“So start with your destination and then navigate them with your quote-unquote directions” – Rajiv ‘RajNATION’ Nathan in today’s Tip 256
How do you focus on better sales presentations?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Rajiv Nathan, otherwise known as ‘RajNATION.’ RajNATION is the founder of Startup Hypeman where he helps startups not suck at how they pitch and tell their story, so they stand out to customers and stand apart from their competitors. Here he is with today’s tip:
Rajiv ‘RajNATION’ Nathan: Let’s talk about sales presentations today. Typically in a sales presentation, we have this tendency to make it all about us, right? We’re pitching the prospective customer on our services. So we design a whole presentation built around our ability and our capacity to deliver on a product or service. But that logic actually works against us because essentially what we’re doing is asking someone to sit down for 15, 20 maybe even 40 minutes to just hear us talk about ourselves and think about in any other context you’ve been in. How much have you enjoyed being in a conversation with someone where all they do is talk about themselves. So that same logic applies to sales presentations. And on top of that, there are specific components of the presentation that you can modify to ultimately have the best results. Today I’m going to focus on one specific aspect of your presentation and that is your introduction. A1nd this is something I had to learn the hard way from doing it the wrong way several times over. Now, most people will start a sales presentation by showing a slide of a bunch of logos of their clients or that slide we’ll talk about, there’ll be a photo of where the company is headquartered and it’ll be like headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, 420 employees, yadda, yadda, yadda. These awards or something to that effect. Maybe another version of that introductory slide might be like your technology capabilities, and that’s how most companies start a sales presentation because they think it’s impressing the other person, but the reality is the other person’s not there to hear you talk about your own accolades. The other person is there to figure out if you are capable of solving their problem. So naturally, even if you do understand that the next course of action people take, if they’re going to modify their presentation and cut out those slides I mentioned before is, try to build some type of anticipation. They will work on an element of a story which is great. That’s what you want in a sales presentation. However, where this differs than say your traditional storybook is that your first slide after of course your cover slide, your first slide should actually be providing them with the destination. My college marketing professor always used to say ‘Give them the gift’ and that’s what you want to do. You want to give them the gift first. Whatever is the big vision you are pitching them. Make that the first slide and say “Hey, today we are here to talk about how we believe you can get to X, Y, and Z point by doing these things.” And then after you do that, then you can reset and say “So to get there, here’s what we need to understand first..” and then you build up the story slide by slide to ultimately return to that destination towards the end of the presentation, but give them the destination first and here’s why that’s so vitally important. It is because the.., I’ll give you an analogy. Think about when you were a kid and your parents said, “Hey, get in the car. We’re going to Disney World” and you were like, “Yeah, awesome! Disney World.” Now think about if they said, “Hey kids, get in the car. We’re going to drive for the next 20 hours, but we’re not telling you where.” You would have said “No!” and you would have been kicking and screaming the whole way through. You don’t want to make your prospective customers the ladder case. You want them to be the former where they are so excited because they know you’re taking them to Disney World, not; Hey, sit with me for the next 20 30 minutes to be able to ultimately figure out where we’re going. Right? Give them the destination first. When you type something into Google maps, you have to have a destination to know the directions to get there. So start with your destination and then navigate them with your quote-unquote directions to ultimately get there. Show them Disneyworld out of the gate to get them excited, to give them an anchor to logically to mentally hang on to so that the rest of the presentation makes sense.
Scott Ingram: If you’ll click over to DailySales.Tips/256 you’ll find the video version of this tip, the transcript and more about RajNATION. You’ll also find a special link to his Startup Hypeman website where you can get a free ebook on how to really pitch case studies in your cold outreach to get prospects to take a meeting with you.
After you’re done downloading that, make sure you come see us tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!