My other half works in an extremely fast growing internet company. Weekly I hear him discuss the sales approach of almost every sales person walking through the door and it reminds me of my own experiences which were much the same.
The sales person comes in, fires up powerpoint. Generally they are OKAY on the interpersonal skills (not great), well turned out, and professional. However, they then fire up powerpoint and take you through the same ridiculous process:
"we are company XYZ, here are the same slides I show everyone else (if I really want to look good, I add your logo or some of your webpages). We were established in xxxx (who cares?). We are the leading company in (service). We have lots of big clients (unrelated to your industry as you are just another company). Therefore we are great at what we do. Here's, therefore, what we can do for you by listing our standard product range...basically the same thing as we did for all the rest."
This goes on for ten minutes typically without any interaction from the client. At this point, one of the client's management team strats to ask questions, often related to the lack of presentational relevance of their business. The salesperson is tired as its there third presentation that day, stressed, and annoyed that its obviously a different scenario from the list of unrelated clients that they have presented before them. But its accepted as the status que, so the client actually can feel awkward asking these obvious questions and the salesperson rightly aggrieved in their own mind.
I watched a video on Youtube recently which I now cannot find!!!! It was by an American business coach who hit the nail on the head when it comes to this scenario. She said "imagine the average sales pitch as a date".
Now this really shows how lousy this approach is, and yet every sales person in the UK seems to follow it!
She asks us to imagine going out on a date, exchanging niceties and sitting through:
"I am great..,, I studied at X, joined X, I was promoted, founded a company, achieved x, y,z, turnover x million / billion, etc. Now because I did all of this, I would be really great for you, because you are like all the other women /men out there. Any questions now after ten minutes of talking about myself?"
The parallels between the two approaches are obvious and that is why most sales people, and most dates "convert" in the low single figure percentages, and especially in the average market where competition is strong.
Now imagine a sales pitch or dinner date which involves "the audience". A good salesperson or "dater" will shown an interest in the other person. They do this by asking lots of relevant questions (not too deep to begin with!), verbally nodding, smiling, holding eye contact for a natural period of time, acting interested but not overbearing, etc. Imagine the impact of these basic skills on sales performance by keeping to these basics. On my sales and negotiation courses, I regularly stun experienced sales directors, executives, and managers by taking them back to basics. They do not realise what their own actions. They cannot believe the bad habits they have fallen into. Then I hit them with all the secret skills and techniques they never imagined to exist!
Tuesday 5 August 2008
Saturday 19 July 2008
Business networking - how to approach groups and strangers
Business networking guru Elizabeth Clark shows how to successfully approach strangers and groups. Discover the 3 zones of business networking, and the critical one which you must master or avoid!
Friday 11 July 2008
Booking Speakers? Save 20% by watching our great video!
Booking speakers? Don't book without watching our free video. Learn how to save 20% when booking a speaker and get our free guide!
Call 08453 700155
Call 08453 700155
Sunday 6 July 2008
Great Presentation Skills
Great presentation skills:
This article will give you all the information you will ever need to give a great presentation. A common mistake that most people make is that they focus on the words and technical content, when actually the measure of a good presentation is the audience’s reaction. If your presentation has awoken their interest, guided their understanding of the topic and then incited them to action, then you’ve given a great presentation. The way to achieve this is to prepare, prepare, and prepare again! Nobody ever got worse by practising!
Here are some tips on how to achieve this:
1. Use audio + visual aids; you don’t have to have a great knowledge of PowerPoint, a basic understanding of the programme would do, such as Steve Jobs that recently did a presentation and used a very simple visual presentation for his subject. As long as your visual presentation flows with your talk it will be fine. However some people think that the best visual + audio aids are the ones which are more complicated and this just isn’t true.
2. Be well researched on your subject but pay attention to time and duration. You don’t want to go into the presentation and be talking about your subject, then found that you’ve used all you points and still having 15 minutes left. So you resort to babbling on about your used points and drag it out, which is not acceptable. Equally, you should never over-run or you risk upsetting the host and your fellow speakers.
3. Treat the talk like a conversation; allow the audience to participate and ask questions where appropriate (generally at the end). You can get your audience to participate by asking them to raise their hands if they agree or disagree with your point or if they fall into a certain category, etc.
