How to Start Your Sales Presentation

An effective way to start your sales presentation is with a success story. That story should be a true account of how your solution helped a past client. Keep the story as short as possible. Include the obstacle, your solution and the results. Numbers solidify the story. For example I often use the story about how I helped my client close a $10 Million deal.

Yes you should have the permission of the successful client to tell their story. For the sake of privacy, you might not mention the client’s name. Instead you might mention the type of business.

Your audience should be able to relate to your client and see themselves in your story. A story about what you did for Apple might not connect with members of a farm co-operative.

After relating the success story talk about this prospect’s situation and how you might be able to help them.

At this point your listeners will either be keenly interested or not at all. In either case you will know what to do next. If they are not interested, pack up and leave. Don’t waste time continuing the rest of your prepared presentation. If they are interested, it might be time for some question and answer.

Notice those simple yet effective two steps to open your sales presentation.

Don’t take the winding yet well-worn path that many sales presentations blindly stumble along.

They start talking about their company, the president, the founder’s story, their mission statement and their personal history with the company.

None of those things are important to your prospects.

Yet many sales presentations are designed that way.

There is likely only one person who might like to hear that nonsense – the president of your company. Too many sales presentations are designed to placate the president and not to capture the attention of the prospect.

Another benefit of leading with your success story is that your presentation can be much shorter and still succeed. The client whom I helped win the $10 Million deal was allotted 60 minutes by the prospect. But my client delivered a 12-minute deal-closing presentation.

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