Julie Hansen //October 14, 2014//
“Why are you wasting my life?” Can you imagine a client saying that to you after you delivered what you thought was a pretty good, on target business presentation? Jeff Bezos did exactly that after one of his engineers delivered a complicated, boring presentation to the outspoken founder of Amazon. I don’t know if that engineer still has a job at Amazon, but one thing I do know: If that were an outside salesperson, he or she would have left without a sale – and not even qualified for free shipping!
While it’s rare that prospects or clients express themselves quite so bluntly after a presentation that misses the mark, I am sure there are times when they have wanted to stand up and join Jeff in demanding, “Why are you wasting my life?!” Whether you’re selling a product, service or idea, you can’t afford to waste a moment of your prospect’s time or let the seeds of doubt take hold. Of course, no one consciously sets out to take their audience on a long, rambling ride to nowhere, but there are many small things you may be doing that can add up to a negative perception.
One of the requirements of my first job was to sit through hundreds of sales presentations, meetings and calls. While only a handful could be labeled a complete waste of time, the majority were filled with moments where my thoughts ventured into the dangerous territory of: “Didn’t we cover that?” to “So what?” to “When is he going to get to the point?!”
As a salesperson, I was determined not to let those thoughts take hold of my audience. This was more difficult to accomplish than I realized. One of the reasons was that I had a deck to present that was better suited for a brochure than a live presentation. I was expected to include certain information in a certain order, including a detailed corporate overview slide and customer references long before I got to any value for my audience.
It was how things were always done. I learned very quickly that I could do things “how they were always done” or I could win more business by presenting my message in a way that quickly connected with my audience and delivered value, but not both. I chose the latter. Today, I’m going to share five of those techniques with you:
Five ways to stop wasting time and start winning business: