Implementation and evaluation
UNIT 6 SALES PRESENTATION
6.6 Keywords 6.7 References
6.8 Suggested Readings
6.1 Introduction
In the previous unit we have understood various definitions of communication and the communication models. We have also analyzed the issues that need to be addressed for effective communication. We saw that presentation skills are one of the important factors which determine the success of the sale. In this unit we shall understand about what are the issues that need to be addressed in making a successful sales presentation which helps in building a long lasting relationship with the customer. The quality of presentation is an important factor which will determine how well the prospect will understand your product/service. Presentation should be motivating enough to the prospects to make them participate in the process. In this unit we shall understand that before going for the presentation there are some pre-presentation activities that one must follow. One has to keep in mind that his/her presentation should be better that the competitors and therefore, some background work needs to be done in deciding what goes into the presentation to make it look better than the competitors.
In this unit, we shall understand that knowing your company should be the first task before knowing your customers. Many-a-times prospect may not know what the problem is and so identifying the problem is the first task for the sales representative.
Once the sales representative and the prospects understand the right problem, it would be easy to concentrate on the solution part of the presentation.
This unit also highlights the basic concepts on how to make a better looking presentation in terms of presentation of content. Finally in this unit, we shall understand that the presentation wouldn’t be complete if the objections aren’t handled well. We shall also look at about some of the objection handling techniques where you can handle the objections effectively.
Objectives
After studying this unit you will be able to:-
1) Importance of Knowing your customer, company and competitors
2) Various functions of sales team and pre-sales team in preparing an effective and efficient presentation
3) Define the presentation objectives
4) Enumerate various guidelines for preparing slides and documents
5) Explain various presentation methods and scenarios where they can be applied.
6) Address various objections and use appropriate objection handling techniques
6.2 Pre-presentation activities
Pre-presentation activities include all the activities that are performed to ensure a successful presentation design. The list of pre-presentation activities would generally include the following:-
Pre-presentation activities
Knowing about your company
Knowing about your customer
Knowing your competitors Defining the presentation objectives
Other essentials activities
Several issues have to be addressed such as the objective of the presentation, content that goes into presentation, gathering information about the customer, your company and the competitors and so on.
6.2.1 Knowing about your company
Knowing about your company is vital because during the presentation customer may ask you anytime about your company and the products/services. Anytime if the customer is interested to know about your company, you should be able to explain about your company in not more than 30 sec to 1 min during the presentation. So it is important for you to write a brief summary about your company which includes the following:-
Company’s objective
mission and vision statement
List of product/services
Areas of expertise
Previous and present customers of your company
Number of employees working
Company turnover and growth
Your seniors and heads in your department
Knowing your company’s employees or various domains of expertise would be very important when you are responding to the customer requirement. In situations like when the customer sends the problem and request you for the solution, you should be able to know whether your company will be able to handle that problem. For example, if the customer is in a telecom company and the problem is low network connection speed, then the solution would be to upgrade the entire network to a faster platform which requires huge amount of investment. As a part of your sales team it’s important for you to know the following before making the presentation for such customer:-
whether your company has such expertise in handling big projects
If yes, are there any customers in the past where such projects have been implemented
What should be the profit margin in such projects
What could be the time-limit for project completion
How many number of employees would be required to work in such projects
What are the other resources required by your employees (travel tickets, internet bandwidth, laptops, living expenses in other countries etc).
In many companies, there would be a sales team and a pre-sales team to handle huge volumes of customers. The main function of the sales team would be to meet the customer, take the requirements of the customer and make the necessary sales presentation. Most of the times, the sales team will be on-site i.e. at the customer place.
The pre-sales team will be mainly at the company’s office which may not necessarily be at customer premises. The pre-sales team would be responsible to address all the questions which we have discussed earlier and make the presentation. It is the job of pre-sales team to correctly optimize the profit margins and the number of employees required to implement the solution for customer.
If you are a part of the presales team it is very important to know that the customer solution may not be handled by a single technical team. For example, if there is a telecom problem of low network speed, the solution team may involve the networks/hardware team, software team, testing team etc. It is important to know that every team will try to put as many employees as possible in the projects so that their employees will have maximum work and profits. As a part of pre-sales team it is your job to keep optimizing the number of employees such that not too many or too less employees are involved. Coming to the cost part, it is always advisable to check the number of days employees need to stay at on-site with the customer and try to optimize these days so as to reduce some of the living expenses in other countries.
