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Ten Points to help in Selling with Powerpoint June 15, 2008

I’ve talked about PowerPoint before. I don’t like it so much, but many companies insist on using it for everything.

One such company I was recently working with used it for all sales presentations. That’s right; a ‘Death by PowerPoint Sales Pitch’.

I watched one of the presentations, and the sales guy came a distant second to the slides. This destroyed his sales abilities. He was a good salesman when able to interact directly with his clients, but stuck behind PowerPoint, he really struggled. Is it any wonder the companies sales were low?

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t be forced to use PowerPoint in our sales presentations. If we are, there are things we can do to improve the results we get.

So we sat down and devised a new set. This set used his sales skills directly in the presentation, with the slides to back him up. This slide set also used little known persuasion techniques from a variety of sources to improve his sales results.

So what did we do? Here is a list of what and why…

1. Each slide is given a unique headline that describes a benefit to the client in one single sentence. This benefit is then expanded within the slide itself. The only time you’d mention a feature is if in direct reference to the benefit the client gets. Some example titles might be:

2. These headlines are written in an active voice. Drop the cold wet fish of business language and use active, first person language. Doing this actively involves the readers brain, and keeps their attention longer.

3. Make the slides about the client, not about you or your company. How can your product and service help the client directly? They don’t care about you or your product and service. They only care about how you can help them.

4. Each slide is to have no more than 5 bullet points (Each point written in active, first person language). The reason for 5 points only, is because there are volumes of research on how the human mind can only deal with 7 +/- 2 chunks of information. Some people in the room might be able to deal with 9, but the actual decision maker might only be able to deal with 5. Why risk it?

5. Each and every slide and each and every point of every slide must defer to the sales person to explain and expand on. If the points are well written, everyone in the room with is waiting with anticipation for the sales person to discuss it.

6. If you must read the slides out loud, then use a laser pointer so people can follow along. Otherwise they’ll be reading at different speeds, and starting to get annoyed as you fight directly with their own reading style.

7. This goes for every sales situation, but get excited! Your excitement in the slides will be directly transferred to your listeners. If you are sitting at a desk, watching your laptop, it’s hard to get excited. You might have to stand up and move around.

8. Make sure your regular set of objections are covered somewhere in the slides! The more regular, the sooner you cover it.

9. Have different endings to your presentation. There is a well known adage in sales; “When the customer is sold, stop selling”. It’s difficult to do this with another 15 PowerPoint slides remaining. Within PowerPoint you can create a web site like structure, so instead of going from one slide to the next, you can jump around. Giving more details on a direct benefit the client is interested in, and skipping the ones they’re not.

10. On each slide as the last point, ask a question that is answered by ‘yes’. This can help test for closing and uncover objections on each slide.

Bonus Extra
11. Use pictures. If you can’t find a good picture that describes what you want, then use a picture of a face. Humans are hard wired to recognize and respond to faces. Doing so will keep attention focused and make the slides more memorable.

There are a few more subtle methods we used that were directly related to his client’s problems, but these should get you started on redesign.

Any other ideas or pointers you have used to get good results?

The secret to overcoming any excuse… August 21, 2006

… from anyone, anytime. Including your own excuses that cripple your motivation.

Everyone seems to want more motivation. Often I hear from people that some days they just can’t seem to get out of bed, go to the gym, or eat healthy food. Yet those same people don’t connect the excuses they use to their lack of motivation.

There is a very easy method that you can used to immediately drain the power from any excuse you have (or, for everyone in sales, any excuse you are given by someone else).

This will work with _every_ excuse. Though be aware that once you reduce the excuse, that does not necessarily mean you are motivated. You have only taken the hand brake off, you still need to press the accelerator.

Before I explain how to nullify an excuse, I have to explain a little about the structure of an excuse and how it hamstrings motivation. Every excuse can be described in the form of:

Not action because of excuse

This can be said in many different ways, but can all be boiled down to that structure. Some examples are:
“I can’t go to the gym because I’m tired.”
“I would like to go to the gym but I’m too tired.”
“I’m too tired to go to the gym.”

