No one wants to mess up a presentation. A golfer has never stood on the 1st tee hoping to shank his first drive out-of-bounds. There is never a traffic jam or flight delay when we’re headed for vacation when we envision our travel plans.
So why do things not always go as planned?
It probably comes down to preparation, practice and confidence. Or maybe it’s a lack of any or all of those three things?
The best salespeople know their product’s features backward and forward and inside out. Perhaps even more importantly, they know how to express those features in terms of their benefits to the customer. Consumers care less about what something IS and more about what that product, service or tool DOES if they purchase it. Those same salespeople also are better at understanding their customer by taking time to ask the proper questions, identify wants and needs, determine urgency and motivation and establish if their product or service will be the right fit.
When you truly practice your presentation, learn to anticipate certain questions or objections and approach each opportunity as a possible win-win for anyone involved, there is a much higher success rate. It’s no different for the golfer who practices her swing, learns to anticipate certain obstacles, lies or conditions and understands how to approach the course in a way that maximizes strengths and minimizes weaknesses or the football coach who scouts his team’s competition to identify the keys to victory.
The final piece is seeing the outcome you desire in your head before it happens. Do you truly believe the customer will say yes? The tee shot will land safely in the fairway? The tool will do the job it was built to do? Having the confidence to say it the way you rehearsed it, maintain eye contact when you ask for the sale or stand up for what you believe in makes all the difference and allows you to walk away a winner.
Is that the way you saw it in your head before it happened?
Photo Credit: Sam Nasim via Flickr