Many salespeople are too eager to make sales presentations – are you? They view them as opportunities to establish the value of their products or services by demonstrating their unique aspects. You can’t establish value, however, until you have determined which aspects, if any, are relevant to the prospects’ situations.
The real purpose of presentations is to confirm your ability to deliver the solutions prospects are predisposed to buy. How do you know what prospects are predisposed to buy? You determine it by thoroughly qualifying the opportunities.
Until you have learned the specific reasons prospects would buy your product or service (rather than a competitor’s), uncovered the resources they have available to make the purchases, discovered the criteria by which they will make their decisions, and (assuming you are willing and able to meet their decision criteria) obtained their commitments to make those decisions, you should refrain from making presentations.
Making presentations before "thoroughly" qualifying opportunities will almost surely guarantee that you leave those presentations not with decisions, but only prospects’ promises to “think it over" or "We'll let you know", etc. You will then spend countless hours chasing these prospects only to become frustrated because they were never going to buy from you in the first place.
Sound Familiar?
Ken Seawell
Managing Partner Sandler Michigan - EAM Consulting Group
