Before presenting anything it is our responsibility to discover which of our products or services are a good fit for the prospect. There is only one way to do that. Ask a question, then ask more questions, and finally ask even more questions. Find out what problems they are running into that your product or service can solve and keep asking until they have nothing more to say. This gives us a great starting point on which parts of our presentations are in and which parts can be cut out as irrelevant to this prospect.How well can you run through your presentation? We all have our dog and pony show down and most of us love giving it. We are excited about our product or service and want to give all of those wonderful features and benefits. The problem is that there are very few prospects out there that need every one of our solutions. They need some of our products or part of our services. Yet many salespeople deliver the whole thing. We become waiters that dump the whole menu on the table when the customer asked for a salad. Unfortunately most of us don’t have a menu. So how do we discover what the prospect wants to order? The secret lies in asking them and knowing when to stop piling on the features and benefits.
Just because a segment of our solutions are relevant to the prospect, doesn’t necessarily mean they all have to be presented. Arrange your solutions to the best of your ability from most important to the prospect to least important.
Here is the structure for presenting our solution:
- After we cover the first couple of problems and discuss how we can help solve them, stop. See if the prospect has had their fill.
- Ask them if they are waiting to politely ask us to leave, or are they ready to sign a contract. Most people will say that they are somewhere in the middle.
- Ask them where they are from 0 – 10. If they are not ready to sign ask what they need to hear to get there. Most often you will find that what they need to hear is the next part of your presentation. This happens because it has been catered to them.
- Continue this process until you have exhausted all of the key points that were important to them.
- If at any point they say they are ready to buy, stop talking. That is the end of your presentation. Don’t feel that you have to hit all of the points. You only have to talk about as many as it takes for the prospect to be ready to buy.
This might seem awkward but its effective. It is simply a technique to see if you are on the same page as the prospect. By speaking only to what the prospect says is important, we avoid gorging them on irrelevant features and benefits. If it doesn’t apply to them they aren’t paying attention. If we have too many things in our presentation that don’t apply to them, they will tune us out all together. Speak to what matters to the prospect and when they have heard enough pull the plug. It saves us time and it saves them from hearing irrelevant information. It also lets us know exactly when they have bought our solution.
|
|
