Do you ever get anxious just from the mere thought of making a presentation? Have you ever made a bad presentation? This is one of the most common phenomena that most sales people go through. In fact, almost every new sales recruit goes through this feeling.
Delivering a presentation can be both scary and overwhelming. However, almost everyone will have to give a presentation at some point during his or her career. To help you kick this fear, I’ve compiled a list of four essential tips to finally overcome your presentation fears, basic contents of a sales presentation coupled up with the Do’s and Don’ts of presenting your presentation.
Essential Tips to Overcome Your Presentation Fears
Primarily, you need to feed it in your system that delivering a sales presentation, product or service demonstration or sales talk is no rocket science. These are skills that can be acquired, learnt, practiced and mastered with time and experience. All you need to do is believe in yourself, study, prepare and execute.
1. Prepare for your Presentation
POWER DRESSING
You never get a second chance to make a First Impression. Power Dressing is the unique style of an individual that shows their position and authority in business or at work place. Power dressing has a major impact on your career. Not only what you wear, but your style, confidence, your body language, and the way you carry yourself matters equally. Surely, your clothing is not an indicator of your intelligence; but it does act as a confidence and morale booster in the corporate world.
PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE
Product knowledge is an essential sales skill. Understanding your products, product features helps you to believe in what you are selling and allows you to present their benefits accurately and persuasively. Customers respond to enthusiastic sales staff who are passionate about their products and eager to share the benefits with them.
CONTENT
Content is central to any presentation. Your content must be accurate, factual, and well-organized before you start adding any kinds of frills to it. Good content explains and educates your prospect about your product or service and give the prospect a message that he/she will remember. If you are presenting on a topic about product or a service then your content should inspire your prospect to want to commit to you to buy, purchase or sign up. Keep in mind that even though your content is the pivot of your presentation, it should be simple, relatable, concise and crisp.
TOOLS
Brochures, literature, info, reports and stationary are an bare essentials of your selling tool kit. Yet, with the progression of digital revolution, it is important for sales people to keep up with this pace and look for modern presentation tools. Laptops, Tablets, Power Point, E-brochures, Website Info & Audio Visual presentations are great time savers and also create a good impact.
2. Practice
“Don’t practice until you get it right, practice until you can’t get it wrong.” The reason for practice is pretty obvious. Practice helps improve skills and makes you better at what you do. If you routinely practice a certain skill, you will get good at it. Practice helps you get a grip on your subject, improves your skills and boosts self confidence.
- Read your presentation multiple times till you know it at the back of your hand, relate it to your customers needs and wants(based on your identification and analysis).
- Recite it loudly every time you read.
- Practice Demo sessions in front of the mirror while looking yourself in the eye and also in front of your colleagues. This will prepare you to a great extent.
- The best mode of practicing a presentation is the actual presentation to multiple prospects.
3. Relax
Basically, stress brings us more of what we don’t want and relaxation brings us more of what we do want. This means our bodies and minds work best in a relaxed state. Regular relaxation helps you start your day off right and to seriously increase productivity. There are no downsides, only advantages. The one who relaxes regularly or maintains a relaxed state of mind receives lots of benefits. And you’ll certainly be in a better, more fun mode after getting relaxed. Regular relaxation helps you start your day off right, to drift into a restful sleep, and to seriously increase productivity.
Remember, it’s just a presentation. Take some time off, grab a coffee and relax. You may imagine a peaceful setting and then focus on controlled relaxed breathing, slowing your heart rate, or feeling different physical sensations, such as relaxing each arm or leg one by one. This helps you put yourself together and stand up against your anxiety and fears.
The one who relaxes regularly or maintains a relaxed state of mind receives lots of benefits.
Essential Tips to Overcome Your Presentation Fears – Effective Sales Presentation by The Sixth Element
4. Deliver
What are the main factors of delivering an effective product demonstration/ presentation? Quality product knowledge, a well-structured text, good visuals, and great communication skills to name a few. According to some studies, using humor, sitting/standing close to the audience, or speaking off script may increase the attention level of the audience.
