Читать книгу Sales Presentations For Dummies - Julie M. Hansen - Страница 9

Although persuasive presentations share many common characteristics, certain types of sales presentations – team, virtual, demonstrations, and so forth – offer unique challenges. These sections give you a quick overview.

Presenting as a team

If you’re involved in a strategic sale – high stakes, multiple steps – more than likely you’re a member of a sales team. Your success rides on your team’s ability to present a united front and a cohesive message. With unfamiliar team members often stretched for time, team presentations can start to resemble Frankenstein’s monster: a mish mash of styles, an unsteady delivery, and unpredictable results. To make sure that everyone on your team is singing from the same songbook, remember these points:

✔ Assign clear roles. Having one person as the point person who collects all presentation materials and another who handles all the logistics can keep information from getting lost or balls from being dropped. Having a go-to person to handle certain types of questions can avoid missteps during your presentation.

✔ Use good rehearsal practices. Forget the dry run; team presentations require a full rehearsal – including those transitions and hand-offs where many teams lose valuable points.

✔ Reading cues: A cue is a predetermined body or eye movement, or sound that sends a signal to your teammate. Planning a few clear, memorized cues to use during your presentation can resolve much of the confusion and have you operating as a true ensemble.

See tips on how to present as a team in Chapter 16.

Delivering a web presentation

Fitting your content and your style to your medium is critical, as is improving your connection with your audience. Web presentations are typically live presentations crammed onto a small screen with understandably disappointing results. Remove the cloak of invisibility and increase the engagement in a web presentation through the following techniques:

✔ Leverage the power of your voice. Without your physical presence your voice plays even greater importance in getting your message across and engaging your audience.

✔ Incorporate polls and other web tools. Using your web tools can help break up some of the monotony of endless slides or screens.

✔ Use a webcam. Increase your visibility in a web presentation by using a webcam. People respond much more positively to faces than a disembodied voice. Because many salespeople still prefer to go unseen, you’ll also have the advantage of standing out in your prospect’s mind.

You can find out how to make your web presentation more engaging, interactive, and successful in Chapter 17.