The important objective apart from developing a long-lasting relationship with customer is to have a decent profit margin in the project. It is the job of the sales team to get a clear picture of the profit margin and then decide to go on with the presentation or not.
You cannot make the presentation for the solution which brings loss instead of profit for the company. Most of the time sales team may have to get approval from the finance team who monitors the financial status of the company before going ahead with the presentation with the customer. Even in door-to-door sales, most of the times the sales representatives will be instructed by the sales manager about the maximum discount he/she can give to the customer in order to close the deal effectively.
Now let’s look at the information that is necessary to known about the customer before the presentation process.
6.2.2 Knowing about your Customer
Customer is the key to any business, hence knowing the customer will be an important task for any business. Your customer may be a multi-national company or a government institution or even a single customer in door-to-door sales. A due diligence would be required to know your customer well. If it’s a door-to-door sale, some of the parameters you should be willing to look are:-
Income level of the family or head of the family
Gender and age of the family members
Educational level of the family members
Occupation of the family members
Most of the parameter can be known easily except the income level. One can never ask the customer what his income is esp. when selling some door-to-door products like chimneys, water purifiers and some other household items. If it is a loan product or insurance products you may ask the customer directly to fill the income in the required column in the application. Age can be known approximately when you look at the
customer. The important thing to know is who is the decision making authority in the home, is it the male head or the female head or the children.
If the customer is the Government or Institutional organization some of the parameter you should be looking at include:-
When was the organization established
How many employees or departments there in the organization
Who is the decision making authority or individual in the organization
What are the areas which the organization serve
How good is the organization in clearing the payments in time
What can be the future sales opportunities with the organization
In Government and institutional sales the important task for sales people would be to get timely payments. Since the organization deals with many other responsibilities your payments may get late, so knowing the credibility of the organization for timely payments is important task. One way of finding this is by looking at the previous customers and any problems they have faced. You cannot go and ask directly your competitors about the organization but what you can do is to take a look at the growth of the organization over time.
Finally if your customer is a big multinational, then the list of parameters you must have a look are:-
Time of establishment
Number of employees and departments
Turnover and the profit margin of the company
Year-on-year growth of the company
Rank of the company in the market place
Previous experiences with the company if any
The biggest problem with big multinationals is to know whether the customer will be able to fund the project successfully in time. If necessary funds are not released in time then the time period will increase and so do the costs. So it’s very important to look at the financial health of the customer and then proceed for sales presentation.
6.2.3 Knowing your Competitors
Customer prefers the company who serves them according to his needs. However, if there is more than one company which is able to serve the customer according to his needs and expectations, then the customer will choose the best one according to his/her criteria. This leads to the competition between the companies to prove themselves that they are the best according to the customer criteria.
Hence it is an important task for any company or you as the sales representative to correctly analyze the competitor movements towards the customer. Your presentation may fail if the analysis of your competitors is not done well. We have already discussed that there exists two functions in sales namely sales and pre-sales in the company. The competitor analysis is primary function for sales rather than pre-sales. It is the duty of the sales team who is on-site to know who the competitors are and what are their strength and weakness? Once the information is known it can be passed on to the pre-sales team who will prepare the presentation accordingly to reflect that they are much better than the competitors.
No matter how well the presentation is prepared, it won’t close the deal unless the sales teams have a clear idea about their competitors. For example, let’s assume that you have prepared a wonderful presentation which clearly highlights the benefits of your products/services to the customer. But if you have quoted the price much higher than your competitors, your solution may not be preferred by the customer. You must understand that in today’s competitive world there is a pressure on profit margins and growth of every company and so your customers too.
You customers always look for the company which provides best or reasonably good solution at the least cost for the solution. So as a sales representative it is very important to know approximately how much cost the competitors would quote for the solution. This cannot be known easily as every company maintains the bid amount secretly and will be given strict instructions to the employees not to disclose it. But you should be able to get an approximate idea by looking into their past project costs. So the important parameters which you should be looking in knowing the competitors include the following:-
Domain of expertise and the number of employees
Years of expertise i.e. is the competitor a new entrant or an established player in the market place
Type of solution offered to the customer i.e. the product/services
Amount quoted for the solution in the bidding process for the customer
Competitors advantage areas over your company’s products/services
Having discussed much about knowing your company, customer and the competitor, it’s time for us to look at some of the other pre-presentation activities in subsequent sections.
