Our presentation training course is the most highly participatory and personalized class of its kind. Participants have two instructors to help them learn and practice fundamental and advanced presentation skills. There are 10 digitally recorded personal presentations and each of the 10 presentations is followed by personalized one-on-one feedback from a senior instructor to guarantee progress and eliminate any distracting behaviors.
For more information and pricing on our presentation training courses, please contact us.
Course Objectives:
Present technical information clearly, concisely, and persuasively.
Enhance voice projection, articulation, pace and fluency, body language, eye contact, and gestures.
Determine audience attitudes and needs.
Overcome nervousness, anxiety, and any distracting mannerisms.
Use both common and high-tech media effectively.
Implement persuasive communication techniques.
Project control and confidence.
Plan and develop complete, formalized product presentations around the market forces that affect business.
Structure presentations to gain maximum effect.
Use audience involvement techniques to identify and handle questions.
Set up an on going action plan to improve future presentations.
You may have learned how emotions are involved in the buying process ?” indeed, how emotions control the buying process ?”and how they can make or break your chances for making a sale.
Now we‘re going to learn about closing. We‘re also going to learn a vital skill for getting to the point where the close will work. To get to that point, you have to be able to:
Control The Presentation
After all, all sales must have a presentation. You can‘t just walk up and greet a potential customer and immediately try to close him!
Getting to a closing point is a problem faced by ALL salespeople, because the customer so often winds up controlling the presentation with objections.
If the customer controls the presentation, you‘ll never have a chance at getting to a closing point. No close: no sale. No close will work if you don‘t get a chance to use it.
A salesperson‘s job is to sell. Period.
Oh, you might have a lot of other duties like prospecting and product training seminars and cold calling, but your job is to sell, because that‘s the only thing you get paid for. Go into your boss‘s office on payday and say "Boss, I made 27 powerful presentations and 30 cold calls this week. Pay me," and I‘ll wager you won‘t get a dime.
So a salesperson‘s job is to sell, and selling is closing, we know that, too. But what is a close?
The complicated answer might be:
A Close Is A Favorable Buying Decision
But what does that boil down to? It means you ask your customer to buy and he says, "Yes." Not "let me think about it," but simply "yes."
So, a closing point means getting to that "yes" point. But you won‘t get there if the customer is in control of the presentation.
What does "control" mean? Control means the presentation is headed in a certain direction. You want it to head towards a closing point, but the customer ?” consciously or subconsciously ?” wants it to head away from that painful decision-making point.
What‘s that? You thought prospective customers just wanted to avoid buying what you were selling?
Not so, and if you don‘t believe me, the next time you‘re having trouble with objections, just say, "Okay Mr. Customer, I‘ll tell you what ?” you can have this product for free." Want to bet all his objections disappear?
Rest assured your customer does want what you‘re selling; he‘s simply trying to avoid the emotional pain of making what could turn out to be the wrong decision. So he tries to head the presentation away from that decision-making point. This brings up an important rule:
He Who Controls The Presentation Shall Be The Seller
If your customer has control, he‘ll avoid pain and will steer the presentation away from a decision. He‘ll sell you a feeble excuse for not buying.
Excuse? Yes. The excuse is really an objection. Soon you‘ll learn that, with one exception, all objections are only excuses used to postpone a decision.
When I say he‘ll block the sale with a feeble excuse, I mean he‘ll block the sale with what you‘ve been calling an objection. Objections are defensive weapons, remember? They are what the customer hits you with when he‘s mad or scared and is fighting you. Objections are one of the two ways a customer has to steal control away from you.
That‘s right: Customers have two ways of stealing control, and one of them is by raising an objection. Let me give you an example. Suppose you‘re giving a presentation. Your customer is in a neutral state and is just sitting there listening.
But inadvertently you say something that scares him. When he‘s scared he has only two options: fight or flight. So he fights you by offering an objection.
The presentation is now headed away from a closing point. You were headed in one direction, but the customer objected. This heads the presentation in another direction.
You‘re forced to address his objection before you can get back on track. So objections are one way customers have of stealing control. Unless you can take back control, he‘ll become the seller.
I‘m going to show you in a moment how to take back control, but for right now I want you to understand he who is in control shall be the seller.
The second way customers gain control is by asking questions.
Let‘s say you‘re selling real estate, and you‘re showing a home to a customer, walking from room to room. Suddenly he asks you about the size of the yard. You had control as long as he was neutral and was listening to you. Now, by raising a new topic, one he picked, he has gained control.