Now the secret here is to change the relationship between action and the excuse. With the examples above there is a direct relationship between the action and the excuse and the excuse stops the action.

I’ll give you another example:

“I can’t go to the gym because I’m sitting on the couch.”

Now if you are like most people, you might start to wonder about the validity of the excuse. I should go to the gym because I’m sitting on the couch. This example starts to show how the excuse – any excuse – is in no way required to be related to the behaviour being avoided.

So knowing this, how do we change this? Once you know how, it’s very easy and you will no longer have an excuse to have an excuse.

The simple method is to use the word ‘and’. So you would change the structure of the excuse to:

Not action and excuse

So changing the above examples you would have:

“I can’t go to the gym and I’m tired.”
“I would like to go to the gym and I’m too tired.”
“I’m too tired and [would like] to go to the gym.”

Say these changed excuses to yourself and take notice how you feel about the action. Next time you hear yourself give an excuse, change it and take notice of your feelings. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to find yourself being much more motivated.

And as I hinted at earlier, you can use the same technique on others and here’s how. When someone gives you an excuse reply with the exact words they used for the action and excuse, replacing the linkage words (because, but, or others) with ‘and’. Often they will nod, as if you have agreed with them. Try it, and let me know your results.

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What stories are you not telling? July 6, 2006

Stories have been a staple in society for as long as humans can remember. We were raised at stories at bed time, Dan Brown’s “The Di Vinci Code” has sold over 60 million copies and Hollywood makes billions of dollars a year by telling us stories. At about the age of 2 we start telling our own stories.

The stories we tell send a very strong message to the listeners. The unfortunate thing is that most people don’t always get the full potential from their stories, and some work against their best interests.

A financial report tells a story.
A corporate brochure tells a story.
A business card tells a story.

The story each of these tell will be different and get different results. For example a hand written business card tells a different story about the owner compared to an expensive, high gloss, graphic designer card. What is the story that yours tells?

A common story

Stories allow us to understand the world around us. Some stories empower us, others hamper us. Sometimes these stories are so much a part of the environment, we don’t even notice them. One of the most common is the story about how Business is war. You’ll not always hear that story explained directly, usually just through comments like: “we need to roll out the big guns”, “motivate the troops”, “understand the enemy”, “prepare a defence”.

I will never forget a conversation I had about this topic some time ago. I was talking with a business executive that was stressed, angry and having difficulty coping. His description of his work environment, and the story he was telling, was entirely in terms of war. He was, in his own words, fighting a losing battle.

So after some time establishing how difficult working in a war zone is, I directed him to consider, for just a moment, if he would think about his work as a basket of fruit. There are the rotten apples that need to be removed, seeds to be spat out, pits that will break your teeth if you bite into them, yet the work itself is sweet, healthy and revitalises.

He looked at me with a blank stare, confused and trying to understand how to do what I asked. After a few moments he claimed it was impossible, “I can’t do it. It’s just not real.”

“Neither is being in a war zone.” I replied.

Stories are Persuasion

One day, there was a blind man sitting on the steps of a building
with a hat by his feet and a sign that read:

“I am blind, please help.”

A creative publicist was walking by and stopped to observe.
He saw that the blind man had only a few coins in his hat.
He dropped in more coins and, without asking for permission,
took the sign and rewrote it.

He returned the sign to the blind man and left.
That afternoon the publicist returned to the blind man and noticed
that his hat was full of bills and coins.

The blind man recognized his footsteps and asked
if it was he who had rewritten his sign
and wanted to know what he had written on it.

The publicist responded: “Nothing that was not true. I just wrote the
message a little differently.” He smiled and went on his way.

The new sign read: “Today is Spring and I cannot see it.”
- Taken from Kim Klaver’s blog

Stories are able to capture the listeners imagination and stimulate emotion. Stories have a profound ability to make you think in different ways. They have the ability to persuade when other methods fail. They can cut past beliefs, preconceptions, and conflicting ideas. Stories package information in a way that help the listener to understand that information. And for these reasons, and many more, stories persuade.

