Use these ideas and tips to deliver an effective sales presentation.
People have been searching for ways to make a more effective sales presentation for 70,000 years!
According to scientific sources, people began to acquire modern speech around 70,000 thousand years ago. Whether you consider it a gift of God, or an ability that arose from natural selection, no other human development has had such an impact on our success.
Cresting ever-higher peaks in understanding and knowledge rests entirely on the emergence of a sophisticated, versatile, and adaptable language. Without it, we couldn't think of the thoughts that have led to a seemingly endless list of accomplishments, yet we so easily take speech for granted.
While other skills, such as observing and interpreting unspoken signals, projecting the right body language, asking good questions and, listening attentively underpin persuasion, we depend on the power of words to communicate an idea or justify an action.
Effective Sales Presentation
"Speak only when your words will be better than your silence would have been". This was the advice offered on the first sales training course I attended. Speaking well is an indispensable sales presentation skill.
It is a hard maxim to follow unless you are naturally quiet, which is an unusual characteristic for salespeople. If everything you say rings like church bells on a Sunday morning, people will get into the habit of listening when you speak.
Winston Churchill, recently voted our greatest Briton, understood this well. His reputation as a great orator rested on the preparation that went into his speeches. When he spoke in public, people listened. A simple step to improve spoken impact is to eliminate any filler words used in normal conversation.
Examples that I have heard recently include frequent repetitions of "err", "you know", and "like" or all together with "err . . like . . you know . .". Others that spring to mind are "OK" and "actually". I could go on but the stones are rattling off my own windowpanes.
It is true that we are usually blissfully unaware of the things we say to bridge our sentences and allow thinking time. In sales presentation skills courses, I have the delicate task of drawing attention to such non-words and filler words.
In preparing for the sales presentation skills training that I deliver, I first have had to eliminate my own um's and err's.
Use these suggestions to make any presentation more effective. Apply these principles to what you say in any conversation to make it more interesting and compelling.
Record some of your conversations:
Use the audio recorder on your phone. If you have pet filler words, they will stand out when you listen to the playback.
Some people manage to cease using them the moment they realise how much they have been using them, and how they weaken the effectiveness of their speech.
Don't change how you sound, take advantage of it:
Keep your accent, providing that it isn't so broad as to make it difficult for people to understand you, outside the region of your birth.
Try this speaker exercise:
If you enunciate poorly, or if your pronunciation could do with improving, use this simple exercise:
Hold the blunt end of a pen gently between your teeth, as if it were a pipe. Then read aloud some text for about five minutes. It will sound awful so try to carry out this exercise in private. It will be difficult to say the words properly. Ignore this and persevere. After about a week of daily practise, you will notice a marked improvement in the clarity of your speech. Keep up the exercise as long as you find the continuing improvement worthwhile.
Think of better ways to say things:
On average, people speak over a hundred unique sentences every day. To do this, we all must have an innate creative talent.
Try this experiment. Think of an important message that you often need to communicate. Write down twenty ways to say it. Pick your best three then rearrange them until you have created high-impact expressions of your intended message.
Practise speaking the phrases you have developed with your audio recorder to be sure that your expression sounds the way you want it to be heard.
Be prepared to wait:
Timing is important. If you have invested a lot in preparing a powerful phrase, you will want to use it. Restrain yourself and wait for the right moment. If the opportunity doesn't occur right away save your powerful sentences for a better time.
Avoid clichés:
Using phrases that have become popular with others simply makes you sound like one of the crowd. Instead, quote famous deceased people. Use quotes from deceased people because famous live people always have their share of dissenters.
Build up your store of expressive sentences. If you invest in developing powerful phrases to get a message across, you will begin to collect more and more of them.
As you do so, you will find it easier to think of new and novel ways to say things. Eventually, you will start inventing them as you speak.
People will begin expecting you to have something interesting to say, whenever you open your mouth.
Sophisticated language began emerging around three thousand generations ago. It continuously evolves. Dictionary publishers would soon go out of business if they didn't have a torrent of new words to catalogue each year. The best sales presentations get a message across in the most memorable way, with the greatest clarity, and to the widest audience.
Words move hearts and when hearts move, action follows.
Article by Clive Miller
If you need to improve sales communication, deliver an effective sales presentation, or develop public speaking skills, we can help. Telephone +44 (0)1392 851500. We will be pleased to learn about your needs or talk through some options. Alternatively Send email to custserv@salessense.co.uk for a prompt reply or use the contact form here.