And if he stays in control, he‘ll soon be talking about money long before you‘re ready to ?” before you‘ve had a chance to establish any value. And then he‘ll tell you he needs to "think about it" and he‘ll leave.
He became the seller and sold you a NO SALE.
Customers only gain control in two ways: by raising objections and asking questions.
Objections are a defense tactic used when the customer is mad or scared.
Questions, on the other hand, usually indicate interest and a neutral emotional state.
Questions are welcome as long as you understand the customer gets control with them.
Later on you‘ll see how to regain control when your customer asks a question ?” and you‘d better get it back, or he‘s going to be the seller.
In my example about objections, I said the customer was in a neutral state while he was listening to you, but then got scared by something you told him and reacted by fighting ?” objecting. So what did you say that scared him?
Here‘s a concept that‘s axiomatic in selling:
If You Say It, It‘s A Lie. If The Customer Says It, It‘s True
Okay, that‘s an exaggeration, but by and large customers suspect anything we salespeople tell them.
And salespeople certainly like to talk a lot at times, right? Most salespeople think if they have the first word, the last word, and every word in between, they‘ll remain in control.
Okay, that will give you control, in a way, but only for as long as your customer stays neutral.
Sooner or later you‘re going to say something you think is a buyer benefit, but which he doubts. Doubt equals suspicion, and suspicion equals fear. Your customer gets scared and fights back ?” and believe me, you won‘t be able to talk fast enough to prevent it!
Let me give you a practical example of this concept. Imagine a photocopier salesman giving a demonstration. He thinks he must do a lot of telling, so his mouth is moving a mile a minute telling the customer how wonderful his copier is.
"It‘s well-built, strong, made to last forever. Why, the frame alone weighs 150 pounds. Add the moving parts and cabinet and we have a sturdy 300-pound copier. Not in the same league as those flimsy, unreliable, lightweight machines you see. This machine will last and last."
He punctuates his points by pounding on the copier, which doesn‘t even budge.
Then the prospect turns to him and says, "I‘m sorry, but this copier won‘t work for me. I need a copier in my accounting office from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m., then we will have to push it down the hall to the advertising department until 3:00, after which the drafting department needs it. We can‘t push this monster all around the place."
Of course the salesman thinks, Dang! He has mouthed off about all the wrong benefits, features that do absolutely nothing for his customer.
However, well-trained salesman that he is, he knows the next step is to overcome the objection!
Here he goes: "Oh, Mr. Customer, why didn‘t you say so? I have a lightweight tabletop copier in my van that will suit your needs perfectly. It only weighs 55 pounds!"
To which the customer replies ?” you guessed it ?” "Well, I don‘t want that one either! You just told me lightweight copiers are unreliable. I don‘t want your bottom-of-the-line model."
And there we are: The customer used the salesman‘s own words against him. What the salesman said contradicted himself, so it was obviously a lie. The customer now has complete control of the presentation, and the salesman is in deep water indeed.
You might think, Well gosh, I‘ve got to tell the customer about the benefits of my product. If he doesn‘t know what I can do for him, how can I solve his problem?
And you‘re correct that the customer must see you have a solution to his problem. But telling him so doesn‘t make it so! Remember:
Telling Doesn‘t Equal Selling
Telling does not gain you control. Telling often scares the prospect because he is naturally inclined to distrust what you say.
The more you tell, the less he trusts! And the more you tell, the more ammunition you give him to turn the presentation around and take control. It can be one tiny flawed detail in an otherwise brilliant presentation, but it‘s enough!
This example was classic. The customer turned the salesman‘s own words into an objection: "If heavy copiers are good, as you just told me, then light ones must be bad. So don‘t try to sell me that lightweight copier, even though I told you that‘s what I need!"
The more you tell, the more ammunition you give your customer to take control and move the presentation away from a close.
Fortunately, you can stop that process short and regain control. You‘re going to learn how to tell less and sell more. In fact, you‘ll learn how to get your customer to do the telling.
Remember, if he says it, it‘s the truth. So how do you regain control once it is slipping away from you? Well, what is one of the ways the customer gains it?
That‘s right: by asking questions.
You‘ll see how true this is as we explore some facts about questions you were never taught in school.
We‘ve even developed rules about questions to help you get control and keep it. These rules will be additional building blocks for you. As we progress you‘ll start to see those blocks come together and form an unshakeable foundation that will make you nothing but money!Source: Bill Bishop