I was once a new resident in a rural community and was talking to my neighbor, who was a great guy and a WWII vet. I asked him what the best route was to the interstate highway. He told me, “Go down to the main road and turn left, when you get to the end of the stone wall there’s a road on your left that’ll take you past Wilson’s farm, there’ll be a Shell (used to be a Gulf) gas station on the right, then some condos and in 2 miles you’ll see the general store. Don’t take that left. Instead, keep going down the main road and you’ll see another left just before the drug store. That’ll bring you past the library, the middle school and after you pass South Meadow Pond you can take the right that’ll bring you to Town Hall. You don’t want that left either…“ He went on this way for a while but I’ll stop as I suspect you get the drift of today’s topic. This is a perfect example of NOT using the KISS method.
Twenty years ago I was a sales trainer for a company where the training philosophy was to devote the lion’s share of new employee classroom training time to learning, memorizing, and perfecting delivery of a sales presentation brochure. That was very important to this company because they invested a fortune in their marketing department who spent most of their time developing very sophisticated and lengthy sales brochures for every product and service they offered to the public.
From the day new reps were hired, they were convinced that if they could only get a prospect to sit down and listen to their presentation they would be able to sell enough to make a good living. There was a very high daily accountability in “How many proposals did you give today?” Don’t misunderstand, I realize that you can’t close it until you propose it, but there was little time and effort invested in an assessment or diagnosis before a presentation was attempted. This company wasn’t convinced that surgery without a diagnosis is malpractice.
Well, as you might imagine, this firm suffered from high sales turnover and low sales closure. By the way, I don’t work there anymore, as that philosophy made me break out in hives.
Conventional salespeople are probably squirming while reading this because many consider their presentation the death ray of their sales arsenal. It is their comfort zone, their security blanket, and the last thing they want to surrender. Unfortunately though, most of the investment and effort put into sales presentations end up being lost on customers.
I can think of three reasons sales presentations are not the bomb:
- Presentations are lectures – When boiled down to the lowest common denominator the sales rep is the teacher, and the prospect is the student. Aside from the fact that most people don’t want to be lectured, the big problem is that only about 30 percent of what people hear gets remembered. That’s why trainers typically produce salespeople with marginal results, after using the lecture method in their classrooms.
- Presentations don’t focus on prospects – Rarely is more than 10 to 20 percent of a presentation focused on buyers and their current situation. Those reps spent most of their effort on the solution and not enough on the pain throbbing in the customer’s home or business. At the conclusion of the presentation, the prospect may be impressed with the offering, but don’t know why they should buy it.
- Presentations aren’t unique – The main reason you don’t get any more mileage from presentations you deliver is because competitors use the same strategy. When all is said and done, what is basically gleaned from each proposal by the buyer is that each rep’s offering is positioned as the only answer.
Since this tactic makes it harder for the customer to understand what the presentation was really about, they retreat to the one thing they think will level the playing field, and that is the price. This attributes more than anything to the knock-off mentality most buyers have of your offering. So it seems to me the best advice is putting your diagnosis firmly in the pole position, and moving your presentation back to the second row.
I’m reminded of Dr. Gregory House, and his team of diagnosticians on the TV show, House, M.D., who worked feverishly on each episode to uncover medical problems and conditions that nobody else could seem to solve. Before each episode concluded, patients were fully aware of their medical situation along with their options. Fortunately for them, most were then able to experience a cure at the hands of House’s dream team.
Likewise, in the sales world, only when you function in this manner can you justify making professional recommendations rather than just sales presentations. This approach is what helps differentiate you from your competition.
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