12 Biggest Mistakes Salespeople Make in Their Presentations

I came accross this report from one of our outstanding University of Freedom "Faculty" members and thought you would enjoy it!

A former President of the National Speakers' Association, Ms. Fripp is both a phenomenal and entertaining speaker, as well as one of the top communication trainers in the country. While this article is specifically related to sales presentations, at the University of Freedom Ms. Fripp will be teaching us how to become infinitely more effective in the "sales" presentations that we encounter in our everyday lives... from a professional sales call, to speaking at a PTA meeting and even interviewing with a College entrance advisor.

Patricia Fripp is just one of the powerful speakers/trainers you'll be meeting and learning from at the University of Freedom!

We're counting down the days till Atlanta!

All The Best,
Thom
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12 Biggest Mistakes Salespeople Make in Their Presentations
By Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE

Salespeople are incredible. Like Hollywood
actors, whenever they open their mouths, they are
putting themselves and their company on the line,
taking a risk in the hope of a favorable outcome.
Just like actors, even the best, most experienced
salesperson can use some coaching and polishing
now and then.

Here are the 12 most common mistakes that my
sales clients are making at the beginning of our
coaching sessions. By the time we’re through,
they’ve learned how to avoid them.

1 - UNCLEAR THINKING. If you can’t describe the
objective of your interaction in one sentence,
you may be guilty of fuzzy focus, trying to say
too much at once. You’ll confuse your listener, and
that doesn’t make the sale. Decide exactly what you
want and need to accomplish in this contact. What
would be a positive outcome? For example, imagine
that a busy executive says, “You have exactly ten
minutes of my time to tell me what you want me to
know about your company. In one sentence, tell me
how should I describe your benefits when I talk to
my managers tomorrow.” At any stage of the sales
process, you should know in advance why you are
interacting, what benefits you are offering your
prospect or client, and what you’d like the next step
to be.

2 - NO CLEAR STRUCTURE. Make it easy for
your prospect to follow what you are saying,
whether in a casual conversation or a formal
presentation of information and ideas. They’ll
remember it better—and you will too. Otherwise,
you may forget to make a key point. If you waffle or
ramble, you lose your listeners. Even for a
conversation, mentally outline your objectives. What
key “Points of Wisdom” do you want the prospect to
remember? How will you illustrate each point? What
colorful examples will your prospect be able to
repeat three days later? What phrases or slogans do
you want to guarantee they will repeat afterwards?

3 - TALKING TOO MUCH. Salespeople often talk
too much about themselves and their service
or product. They make a speech rather than
having an exchange or interaction, otherwise known
as conversation. The key to connecting with a client
is conversation; the secret of client conversation is
to ask questions; the quality of client information
received depends on the quality of the questions—
and waiting for, and listening to, the ANSWERS! In
fact, a successful encounter early in the sales
process should probably be mostly open-ended
questions, the kind that require essay answers rather
than just “yes” and “no.” And don’t rush on with
preprogrammed questions that pay no attention to
the answer you’ve just received. Learn to listen, even
pausing to wait for further comments. Silence draws
people out.

4 - NO MEMORABLE STORIES. People rarely
remember your exact words. Instead, they
remember the mental images your words
inspire. Support your key points with vivid, relevant
stories. Help them “make the movie” in their minds
by using memorable characters, exciting situations,
intriguing dialogue, suspense, and humor.

5 - NO THIRD-PERSON ENDORSEMENTS.
There’s a limit to how many bold claims you
can make about your company and product
results, but there is NO limit to the words of praise
you can put in the mouths of your delighted clients.
Use case histories of your clients’ success stories
about the benefits they received from your service
or product. When you are using their actual
dialogue, you can say much more glowing things
about yourself and your company than you could if
the words were your own. Your endorsement stories
should use the same ingredients as a good
Hollywood movie: create memorable characters, use
vivid dialogue, and provide a dramatic lesson
learned.