6.2.4 Defining the presentation objectives
Many sales presentation ends up without any results due to improper planning of the presentation and no measurable results. It is always better to have the list of objectives that you want to achieve by the sales presentation. One must remember that the objective of the first sales presentation with the customer shouldn’t always be the successful closing of the sale. Initiating a dialogue to involve the customer in the presentation and help in decision making should be the first objective. We see lot of presentations where the customer doesn’t take part much or remains to be a silent participant. So, one should plan the presentation such that necessary dialogues would happen between the customer and the sales representative which will help in building
the rapport. Some of the general objectives one would look for the presentation would be as follows:-
Developing a good rapport with the customers
Explaining about your company expertise
Building trust in the customer
Creating enough interest to make the customer participate in the presentation process
Identifying problems of the customer
Identifying the right products/services for the customer
Successfully handling objections
Setting the stage for next meetings
Maintaining the time allotted for the presentation
Closing the deal effectively whenever it’s appropriate
Most of the sales presentation starts with the introduction of the company. You should be able to clearly highlight the strengths of your company like a strong workforce, various domains of expertise, level of employees i.e. the educational and experience levels of the employees and so on. Once you have created a positive image about your company, the next objective would be to develop a good rapport where the presentation process would become a two way communication between the customer and the sales representative rather than a one way communication with only sales representative involvement. A two way communication process will always helps in quickly identifying the problem and then identifying the right solution for the problem. Following the time limit is very important as the customers will be busy with their daily work and may not show enough interest if presentation takes too long. The final objective before ending the presentation should be to set the stage for the next presentation. You should be
able to get another appointment where you can carry on with your further presentation activities which can help in closing the deal effectively.
It is very important to have a check-list of the objectives such that they will be followed by all the sales representatives during presentation. It is important to measure the objectives in terms of their level of achievement and should plan better in future presentations. For e.g. if the objective of maintaining the time limit is not achieved as the time for presentation overshoots, then it’s important for you to ensure that at least from now onwards in next meetings you will take care of that objective with utmost importance.
6.2.5 Other essential activities for presentation
Till now we have discussed about a lot of pre-presentation activities like maintaining an objective check-list for every presentation and important parameters in knowing your company, customer and the competitors. Now let’s look at some other issues which must be addressed before going for the presentation. Some of them include as follows:-
Having sufficient number of hard copies of your presentation, preferably with the name of the customer on it.
Dress appropriately
Have your own tools for presentation
Ensure your tools are working perfectly fine
Choose appropriate team for presentation
Ensure every team member is present for the presentation
Have the necessary check-lists
You may never know how many people from the customer side will participate in the presentation. So an important requirement in any sale, it door-to-door or institutional or industrial sale, it is advisable to have adequate number of hard copies of your presentation and any other supplements like company brochures, previous customer list
etc. It is always better to have individual copies in decent folders with the names of the customers.
The next issue is about the dressing for the presentation. It is better to have a formal dressing in any sales presentation with or without a tie depending upon the circumstances. Make sure you have a tie with you if you see everybody wearing a tie in the presentation. For door-to-door sales tie may not be an important requirement.
Dressing should be in such a way that you are not over dressed or neither under-dressed. In absence of any clue a plain blue shirt and black trousers are recommended for use.
The next issue would be having tools for your presentation. Make sure that you have necessary tools which make the presentation process easier without any interruption. If it is a PowerPoint presentation, the tools may be your own laptop with the necessary software to run the presentation, your own project and your own audio system. You will never know whether the customer premises will be having all these facilities. So it is better to carry one yourself. Nowadays you get projectors with audio system embedded in them.
The next task is about choosing the appropriate team for presentation. If it’s a door-to-door sale of some FMCG products or consumer care products, then there would be no team as it will be handled by one sales representative most of the times. But in case of institutional or industrial sales, generally a group of sales team goes for the
The next task is about choosing the appropriate team for presentation. If it’s a door-to-door sale of some FMCG products or consumer care products, then there would be no team as it will be handled by one sales representative most of the times. But in case of institutional or industrial sales, generally a group of sales team goes for the