You are a story teller. What are your stories?

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Better team building part two June 25, 2006

One of the podcasts I was listening to mentioned in my earlier post is “For Immediate Release“. One of the hosts of the show was involved in a second life conference and links to the transcript of the event.

Now the event is about marketing online in a virtual world. However some of the points they cover relate directly to working teams; Combining real life with a virtual online presence, co-creation, and above all, the whole event is an example of the space for communication I was discussing in my last post.

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Stupid business policy that costs over $10000 per month June 13, 2006

This happened last week.

A company policy states: ‘…any order less than $10000 is charged freight. Any order over $10000 is not charged freight.’

This month’s order was only $9950. The company, following the policy, charges the $150 freight. So, after a few phone calls, it becomes apparent that this policy is immovable. Buying $50 less will actually cost $150 more. So, doing what any customer will do when they think they are overcharged or treated poorly, they move their business elsewhere. So after 3 years of business worth over $10000 each month, the customer takes their money elsewhere.

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How to build or break a habit May 25, 2006

Seth Godin recently mentioned making and breaking habits. As humans, habits are what keep us alive. Almost every behaviour you do is either a habit, or built on habits. From walking and talking to putting on your socks and combing your hair.

While it is possible to break habits, it’s much easier to just replace them with a new one. Offer a better option, and you get a better result. When you were much younger, you learned and built a crawling habit. After a while you learned the more effective transport habit of walking. Regardless of your age now, you can still go back to your crawling habit. As the old saying goes – it’s just like riding a bike.

Of course, knowing the right stop where to insert the new habit is the challenge. To find it, I usually start with the question – “What is the real or imagined positive value that you get from this habit?”

If you were marketing a new product, and wanting to build a new habit in your customers, that question needs a little modifying. You may want to use the Creating Passionate Users mantra of helping them to “kick ass”.

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So what does a CEO actually do? March 17, 2006

According to recent research some interesting aspects to being a C level executive have become apparent. The report discusses the various obvious aspects of being a CEO, developing and implementing corporate strategy for example. Interesting to me is the various communication aspects mentioned. The report details how analysts take into account the ability of a CEO to communicate and motivate employees when valuing a company.

How the analysts know a CEO is able to communicate and motivate employes or not, is not detailed unfortunately. That may seem like a strange question, but how the analysts view a CEO’s performance is going to be different than how the employees view it, and different again to how the shareholders view it. From my experience, it’s a rare company where all three groups share the same view of the CEO. This knowledge could be used to give the CEO another form of feedback to his or her performance and improve the overall business performance.

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Authentic relationships? March 15, 2006

Seth Godin has a posted an idea of the difference between authenticity and factory. While I need to think more on this idea, as I think it varies between contexts. Ie, Our theoretical friend, Barry, likes to go to the authentic Japanese restaurant. He likes walking through the hanging cloth at the door, hearing all the staff yell a welcome, and sit in an environment that could easily be in Tokyo. The food is good, though more expensive than the take away sushi place down the road.

After a nice dinner, Barry wanders out of the restaurant, shaking his head at the idiots eating at the sushi place, wondering how they can eat there. He walks to a nearby cafe to get a coffee. He goes here because it is the cheapest take away coffee he can find. It’s bitter, weak and in a styrofoam cup.

Barry likes the authentic style of the restaurant and can’t understand how people would choose the sushi place instead. Yet at the same time, he likes cheap coffee and can’t understand why people are so fanatical about the coffee they drink.

And this brings me to my main point – How does this relate to business customers?

Knowing that your customers want authenticity, how do you grow larger? This question implies that being authentic is being small. Which may or may not be true – I’m unable to think of a large company that handles that authenticity well, but can think of many small companies that do.

And if you are a factory company, producing factory products, how do you begin to approach the ‘authentic market’?

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