Poor Sales Presentation

An Open Letter to Sales Managers and Executives

by Victor Antonio

Dear Sales Manager and Executive:

Every sales presentation on behalf of your organization is an opportunity to explain or demonstrate your company’s capabilities.  That is why you can’t afford poor presenters.  Every poor presentation is not just a bad sales performance; it’s a missed opportunity that may never come again.

You spend millions of dollars on product development or delivery of service.  So when a sales person you hired delivers a poor presentation, how does that hurt your effort in trying to achieve your sales revenue goals?

What are poor sales presentations costing your company?  Versus, what does it cost to hire a sales trainer?

You spend millions of dollars on marketing and sales events, but yet your sales force can’t deliver effective sales presentations, how does that affect your efforts in trying to achieve market penetration?  What about Major Account Sales penetration efforts?   

What are poor sales presentations costing your company?  Versus, what does it cost to hire a sales trainer?

Your account sales manager finally gets a meeting with a decision maker, an executive in the company you been trying to penetrate and delivers a less than stellar sales presentation. 

What are poor sales presentations costing your company?  Versus, what does it cost to hire a sales trainer?

You spend $1,000s if not tens of $1,000s to participate in a Trade Show.  You’ve contracted a spectacular booth, you have product demos ready, you’ve spent money on sales literature and promotional items.  At show time prospects come to your booth, but your sales person can’t seem to articulate the company’s mission, product focus or market strategy. 

What are poor sales presentations costing your company?  Versus, what does it cost to hire a sales trainer?

When your sales team goes out to visit customer sites, they represent you, the company.  Are you comfortable with your team’s sales presentation skill level?  Your sales representatives have to be able to represent not only your company, but they have to be able to instill a level of confidence in people and companies they sell to.  When we buy as consumers, we buy from people we feel comfortable with after they’ve articulated that they understand our problem and demonstrated that they can solve it.

Great sales presenters are not born.  Great sales presentations don’t just happen, they have to be created.  One could argue that the responsibility of developing speaking and presentation skills is left to the individual sales person.  But one could also argue that as a sales manager or executive, part of your job in leading is to first recognize the deficiencies in their sales presentation skills and second, help them develop the necessary sales presentation skill.  Stop and ask yourself the following questions:

a)      Are your sales people great presenters?

b)      Have you ever seen them in front of customer?

c)      If so, do their sales presentations make you proud or do you cringe?

d)      When they do product demonstrations, do they understand how to translate a feature into a benefit?

I could go on with my questions, but I think you get the idea.   As a sales manager or executive you have to feel comfortable with a team’s presentation level.

Again, what are poor sales presentations costing your company?  Versus, what does it cost to hire a sales trainer?

The True Cost of a Sales Moment

Have you ever taking the time to calculate or estimate the amount of time it takes to get a meeting with an important client?  Have you ever taken the time to calculate the cost of getting that first face-to-face sales meeting with a client? 

• Sales person calls at least 5 times before getting in touch with the client.

• Sales person finally gets some time on the phone with the customer and spends an hour (if they are lucky) discussing your company’s products or services.

• Potential client asks for more information.  So the sales person now has to take the time to call someone to ship the information or do it themselves.

• Sales person follows up a few days later to see if the package arrived.  Several phone calls and emails later the customer confirms receipt of the sales material.

• Many phone calls later, the sales person is asked to fly out and give the client a product demo.

• Your sales person now has to buy an airline ticket, pay for ground transportation and hotel just to meet with the customer.

• Finally, keep in mind, that all this dedicated time is taking time away from other opportunities…so you have to make this count.

If you really begin to analyze the cost of making an appointment to give a product or service presentation, you will come to the quick conclusion that it isn’t a cheap proposition.

Missed opportunities during sales presentations are equivalent to boats with very small leaks.  Each leak in it of itself, isn’t that important.  But over time, those leaks start taking on a lot of water and begin to weigh down the boat.  Over time poor sales presentations can cause you to loose revenues and weigh down your revenue efforts and the company. 

Here are the non-quantified cost of a bad sales presentation:

• Every missed sale is an opportunity for your competitors to grow that much stronger. 

• Every missed sale means you have to find one to five new opportunities to make up for this one lost deal.

• Every missed sale means you will miss out on follow-on sales that could’ve come from that one deal.

• Every missed sale means if you try to sell to that company again, you now have to be TWICE as good if you’re going to unseat the incumbent.

My high tech sales presentation program is designed to help your salespeople learn the fundamentals and understand the complexities of giving an effective presentation.  If you'd like to talk with me on how I can help your sales team become more effective in delivering product or service presentation, let’s talk...