Most Sales and Marketing presentations are ineffective, boring and a big waste of time and money. They rarely engage and motivate the people that need to implement the sales strategies. Sales people sit for hours on end listening to presentations designed by marketers that try to cover far too many details and that do not offer reps practical ideas on how they can grow their sales and solve their customers problems. Customers care very little about your products and services; all they want is to find ways to make their lives easier and their organizations more successful.

“Death by Slides” is a big problem with most Sales and Marketing presentations. Too many slides, with too much information and not enough audience engagement and involvement will kill even the best-prepared and delivered presentations.

Usually these presentations are created with very little input and involvement from customers and or sales people so they come across as being out of touch and not very interesting. Most sales people tune out after the first 15 minutes.

There is a solution though……….

3 Tips to Creating and Delivering Powerful Sales and Marketing Presentations that will Motivate & Inspire your Sales Team

1. Motivating your Sales Team
   Sales people want to be motivated and inspired. Talk less about your products and services and more about how to solve customers and sales people’s problems. One of our clients was selling high-speed drills and the marketer was presenting all the details about how wonderful their new drill was. A rep screamed out: “our customers don’t want drills, they want better holes”. Everyone laughed but he was right. Customers want the benefit or the hole not the drill. The big customer problem had nothing to do with the specifications of the new drill. Customers wanted ideas on how to help their workers to make better and faster holes in a safe and efficient way. Imagine if the presenter had no slides and instead had a room full of drills and wood and a workshop teaching reps how to help their customers to get the most out of their new drill. Hands on practice while focusing on real customer problems and solutions will motivate and inspire your sales team more than anything else.
   
   
2. Involve and Engage the Sales People
   Ask sales people for their input prior to the creation of your presentations and your meeting agenda. What are their challenges and what are the main customer issues that need to be dealt with? When you design your meetings and presentations to meet the needs of your sales force and your customers you will grab their attention for sure. You should also ask some of the sales people to get involved in the creation of the presentations and to present part or all of the presentation. When they prepare and present they learn a lot and they have credibility with the sales force. They are actually living the challenges that the other reps are facing and this will make the presentation more interesting and practical.
   
   
3. Involve and Engage your Customers
   Invite some of your customers to present at your next sales meeting. They can tell your sales force what they like, what they don’t like and what they would like the reps to do more of or better to exceed their expectations. You can have a panel of 4-5 customers and the reps can ask them questions in order to get live customer feedback. You can also invite customers to be involved in role-playing sessions. Instead of having a manager pretend to be a customer the rep can practice their sales skills with a real scenario and a real customer. Getting open and honest feedback from a real customer is a great way to develop your reps. Customers like to be included in these meetings and it is a great way to show them that you care about them and their needs. It also shows them that you are making efforts to improve and deliver outstanding service.
   
   

Try getting rid of your PowerPoint slides and instead create interactive workshops that allow reps to get hands on practice with your products, services, marketing tools and sales techniques. Less presenting and more doing will lead to motivated and inspired reps. People learn far more form practicing and applying ideas rather than listening to them.

When you focus on how to solve your customers real problems and you involve and engage your sales people and your customers in the meeting design and the creation and delivery of the presentations you will find that your reps will be motivated and inspired to sell more and your customers will want to buy more.

Contact Paul Fergus at [email protected] or call him at 1-877-633-9555 to discuss how he and his team can help you to develop powerful presentations that will motivate and inspire your sales force to sell more.