Do you want to dazzle your clients?

Do you know the number of presentations you give in a month?

Let’s count them, then!

“Well, we did six proposal presentations this month and two company presentations to clients.”

Okay, that makes eight presentations. But are these the only ones?

Let’s think about it together. What about that conversation the other day that you had with that company on the phone? Isn’t that also a presentation?

What about that email introduction you made to that customer today? Isn’t that also a presentation?

As you guessed, we do many more presentations than we usually think.

If we add them all up, you will see that we do quite an interesting number per month.

If we do many more presentations than we think we do, it may make sense to improve the process. That way, the next opportunity arises, we can dazzle our clients.

Let’s focus today on what I call the “lightning presentation”.

The one that should always be on the tip of your tongue so you can use it in any circumstance.

For this to happen, we must first consider the message we want to transmit.

It should continuously be developed from our client’s point of view rather than ours.

And let’s be honest. The only thing that matters to our customers comes down to a simple sentence:

“What’s in it for me (client).”

Therefore, our entire presentation should be built around this concept.

One of the constraints of this type of presentation is the time factor. Usually, we only have, at most, 60 seconds. So we have to structure our presentation so that it can be delivered in this time.

This implies that everything that is an accessory must be eliminated.

We have to think and understand what critical information we have to convey.

In our Sales Workshops, we usually work on three critical components of these processes.

The hook
In other words, we use the opening phrase to capture the customer’s attention.
It should be short and give the customer an understanding of the value we can bring them with our products or services.

Something like:

Customer: “So tell me, what does XPTO GT do?”

We: “We specialize in increasing the profitability of XYZ production.”

This sentence conveys two essential components.

The issue of “we specialize” and “we increase profitability”.

Both of these issues give the customer the information that he has something to gain from our company, provided possible cost savings.

By getting “hooked,” we can then move on to the next section.

The Development.
Then we need to develop what we do in three or four sentences. The idea will be to explain to our customers how we can save them money with our product or service.

But remember. Don’t give too much away in the first contact. The goal is to get him to schedule a meeting with us to continue the business process.

The Call to Action

So, after we give him the hook, and the development we should whenever possible ask for a breakthrough on his part. In other words, a request for action.

For example:

“Does that sound interesting to you? Let’s set up a meeting to look at this issue in more detail.

These kinds of processes should always be present. We should always agree on a clear breakthrough in the sales process.

After these three components, all that remains is for us to rehearse.

We should practice this in various circumstances: sitting, standing, at the lunch table, in the elevator, and on every occasion, we can think of.

The idea is to be as flexible and at ease as possible in this process.

You can rehearse in front of a mirror, and you can do it with a colleague, and above all, you can do this rehearsal in your head.

By closing your eyes and imagining that you are in this situation, and rehearsing the presentation as if it were happening right now.

The idea is to imagine that we are seeing and hearing everything we would see if we were actually there.

Seeing our hands gesturing, the client in front of us, etc.

Doing this mental rehearsal several times will create an interesting phenomenon in your brain.

Your nervousness will decrease. What happens psychologically is that your subconscious cannot distinguish between what is real and what is imagined.

Has it ever happened to you, waking up tired when you have dreamed all night that you have been running? What happens with the mental rehearsal is similar to this.

As we rehearse the presentation several times, our subconscious will think that we have already performed this process several times and that there is no reason to be nervous.

So this week, create your lightning presentation and then rehearse.

When it is ready, you will see that there will be many more opportunities to present your company and do business.

Originally published at Results Driven.