Sales Calls: Comfy or Compelling?
Impact
Depends on Skills, Not Comfort
By
Ken Wax,
Published
in VARBusiness
Are
you comfortable when speaking in front of groups? Well, at
the risk of offending you, I don't really care.
Well,
actually, I do. But your comfort--while nice--guarantees nothing
about influencing your audience and reaching your goals. You
need to present excellent content in a captivating manner.
That you are comfortable in front of a group should be a given.
It's
crazy how most presentation skills courses focus primarily
on having you feel comfortable. Plenty of time is spent discussing
why you should speak clearly and avoid jingling coins in your
pocket. But dwelling on such topics bores most class members,
who are hoping to learn how to become more successful, not
raise self-esteem.
To
me, comfort and confidence are the price of admission. Every
presenter should have them. Then the real work begins--intriguing
the people in the room and taking them along a path that has
them concluding it is very smart to proceed with your proposition.
Brushing
Up
Presentations
are expensive in terms of time--yours and your audience's.
Imagine five people in a room, and you deliver something they
find not at all compelling. You've just wasted many hours.
It
may be true, to a degree, that people 20 years ago did not
mind whiling away a morning at a mediocre seminar or daydreaming
in a conference room while yet another salesperson confidently
made claims. Today, however, there are all sorts of pressures.
The Internet introduces new competitors, and even if it didn't,
it still steals time from the day. Everywhere, customers are
exploring new ways to decide and buy as their daily lives
change and work flows into leisure time. There's no such thing
as "business as usual."
Yet,
skills development in presenting has remained mired where
it was 30 years ago.
The
needs of businesses have changed dramatically, as have companies
and the people within them. You need to know how to capture
attention and influence in our age of fast-paced business
and continually distracted businesspeople.
So
let me share with you an approach that turns the whole thing
upside down. It comes to you from our Presentation Mastery
workshop, which was developed in response to countless requests
from people who present for a living and has been taught all
over North America. "Upside down" refers to the
fact that while your comfort as a presenter is essential,
it takes a back seat to your customers' perspective.
Here's
the logic:
--
You're in the room presenting, using up resources and opportunity,
for a purpose.
--
Reaching your goal depends on having each audience member
reach a desired conclusion.
--
Nothing happens unless you first capture their attention and
intrigue them.
--
People watching you want to be taken on a journey, raising
questions, answering them, appealing to their unspoken personal
needs and desires.
No
one was ever bored into action--an information dump rarely
motivates.
Agree
with that? If so, you might be the catalyst who can help your
company make some quick improvements. Presenting is so leveraged,
so tied to creating customers, that changes here show up in
many places--including the bottom line.
Managers
carve time to examine the presentations your people are giving
and how proficient they are in delivering them. As for sales
and marketing folks, while they may not be able to make changes
as managers do, you can nudge them into looking at this area.
One small step might be to leave a copy of this article for
your manager to get him or her thinking.
Maybe
I should be more understanding. Virtually all presentation
courses are old--created long before the age of PCs and presentation
software. Advice about the best way to use overhead transparencies
is comically archaic. Even sillier is the fact that many such
courses are still taught using overheads.
Instead, focus on improving the impact at every presentation
you give. You'll soon find yourself outselling competitors
who think being comfortable is enough. To me, that's a real
comfy feeling.
Ken
Wax is president of Total Quality Selling Inc. and is an internationally
known keynote speaker. |
