during the close. (kind of like playing ‘Mother My I.’ ***NOTE: Numbers 3 and 4 are not supposed to be a pressure tactic. If you don’t do these correctly, you can create pressure. After almost 17 years of selling, I’ve seen people do these 2 steps completely correct and professionally (thus resulting in a high closing ratio,) and also seen many people do it the wrong way!
3) Qualifying
This is one of the two most important parts of the entire sales cycle. If not done at all, you can experience years of frustration by getting ‘put-off’ by your prospect. And you can waste zillions of hours calling back your prospects to see ‘if they made a decision yet!’
If done incorrectly, you can add undesirable pressure to your sales presentation. And if done correctly, you can allow your prospect to make a ‘no-pressure’ decision in the close!
Please keep in mind, for you to correctly qualify a d.m., you HAVE to follow the steps in the presentation as they’re listed, which means at this point, you’ve already built a TON of rapport (which means the prospect already likes you and trusts you) and you should have already let the prospect COMPLETELY OFF THE HOOK, which means the prospect is already feeling NO PRESSURE!
Qualifying your d.m. is pretty easy. All you have to do is get the d.m. to answer that he or she is indeed the person who will make the call on approving the sale. YOU HAVE TO ASK THIS IN A COMPLETELY NON-THREATENING WAY AND AT THIS EXACT TIME IN THE PRESENTATION. You also have to ask it as recommended below:
“Joe, before I go any further, let me ask you. Are you pretty much the one who would handle this?” LET HIM ANSWER VERBALLY. It’s O.K. if he takes a second! He’s thinking. If he answers NO, then you can either recycle back to the rapport part and try again, or find out who really does make the call and attempt to get them into the demo too! (see ‘The Art of Recycling your sale.)
Now if Joe says, “Sure!” You’re one step closer to having a qualified
presentation!
4) Procrastination
Now this next one is the MOST important objection you can ‘pre-beat’ by bringing it up first! We call this one ‘de-procrastinating’ your d.m. Ask any seasoned sales person what the biggest objection is they receive (regardless of the industry,) and you’ll more than likely hear “Let me think it over, or can you call me back next week?”
Most sales people have never heard of ‘pre-beating’ this objection, let alone have many people learned how to do it and apply it successfully. But if you can believe it, we’ve had many sales people successfully use this technique to achieve a 70 to 80%+ closing ratio! And the best part about it is that if you qualify and ‘de-procrastinate’ your d.m., you’ll cut your call-back time back to virtually ZIP! You can even train your d.m. to call you back if they should still try to put you off!
De-procrastinating your d.m. can be a little more tricky than simply qualifying your d.m. You have to do it completely correctly to avoid ANY pressure, and unlike qualifying, the de-procrastination question can sometimes take a few ‘recycle attempts’ (see the art of recycling) to get the answer you want. And again, YOU HAVE TO DO THIS PART OF THE SALE IN THIS EXACT SPOT, EXACTLY THE CORRECT WAY or it won’t work! Anyway, here’s how you do it:
“Joe, like I mentioned, I’m really glad to be working with so many people like Ed, Tammy, and Sherry. You can probably see that my schedule books up really far in advance. Anyway, if I could should you a way to save a lot of money (or insert need here) like I did for Ed and Tammy, is there a shot you might be able to give me a yeah or neah today?” LET HIM ANSWER VERBALLY
For some reason, a lot of sales people completely shy away from even trying this part of the cycle, and I can understand how some people would be uncomfortable trying it; but the magical thing is that once you get confident with it, and start using it EVERY time, you start experiencing AMAZING results! You decrease getting ‘put-off’ by a HUGE margin. Now, frankly, you’re d.m. will not always commit to giving you a YEAH today, (AVOID USING YES/NO- instead use yeah/neah.) But if you have patience and try to build even more rapport, you can often get your d.m. to make the small commitment of giving you’re a yeah or neah TODAY. And when you get your d.m. qualified AND de-procrastinated, chances are you’re on your way to getting a SALE!
5) NEED
Now that you’re past the rapport, buying atmosphere, qualifying and procrastination, it’s time to bring out the needs of the prospect. You simply do this by asking the prospect what he would use your product or service for. You can also share with him or her what many of your other clients are using it for. But make sure you let the prospect answer your questions on his own. If you ‘put words in his mouth,’ then you may not really uncover his or her true needs.
“Joe, what do you think you’d like best about one of these,” or “Joe, tell me what you really need to improve or fix, and how you think our XYZ might get you there.
Or you can also say, “Joe, I’m going to go ahead and show you the XYZ, but so I don’t waste any of your time, which features do you think you’d use most, so I can focus on those instead of trying to read your mind.”
MAKE SURE YOU UNCOVER A COUPLE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS!
6) Temperature Question
We’ve always inserted an automatic temperature question at this point to see if you’re doing o.k. However, we strongly encourage you to ask temperature questions throughout the entire demo.
A temperature question is simply a question that finds out where a prospect is on the buy-line or if he or she is still interested, extremely interested, or not interested.
“Joe, am I doing o.k. so far,” or “are you still with me?”
7) Product / Service Demo
After all this, IT’S NOW TIME to show your product or service! Can you believe we go this far WITHOUT EVEN GIVING A PEEK!?? Now, your prospect obviously probably knows a little (or a lot) about your product through all the different conversations you may have had, or if you sent literature prior to the meeting, they saw the website, etc. But we really like to build up a great demand before we actually bring out the product.
Now that you’re ready to do the actual product demo, make sure you customize the demo to the actual areas in need by your d.m. You can ‘over-demo’ your prospect and start covering a zillion things your product does but that your prospect has NO interest in. Many times a sales person makes the mistake of thinking “Wow, he liked that, he’s REALLY going to like this! Or, “I’ll REALLY impress him by showing him EVERY SINGLE FEATURE.” Don’t make these mistakes. In fact, you’d be surprised at how few things a prospect needs to see to be sold!
You can use more temperature questions to find out if your prospect’s seen enough yet. “Would you like to see more or do you kind of get the picture?” “What else would you like to see?”
If you’ve completed these steps correctly, you should now be ready to enter the price build-up/close!
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