Sales Strategy Execution - Delivering Strategic Presentations

Salespeople typically have trouble selling to strategic issues and instead focus their presentations on the tactical pains that your solution solves or the solution features. You are being outsold by competitors with inferior solutions by not selling at the executive level.

Once salespeople understand the process of selling up the chain of value, they need the skills to craft an effective presentation that links your solution to those needs in a format that is relevant to an executive audience and hits home to everyone on the evaluation team.

Salespeople who can effectively articulate the benefit statements based on the personalities and roles of individuals on the evaluation committee are more likely to win. This requires the presentations to be structured.

Here are some simple steps to be able to do that effectively:

Presentation Strategy

(1) What are you selling?
(2) To whom are you selling it?
(3) Against what are you competing?
(4) In what environment do you expect the message to be received?

What are you selling? Why are you making the presentation? Take another look at the objective. Are you selling a plan of action, a need for action, a product, a service, or support for an idea?

To whom are you selling it? If you know your audience, you have some idea of its position on the subject.

Against what are you competing? Know your competition.

Presentation Organization

The introduction and conclusion cannot be neglected. At the outset, the presentation should gain the interest of the audience and convey to the listeners what is to be covered.

The body of the presentation, located between the introduction and the conclusion, contains the bulk of the message. It should be presented to the listener in a meaningful form.

In the conclusion, the presenter should review the key points of the presentation and pinpoint the action to be taken, if any.

Presentation Delivery

At the outset, the presenter must establish a rapport with the audience. Early in the presentation, the presenter will be judged, favorable or unfavorably, by the audience. After the audience decides whether it likes the presenter, it will determine whether it can give credence to what the presenter has to say.
Final Thoughts

In the new world of multi-media and web enablement there are new ways opf delivering presentations. In place of a live presentation in a boardroom can it be delivered via a video conferencing, Webex, Microsoft Live Meeting?

Finally, let's run down the list of things that you, as a presenter, should remember when you face the audience:

• Speak up. Make yourself heard.
• Keep your back to the wall.
• Avoid any mention of time during the opening comments.
• Maintain "eye-to-eye" contact.
• Stand erect and control your nervous habits.
• Relax and smile.
• Use stories to make your points.
• Reaffirm your points at the end of the presentation.

Now, you should be ready to prepare and make an effective presentation. Best wishes for success in the next one.

Strategic Technology – Unified Communications – The Importance of Presence

Strategic Technology – Unified Communications – The Importance of Presence

Unified Communications increases the speed of interaction between co-workers and customers by bringing together voice, messaging and video. It’s only been the last few years that organizations have started to see the real benefits and the promises it delivers.

Unified Communications brings together fixed and mobile telephony, email, fax, instant messaging and conferencing into a single unified workspace.

All vendors offer a version of Unified Communications in their platforms today and there have been many improvements over the past few years. Some systems wil inter-operate with older TDM systems and newer IP based systems. Regardless of what technology you have there is an application available for it.

It’s transparent and integrated and its technology is stable and mature. One problem it doesn’t solve is getting the right message to the right person at the right time so that they can respond immediately. That’s where the key feature of Unified Communication, “presence” comes into play.

Presence lets users know who is reachable, where and by what method. Users can see who on their buddy list is online, available, busy, in a meeting, or reachable only by cellphone while travelling.

So now we can communicate in an intelligent manner and in the moment.

The biggest benefit of presence is the ability to Instant Message a colleague, and has a quick chat session that can escalate to a telephone call if required. These messages allow teams and groups of people to eliminate telephone tag and voice mail and are able to communicate in real time and in an effective manner.

The collaboration of voice, video and messaging can be managed effectively by the use of the presence feature. The faster organizations can implement these tools the faster they can communicate more effectively and increase their employee productivity and propel their business forward.


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