Sales Presentations

A sales presentation (also called a sales pitch) attempts to lead a potential buyer to purchase a service or a product. Sales presentations are persuasive in nature.

Audience

The target audience for a sales presentation depends on who has the authority to make the purchase under consideration. Some sales presentations are invited by the potential buyer; others are “cold sales” in which the presenter/seller approaches a first-time potential buyer with a product or a service. In some cases, the audience might be an intermediary—a company’s office manager, for example, who then makes a recommendation to the company’s director.

Recent research reported by the Harvard Business Review suggests that persons delivering sales pitches encounter two general groups of buyers—talkers and mobilizers.2 Talkers don’t get the presenter very far because while they have much to say about issues, they are unable to build a consensus among those who make the sales decision. Mobilizers keep their focus on the needs of the business and approach the sales pitch with skepticism; they will only advocate for the sale if they believe it will truly help the business. As a result, mobilizers generate trust among their colleagues so that when they make recommendations, people listen.

Successful sales pitches clearly show how the product or service meets the needs of the potential buyer and demonstrate how it surpasses other options available. In fact, studies have shown that exceptional salespeople uncover and expose unrecognized needs in the organization and clearly help the customer pinpoint solutions.3 It is these “insightful” salespeople who guide their audience to a more productive place and provide support along the way.

ESL SPEAKER’S NOTES

Steps to Counteract Problems in Being Understood

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With the exception of young children, virtually everyone who learns to speak another language will speak that language with an accent. This issue is especially important in business and professional settings, where being understood can have a direct impact on your career. What steps can you take when your accent will make your oral presentation difficult for the audience to understand?

In the long term, interacting with native speakers in everyday life will help enormously. Engaging in dialogue with cross-cultural partners is an excellent way to adjust to native communication styles.1 With immersion, non-native speakers can begin to stop translating word for word and start thinking in English. Using a tape recorder and practicing your speech in front of others is also very important.

But what if, although your experience with English is limited, you must nonetheless give an oral presentation? Robert Anholt, a scientist and author, suggests the following:

  1. Practice the presentation often, preferably with a friend who is a native English speaker.
  2. Learn the presentation almost by heart.
  3. Create strong presentation aids that will convey most of the story by themselves, even if your speech is hard to understand.

By practicing often and ensuring that your presentation aids convey the bulk of your meaning, you can be confident that you will get your message across. And with time and effort, be assured that even the most difficult accent can be tamed to the point where speech is clearly understood.

Source: Robert Anholt, Dazzle ’Em with Style: The Art of Oral Scientific Presentation, 2nd ed. (New York: Academic Press, 2005).

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Organization

Plan on organizing a sales presentation as you would a persuasive speech, selecting among the motivated sequence, problem-solution/problem-cause-solution, or comparative advantage patterns (see Chapter 26). The comparative advantage pattern works well when the buyer must choose between competing products and seeks reassurance that the product being presented is indeed superior. The problem-solution or problem-cause-solution pattern is especially effective when selling to a buyer who clearly needs a product to solve a problem.

Sometimes called the basic sales technique, the motivated sequence, with its focus on audience needs, offers an excellent means of appealing to buyer psychology. To use it to organize a sales presentation, do the following:

  1. Draw the potential buyer’s attention to the product.
  2. Isolate and clarify the buyer’s need for the product.
  3. Describe how the product will satisfy the buyer’s need.
  4. Invite the buyer to purchase the product.

When making a sales pitch following the motivated sequence, the extent to which you focus on each step depends on the nature of the selling situation. In cold-call sales situations, consider spending more time discovering the potential buyer’s needs, and be sure to verify your information.4 For invited sales presentations, including RFPs (request for proposals), spend more time detailing characteristics of the product and showing how it will satisfy buyers’ needs.

APPLYING MONROE’S MOTIVATED SEQUENCE IN A SALES PRESENTATION

  • imageIdentify the potential buyer’s needs and wants and appeal to them.
  • imageUsing the product’s features, match its benefits to the customer’s needs and wants.
  • imageStress what the product can do for the customer.
  • imageEngage the customer’s senses, using sight, sound, smell, and touch.
  • imageAsk for the sale. Do not leave the sales encounter without making the ask.1
  • imageGet the buyer to do something (look something up; promise to call someone or schedule a meeting). Buyers who invest their time are more likely to invest in what you are selling.2