4. An important thing to remember is that with every action will come a reaction (Action = Reaction).
5. Try to have FUN with your presentation; if you enjoy the presentation, your audience will enjoy the presentation.
6. A beneficial tip to remember “is to know your talent” what I mean by this is find out what your good at in presentations, is it telling a story, etc, try to stick to things you are good at during the presentation which will help you get it correct first time round.
7. You must have confidence. If you don’t have confidence your audience aren’t going to listen.
8. An important thing to keep in mind is how you build your speech, you can’t just jump in with how to sing a song, you NEED to introduce yourself, so here is an example of a speech on “how to sing a song” set up:
Introduction
Learn your lyrics
Get the sound right
Have the timing
End
9. A great way to stop the audience from loosing their interest is too use simple words, try not to use big words as it bores the audience.
10. When you give your presentation try to be as relaxed as possible, because when you are tense and anxious you will say everything really quickly, (HINT: a good way to extend your talk is after a sentence say “BANANA” in your head). It will force you to slow down your speech if you tend to speak quickly or are anxious.
11. A nice thing to add to presentation is body movement e.g. if you say “I want to take 10 minutes of your time” hold up 10 fingers. It makes whatever you are saying much more memorable.
12. You should always try to win over the audience, you can do this by putting your points out in the open and reinforcing them .
This has been Calum, 13, and I’ve just won the public speaking competition at my Grammar School after lots of practise.
This article will give you all the information you will ever need to give a great presentation. A common mistake that most people make is that they focus on the words and technical content, when actually the measure of a good presentation is the audience’s reaction. If your presentation has awoken their interest, guided their understanding of the topic and then incited them to action, then you’ve given a great presentation. The way to achieve this is to prepare, prepare, and prepare again! Nobody ever got worse by practising!
Here are some tips on how to achieve this:
1. Use audio + visual aids; you don’t have to have a great knowledge of PowerPoint, a basic understanding of the programme would do, such as Steve Jobs that recently did a presentation and used a very simple visual presentation for his subject. As long as your visual presentation flows with your talk it will be fine. However some people think that the best visual + audio aids are the ones which are more complicated and this just isn’t true.
2. Be well researched on your subject but pay attention to time and duration. You don’t want to go into the presentation and be talking about your subject, then found that you’ve used all you points and still having 15 minutes left. So you resort to babbling on about your used points and drag it out, which is not acceptable. Equally, you should never over-run or you risk upsetting the host and your fellow speakers.
3. Treat the talk like a conversation; allow the audience to participate and ask questions where appropriate (generally at the end). You can get your audience to participate by asking them to raise their hands if they agree or disagree with your point or if they fall into a certain category, etc.
4. An important thing to remember is that with every action will come a reaction (Action = Reaction).
5. Try to have FUN with your presentation; if you enjoy the presentation, your audience will enjoy the presentation.
6. A beneficial tip to remember “is to know your talent” what I mean by this is find out what your good at in presentations, is it telling a story, etc, try to stick to things you are good at during the presentation which will help you get it correct first time round.
7. You must have confidence. If you don’t have confidence your audience aren’t going to listen.
8. An important thing to keep in mind is how you build your speech, you can’t just jump in with how to sing a song, you NEED to introduce yourself, so here is an example of a speech on “how to sing a song” set up:
Introduction
Learn your lyrics
Get the sound right
Have the timing
End
9. A great way to stop the audience from loosing their interest is too use simple words, try not to use big words as it bores the audience.
10. When you give your presentation try to be as relaxed as possible, because when you are tense and anxious you will say everything really quickly, (HINT: a good way to extend your talk is after a sentence say “BANANA” in your head). It will force you to slow down your speech if you tend to speak quickly or are anxious.
11. A nice thing to add to presentation is body movement e.g. if you say “I want to take 10 minutes of your time” hold up 10 fingers. It makes whatever you are saying much more memorable.
12. You should always try to win over the audience, you can do this by putting your points out in the open and reinforcing them .
This has been Calum, 13, and I’ve just won the public speaking competition at my Grammar School after lots of practise.
Saturday 28 June 2008
"advanced presentation skills tips with Elizabeth Clark"
http://www.rapportunlimited.co.uk/presentation_skills_training.php
Call 08453 700155
Need advanced presentation skills? TV's Elizabeth Clark offers training, advice, tips and courses to transform!
Call 08453 700155
Need advanced presentation skills? TV's Elizabeth Clark offers training, advice, tips and courses to transform!
Thursday 26 June 2008
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