Do You Have Perfect Pitch? 10 Tips for Persuasive Presentations

By Dianna Booher, CEO, Booher Consultants

“Well, good morning. We appreciate the opportunity to meet with you today. My name is Simon Shultz, Business Development Manager for InTuitWorld and I’d like to start by introducing the rest of my team to you.”

“Starting from my left is Angela Hospitch, Systems Engineer for the TZ500. Next is Saynar Beneviden, Project Manager for several current client projects, and then, Nancy Lauterbach, our COO. They’re here to help me answer any specific questions you have today.”

“Now, with the introductions out of the way, what I’d like to do first is to tell you a little about who we are and what we do. …”

Another day, another proposal, another supplier, another presenter. And if the parade has been going on for a couple of days – or even a few hours – you can understand buyer weariness in listening to presenter after presenter, following the same plan: “Good morning. My name is John or Joanna. My team is Tom, Dick, Harriett, Lucinda and Lupe, and we’re here to talk to you about X.”

Although you may have never had a client or prospect say, “I’m bored” to you directly, you may have sensed the frustration. What can you do different to make your presentation stand out from the crowd of competitors clamoring for the same business? The following suggestions deal with the finer points of sales presentations.

Influence, Don’t Just Inform
One of the biggest hindrances to selling success is being informative rather than persuasive. Information overwhelms us. Your role as a salesperson is to make the available information actionable for your buyers. To do that, you’ll need to use all ‘Five Prongs of Persuasion’:

1.       Word Choice: Positive, specific, precise words

2.       Rhetoric: Powerful phrasing and graceful grammar that pack a powerful punch on a buyer’s memory

3.       Emotion: Feelings of pleasure, fear, safety, discomfort, pride, acceptance, rejection or prestige

4.       Logic: Reasoning and conclusions drawn from facts, information, opinions or ideas

5.       Trustworthiness: Trust in the principles, values and integrity of an individual or organization

To persuade, you need to know and use the best words, to establish your own and your organization’s credibility, and to identify the best strategies with each buyer – whether that be primarily an appeal to emotion or an appeal to logic or a combination of both.

Act Against Your Own Self-Interest
Nothing underscores your determination to do what’s right for the buyer more than making them aware of decisions made in their best interest. You may routinely do that anyway, but buyers need to know when you do that because it builds trust for larger issues. For example, if you think an extended warranty doesn’t make sense for a particular customer, instead of not bringing it up at all, let the buyer know a warranty is available, but that you recommend against it.

Let’s say the buyer is selecting tiling for break rooms and restroom facilities throughout their buildings and has already made it known that they prefer ‘the best’ in everything. The color choices are black and beige, with a surcharge of 10 percent for the black. Assuming the most expensive is ‘the best,’ the buyer selects black. Yet, you know that customers have complained that black shows scratches more readily and requires more care than the lighter color. You may pass along this information and suggest that the beige might make a better choice in the buyer’s high-traffic areas.

Such candid advice leads to increased trust – but only if your buyer understands that you’re making such decisions to pass on such information at your own expense. Subtly, of course.

Use the ‘Experience’ Factor
Buyers can argue about your facts, data, surveys and research. They can disagree that your product or services outshine the competition. They can doubt that your offering will resolve their problem.

But no one can dispute your experience when you state an opinion or respond to a question during your presentation. For example, your buyer asks: “I think customizing the assessment is a waste of time. Why are you thinking we need a customized version added to our intranet before we roll this out to our own customers?” You respond: “That has to be your final decision, of course. It will delay the project approximately two months. But in my experience in handling these projects for more than 70 clients during the last two years, I can recall only two clients who skipped that phase. And both regretted the decision because their own employees proved to be a great cross-section of the population to test user acceptance. I offer that experience for your consideration.”

Your experience is ‘your’ experience. It can be accepted or rejected, but it’s still your experience and irrefutable as such.

Tell Failure Stories
We’ve all learned to tell success stories. But there’s also power in telling case histories about clients who did not have stellar success with your product or service – if the reason for their lack of success was due to their own decision-making, not your product or service. It underscores what other customers did wrong (for example, waiting too long to buy, not using your design team to install and customize their product, not buying a warranty) and helps the current prospect not repeat the mistake. Telling about failures of other product users adds credibility to your success stories.

One caution: Don’t use names with the failure stories, because prospects may fear you’ll tell others of their own mistakes later if they buy.

Prefer Understatement to Overstatement
After my teenage son came home from his first summer job interview as a grocery stocker, I asked how it went. “I don’t know,” he said. “They gave me one of those honesty tests, where they asked if I’d ever cheated on an exam, if I’d ever stolen money from my parents, if I’d ever shoplifted – things like that.” He paused, looked a little concerned, then added, “I was answering no to all those things and then I got a little worried that maybe I wouldn’t get the job – that I sounded too good to be true.”

He did get the job, but it was an astute observation about human nature.

It’s always more effective to let your prospect ‘add to’ what you’ve promised rather than ‘discount it’ because it seems too good to be believable. Present the range of results you have achieved and can document. Generally, it is better to promise only the minimum gains. Otherwise, you set up your client to be disappointed. If the minimum gains are worthwhile to them, maximum gains will be the ‘extra’ that makes them long-term fans.

Know When to Use Exact Numbers and When to Round Them
Exact numbers are more credible because they more easily can be verified and either confirmed or discounted. Rounded numbers, on the other hand, are easier to remember. Provide specific numbers the first time you cite results or outcomes and summarize with rounded numbers on repeat mention of the data.

Make Statistics and Facts Experiential
People digest numbers with great difficulty. Yes, pie charts and bar graphs help. But if you can go beyond that, do so. For example, randomly survey your committee of buyers by asking them to raise their hands in response to a few questions; then equate those findings to the random survey you did previously of their entire organization. Are they typical of the rest of the employee population? How so?

Supporting statistics lend credibility to what you say. Be sure, however, to do all you can to help your buyers digest them.

Never Shy Away from the Underdog Positioning
Some people have a profound penchant for rooting for the underdog. Consider acknowledging that you’re the lesser known brand and supplier, and focus on the effort you intend to expend for the client because of that one-down situation. Avis has done very well with the ‘underdog’ status as their brand.

Plant Questions You’d Like Competitors to Address
As you present your solutions, subtly bring up issues that should raise red flags in your buyers’ minds about the capabilities of your competitors. You won’t challenge or attack competitors specifically; however, in your key areas of strength, you will suggest issues that, if not handled well, might create pitfalls and resulting fear in the minds of your buyers. Simply by raising these issues, you will suggest to your buyers that they should ask your competitors about these same concerns.

Never Just ‘Walk through’ Your Proposal – Give a Guided Tour
Your buyers will beat you to the end every time. Buyers follow their own route, which is usually not the one you’d prefer. While you’re still on page two, your buyers will be on page eight, checking out the pricing section. You have absolutely no control of what your buyers hear or pay attention to while you talk. In fact, your proposal will compete with you for attention.

Instead, carefully select which parts of your proposal to present orally. Then if you want to refer your buyers to a specific page, do so – after you make your key point about that page.