I recently watched a very capable salesperson get completely flustered because the sales materials he had weren’t in the order he wanted them.
He opened the sales meeting beautifully and then began walking the customers through the materials. At that very point is where things fell apart.
For some reason, he was hung up on the idea he needed cute pictures and “marketing speak” content to wow his customer.
Why? I have no idea! The guy was good!
He didn’t need to rely on anything other than his own knowledge and his ability to have a discussion.
If you need to have sales materials to deliver a presentation, then you don’t know what you’re doing.
I’ve been a strong believer for a long time that the best sales presentations made are those that do not rely on any sales materials.
Why?
Because a sales presentation should be a discussion between people who are comfortable and confident enough with each other to share key information.
This salesperson felt compelled for some reason to use the sales materials his company supplied him. I’m amazed at the number of salespeople I meet who share that belief. If you don’t need it, don’t use it.
Problem too many times with sales materials is that they block discussion more than they foster it. Reason is the sales materials too many times deal with things the customer is not interested in.
When the customer has stuff thrown in their face they don’t really want to see, they wind up shutting down. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a good thing! We want customers talking and we want them engaged. That is the objective, so let’s engage them with a discussion.
Your objective is to know what you sell and know it so well that you don’t need anything other than the questions you want to ask. When you approach sales calls with this strategy, you will be better equipped to show how what you offer meets the customers’s needs and desired benefits.
Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