The dramatic lesson learned in YOUR Hollywood
story will be the benefits of doing business with
you. Choose characters that your prospects can
connect with. It helps if the star of your story holds
a similar position to your prospect. You can’t say,
“Do business with me, and you’ll get promoted,”
but you can give a specific example of someone who
phoned, e-mailed, or wrote you that this happened
to them. “Just last week,” you might say, “I heard
from Mary Smith. She’s the Payroll Manager at
Amalgamated Systems. She said that changing their
payroll system to our company not only made them
more efficient, but they cut their costs 10%. She
told me, ‘You made me look good in the eyes of
management. Thanks to you, I received a
promotion!’” That’s an emotional connection.

6 - NO EMOTIONAL CONNECTION. The most
powerful communication combines both
intellectual and emotional connections.
Intellectual means appealing to educated selfinterest
with data and reasoned arguments.
Emotion comes from engaging the listeners’
imaginations, involving them in your illustrative
stories by frequent use of the word “you” and from
answering their unspoken question, “What’s in this
for me?” Obviously, a customer is going to justify
doing business with you for specific, analytical
reasons. What gives you the edge—what I like to
call the “unfair advantage”—is creating an
emotional connection, too. Build this emotional
connection by using stories with characters that
they can relate to and by providing a high I/You
ratio, using the word “you” as often as possible and
talking from their point of view.

My recommendation is that you make telephone
appointments with your happiest clients. Tell them
you would like to use their stories about working
with you as an endorsement, and ask permission to
tape record your conversation. Then just let them
talk. The more they say, encouraged now and then
by a question from you, the better their stories and
quotes will be. Finally, select the best quotes from
what they’ve said.

7 - WRONG LEVEL OF ABSTRACTION. Are you
providing the big picture and generalities
when your listeners are hungry for details,
facts, and specific how-to’s? Or are you drowning
them in data when they need to position themselves
with an overview and find out why they should
care? Get on the same wave length with your
prospects. For first contacts with executives,
describe what your company can do for them in
broad generalities. With middle managers, discuss
exactly how you can work together, a medium level
of abstraction. If you are dealing with IT
professionals, use the lowest level of abstraction,
lots of facts and figures. Don’t discuss aspects or
details of what you’re offering that your audience
has no interest in.

8 - NO PAUSES. Few sales presentations have
enough pauses. Good music and good
communication both contain changes of
pace, pauses, and full rests. This is when listeners
think about important points you’ve just made. If
you rush on at full speed to crowd in as much
information as possible, chances are you’ve left your
prospects back at the station. Give them enough
time to ask a question or even time to think over
what has been said. Pauses allow pondering and
understanding.

9 - IRRITATING NON-WORDS. Hmm—ah—
er—you know what I mean—. One presenter
I heard began each new thought with “Now!”
as he scanned his notes to figure out what came
next. This might be okay occasionally, but not every
30 seconds. Practice in front of your sales manager
or colleagues, giving them permission to call out
whenever you hem or ah. Or video or audiotape
yourself, and note any digressions.

10 - STEPPING ON THE PUNCH-WORD. The
most important word in a sentence is
the punch-word. Usually, this is the
final word: “Take my wife—PLEASE.” But if you
drop your voice or add, “Right?” or “See?” or “You
know?” or “Okay?,” you’ve killed the impact of your
message. Another popular punch-line killer is the
word “today.” Avoid saying, “Let’s look at the
recommendations we have for you today.” Obviously,
you’re talking “today.” The punch word in this
sentence should be “recommendations.”

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld says, “I’ll spend an hour
reducing an eight-word sentence to five words
because the joke will be funnier.” I train sales teams
to do the same thing with their key phrases because
their presentations will be more powerful. We go
through their sentences, looking for the “$10
words.” Not every word or phrase is, or should be, of
equal importance. Emphasize the action words and
phrases or those that make an emotional
connection. “And”-“it”-“in” are no-dollar words.
One sales team came up with what they called
“$100 phrases,” calling out, “Wow, that’s SO good!”
whenever someone used an especially potent phrase.
Often it was a succinct term for a hard-to-describe
benefit. Such a phrase can be priceless. For example,
a company offering a complex process might
explain, “We’re like a security guard that keeps the
bad guys out and lets the good guys in.”

To find $100 phrases for your company, I suggest
this process: Imagine you’re trying to explain what
you do to your 82-year-old great aunt. How you
describe it should be part of your conversational
sales presentation. This is an especially good
technique to use for executive overviews. If your
$100 phrase is “visual enough,” your prospects and
clients will repeat it later.