Keys to Deliver a Great Sales Presentation:
1. Customization: Personalize your presentation as per the need/want of the prospect.
2. Sell, Don’t Tell: Be expressive, enthusiastic and energetic. If your presentation does not excite you, how in world is it going to excite your prospect?
3. KISS: Keep it Short and Simple. Do not get over informative. Be relatable, to the point and personalized.
4. Pricing: Price = Need + Value. The more value and need you create in accordance to the analysis of your prospect/buyer, the lesser will the price matter to the prospect/customer while making a decision.
5. Be Confident: You are aware of the advantages that you are offering, your prospect/ customer is unaware. This gives you an upper hand to be more confident than him.
6. Ask for Feedback: Getting feedback from your prospect is the best sales presentation technique of all. After you make a key point about your product, ask the prospect for feedback with a question such as, “Does this apply to you?” or “Do you this is related to you?” Here you are prompting the prospect to either give an approval or explain why it doesn’t make sense. When you get the prospect’s approval, he is beginning to slowly close the sale for you. On the other hand, when he tells you that it doesn’t make sense, you create an opportunity to adjust your offering to increase the likelihood of closing the sale
7. Voice Modulation: Is a very important aspect of making a great presentation. the tone of your voice when you present your points to the prospect, customer, audience has to fluctuate according to the expression and emotion related to that point. It binds the audience, expresses emotions, displays confidence, speech becomes interesting, allows the presenter to stress/draw the attention of a listener and brings clarity in communication.
8. Smile: Don’t forget to smile. Make your presentation a pleasant experience for your prospect/customer ans well as for yourself.
7 Standard Steps of a Powerful Sales Presentation
Introduction,
Offering,
How it adds Value to the Prospect’s Life
How your Product/Service matches the prospects Need/Want
Investment
Features (Not Technical Specifications)
Why he should invest (Advantages if he buys and Disadvantages if he does not).
The more you can personalize the presentation to fit the prospect’s immediate needs or wants the better you’ll be able to sell them on the benefits and features of your product. Frame the product as a solution to a problem facing the prospect or their business – and help them understand what they’ll miss out on if they don’t buy.
7 Standard Steps of a Powerful Sales Presentation- Effective Sales Presentation by The Sixth Element
Do’s & Don’ts of Effective Presentation
DO:
1. Make it to the specific. Don’t be generic; create the connection with your product/service and the prospect.
2. Know your product/service and believe in it. If you are not excited about your product or service, why should your prospect be?
3. Get to the point. People are busy; know your key points and present them quickly.
4. Be more demonstrative, energetic and enthusiastic. Stand out from the crowd.
5. Use visuals. Include audio visuals to help convey your message. Remember, seeing is believing.
6. Keep it light. Humor is an integral part of a buying experience. The customer has to feel good about the purchase. Be smart, be witty and be spontaneous.
7. Use third party experience stories and testimonials of your satisfied customers. Hand written, emails and small notes by customers are great. Video testimonials would do wonders.
8. Smile; a good presentation without a smile is incomplete.
DON’T:
1. Don’t be late, if at all you are late for your presentation thank them for their time and for being patient.
2. Don’t beat around the bush. Honestly you don’t have all the time in the world and nor do they.
3. Don’t go unprepared. You need to revise your presentation every time before your call. Make sure you have gone through the background check (Identification & Analysis) of your prospect and designed the presentation accordingly.
4. In case of a power point presentation; Don’t write it all. Make sure you don’t clutter your slide. Your slide is a guide for key points not a volume of information. General rule is to have no more than three bullets per slide- one line per bullet.
5. Don’t read from your slides. You are there to give a powerful presentation, not and for a book reading session. The text should be key points for you to elaborate on.
6. Don’t stretch the truth; you lose credibility.
7. Don’t turn your back to the audience; it is rude, distracting and it creates an imaginary division between the both of you.Stay tuned in for:
Read On For a Detailed Learning on:
How to Step Up Your Sales- 3 P’s of SALES PROCESS
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The Sixth Element™ 
Very nice sir
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