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Successful Sales Presentations That Lead To The Close

By Carl Davidson

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 15Jul2009 Word count: 702 Viewed: 323 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

The quality of your sales presentation will determine the chances of success in any selling situation. There are few areas of sales training with more misinformation than the presentation. Forget about working on a slick presentation, practicing your pitch, learning long speeches filled with all the technical details. Here are the five keys to great sales presentations. I know that if you will use them, the interest shown by your prospects will rise dramatically and so will your closes and sales. Remember that the key to closing is doing a presentation that leads to a sale.

Customized For Each Customer

To be effective, your presentation should be customized to your customer. Forget about learning one pitch and using it all the time. How do you customize it? By asking enough questions that you know what this particular customer wants, needs and fears. Only then are you ready to present, so ask questions first and sell later. This becomes selling not telling and it works with today's customers. People today will not politely sit through a presentation that doesn't interest them. Throw away your flip books and charts and talk to the customer about things that they told you they want to hear.

Benefits Not Features

If a young man sees a great looking woman walking down the street, is he thinking, "I'll bet she has a great liver?" Not likely, because we all want the benefits not the features. The reason features are taught in sales training is that much sales training comes from or is paid for by manufacturers and creators. They are proud of the products and services they have created and can't wait to tell you all the details. Like livers, valves, size of steel, actuarial tables and more probably will not raise a customer to the boiling point. If a customer is interested in the technical, by all means, use it. However, realize that people buy benefits not technical information. For example, most people want to know their new home will keep their family "warm on the coldest winter night" as opposed to what the insulation is made of and how it is installed. Make sure everything you say is about the benefits for the customer. Presentations that focus on the company fail. Things such as "we are number 1 in the state". "we invented it first", "we're a family company" and "our founder built this company from scratch" may not be of interest to most customers.

Trial Closes

When you present any benefit, always end with a question, not a statement. Weak salespeople say, "This computer has dual processors and a titanium bus board". Stronger salespeople say, "this computer is the fastest available to get your work done faster and without crashes. Is that the kind of stability your company is looking for?" If you end every point with a question, every time the customer says "yes", you are closer to the sale and you know you are on the right track.

Know Your Product/Service

Even though I have stated that people do not buy the technical, there is an important use for product knowledge. You need to know your product inside and out so you can customize a presentation to your customers. If you only know the 8 main points about your product, you won't have much room for customization. If you know lots of exclusive features and benefits, you will be able to raise the buying temperature of many more prospects.

Keep Your Eye On The Sale

Remember that everything you say takes you closer to the sale or farther away. Be careful what path you go down in any presentation. Anything you talk about that is not pointing out a benefit you know your customer is interested in is taking you away from the sale. Think before you speak and be sure every word is taking you closer to the sale by raising the customers' interest.

Salespeople often concentrate on the close but the truth is that great presentations make the close easy. You may already be a better closer than you think. You may be able to raise your sales by improving following these steps to better presentations.

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