11 - NOT HAVING A STRONG OPENING AND
CLOSING. Engage your audience
immediately with a powerful, relevant
opening that includes them. For example, “You have
an awesome responsibility.” Then fill in what it is:
increasing sales, reducing errors, cutting overhead,
whatever your product can help your prospect do.
Another excellent strategy is to do some research.
Then you can say, “Congratulations on your
company’s recent success,” and describe it. Or “I
love your new commercials.” Most salespeople start
by talking about their company. Talk about your
prospect instead.

Whenever I give a speech for a company, I check
out their web site, corporate reports, or press
releases to find something their Chairman of the
Board or CEO has said that I can quote. You can do
this too, making it almost sound as if their CEO is recommending your company. For example, “Our core values are—” and match them to your own. Or “We subscribe to Best Practices, and all our preferred vendors do as well.” That’s YOU! To close, pick the one sentence that you absolutely want embedded in their minds, even if you don’t get the appointment or the sale. Leave them with a strong, positive message. They might say, “We’re happy with our present vendor.” You reply, “I appreciate your LOYALTY (a $10 word.) If you ever want a SECOND vendor ($10 word) or for any reason they DISSATISFY ($10 word) you, you need to do business with a company that will be around LONG-TERM ($10 word.) Please remember, we’ve been PROFITABLE ($10 word) for the last 167 quarters ($10 word.)”

In the search for $100 phrases, don’t just add up
$10 words. A $100 phrase stands alone. It is a
repetitive refrain that is so valuable to your company
that every salesperson needs to be trained to use it
in every presentation.

12 - MISUSING TECHNOLOGY. Too many
salespeople rely too much on their
PowerPoint and flip charts and not
enough on making an emotional connection. My
friend, Charles H. Green, coauthor of The Trusted
Advisor, tells about four advertising agencies who
were given an opportunity to bid for a large account.
Each group had two hours.

The last team walked in and said, “We’re ready to
do exactly what the other three competing agencies
have done. We can give you the Dance of a
Thousand Slides, but you have a choice. You can
pretend you already hired us, and for the next two
hours we can start brainstorming on your account.
If you hire us, you’ve received two free hours
consultation, and if you don’t, you’ve still had two
hours free.” They proved they could think on their
feet and be flexible. This won them a very profitable
account. They showed they could use the latest
technology, but, more important, that they didn’t
need it.

“Whenever you’re being considered for a job,”
says Charlie,“act as if you already have it. Most
people want to think that the quality of their work
speaks for itself. It doesn’t. Beat your competition by
getting to work for your prospect immediately.
Demonstrate how it will feel to be working together.”

All four agencies could have done a fine job. The
one that landed the account had enough confidence
in their presentation skills to use technology or not.
The client was exhilarated by their work session,
impressed by the agency’s flexibility, and confident
this agency would, and could, do a great job. Many
sales teams couldn’t communicate with a prospect
for two hours without the help of a suitcase full of
charts, slides, and electronic equipment.

Bottom line: Make technology a support, not a crutch.

When you learn to avoid these 12 common traps,
you’re on your way to being a “star” of the sales
world, ready to accept an award for your dazzling
performance.

I hope you enjoyed my special report. What you
have read is just a small part of the advice I give in
my work with sales teams.

If you believe your sales professionals are
making any of the “Fripp’s 12 Biggest Mistakes” in
their presentations, you may be in the situation
where you qualify to be one of the handful of new
clients I will work with in the next six months.
But I’ve found through experience that there’s
only one way to be sure. And that’s to have a short conversation on the phone.

In our conversation, I would ask you to tell me
about your company and situation, so I can assess
whether this training is appropriate for your
company.

The initial conversation is no charge.
Just like you, my time is limited, but I would
enjoy discovering if my advice can help you
accomplish your sales goals and have the impact it
has for my clients.

To find out about my availability for a no-charge, no-obligation conversation, please call my office toll-free at (800) 634-3035, or send me a short e-mail at pfripp@fripp.com. I, or one of my staff, will give a choice of available times for us to set up our phone meeting.

Thank you...I’m looking forward to speaking with you.

Sincerely,
Pa t r i c i a Fr i p p