The smartest pitch and best-designed sales deck won’t work if they’re not relevant to your prospect. Nowadays, pitching is a two-way street, requiring you to know your prospect’s needs before you enter the conversation. The best pitches and sales presentations are tailored to your unique audience and allow them to participate in the conversation. And always be ready to actually listen to objections before you respond, instead of reading from a script.
We asked a range of sales experts—including Salesforce’s network of talented guest authors, influencers, and our own sales employees — for their best sales tips. We then rounded up these genius tips in a new e-book, 100 Sales Tips for 2016.
These experts shared their wisdom on a multitude of topics, including negotiation techniques, closing a deal, and dealing with angry customers. Here are four of their top tips on making sure you nail your next sales presentation.
1. Prepare more questions. Salespeople spend too much time preparing what they want to say to a customer and not enough time thinking of the questions they should ask. The best sales presentations are the ones never given, because the salesperson and the customer are having a discussion around the questions being asked.
-Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter
2. Start by clarifying each person’s priorities prior to starting the demo, and then let them all know you will be pausing throughout to ask for their feedback. Put logical pauses in the demo to stop and ask, “How do you see that fitting into your existing process?” or “How does that compare to how you’re doing it now?” This is way better than asking, “Does that makes sense?”
-John Barrows, Sales trainer
3. Less about you, more about them. Put your “about us” slides at the end (if you include them at all). Focus on their objectives, their outcomes, their explicit gaps between current performance and future desired success. Demonstrate how others have already reached the promised land.
-Matt Heinz President, Heinz Marketing Inc.
4. Incorporate video into your sales pitch. Try not to go slide by slide in a monotone fashion. Instead, walk around the room and engage your audience, then interject videos to explain valid points. Consider making a video about how you can help the company you’re pitching and interview multiple team members.
-Yaniv Masjedi VP of Marketing, Nextiva