CHAPTER 13
I Thought I Was Supposed to Make a Presentation
From my earliest days in sales, I’ve viewed selling as a dialogical exercise. Sales calls, no matter how big or important, are intended to be a two-way conversation. They might take place in the buyer’s office, a meeting room, or possibly even the gigantic boardroom. But there’s never any thought of standing. Why would anyone stand to have a conversation with a person who’s seated? This is supposed to be a sales call, right? A meeting where a buyer and seller discuss relevant topics to determine if it makes mutual sense to do business (or more business) together.
In the mid to late 1990s, concurrent with the rapid proliferation of Microsoft PowerPoint, I began working with more “sophisticated” companies. A new word was added to my sales lexicon—presentation—and more than fifteen years later, I still wince every time it is uttered in my presence.
I have come to hate that word, particularly when it’s pronounced by salespeople with a long “e.” Preezentation. We all have certain words that cause an immediate visceral reaction. (I’m sure yours are coming to mind right about now.) Cancer is top on my list. I hear that word and rage builds inside me. I purse my lips, shake my head, and am ready to unload the most hateful expletives known to man. I. Hate. Cancer. Rosemary (the herb) causes a similar reaction. If there’s a more putrid herb or a quicker way to destroy a perfectly fine dish, I’m unaware of it. Rosemary should be banned, and chefs who use it without bold warning on the menu should be charged with malpractice. Presentation slots nicely right between cancer and rosemary as a word that triggers violent explosions in my brain.
Why I Hate the Word Presentation
When I first learned about PowerPoint and was taught the concept of making presentations to prospects and buyers, it was a bit intimidating. The thought of being center stage, before potential customers, messed with my mind and created a pressure I was not accustomed to. I already had experienced tremendous success and had conducted my share of high-stakes sales calls with giant companies. None of those experiences made me nervous, but there was something different, awkward, and I’ll dare say, even wrong with the dynamic surrounding presentations.
I eventually became comfortable using PowerPoint as a tool to help communicate. But philosophically, I still could not get my arms around this practice of presenting to prospects, especially early in the sales process. It didn’t matter how en vogue presentations had become. I was, am, and will remain convinced that the entire concept is flawed.
In the spring of 2000, barely a few weeks into my time at the web-based learning management system company described in Chapter 4, I experienced the most painful, formative, and valuable lesson of my sales career.
Our little firm was aligned with a very large performance improvement company. We had a deal setting up this behemoth organization as a channel partner. It made sense on the surface. They had a comprehensive learning offering and many Fortune 500 companies as clients. This company’s crack team of highly compensated senior account managers was spread across the United States, and the hope was that their sales force would open doors and uncover opportunities to sell our learning management system.
We received a call from our partner’s learning team. One of their top salespeople, a perennial recipient of president’s club status, had scored a presentation and demo for us at one of his major accounts. Everyone at our company was ecstatic and there was lots of talk about how best to conduct the demo. Personally, I was confused about the process and not quite sure why we would be “presenting,” since this was an initial meeting with the client. But as the eager and respectful newbie, I played along nicely and kept quiet. For the record, that was the last time in my life I stayed quiet about sales process or a sales opportunity.
Having only been with the company a few weeks, I was in no way prepared to handle this opportunity. It was decided that our vice president, Mark (who also happened to be the friend who recruited me into the company), would lead our portion of the presentation and conduct the demo. He was intimately familiar with the system and also had a better handle on the inner workings of this channel partner. I was simply along for the ride and education. And what an education it turned out to be!
The major account was an electronics company with its U.S. headquarters in New Jersey. Mark and I plunked down more than $1,000 each to fly in and out of Newark for the big meeting. Not a minor expenditure for a company of our size.
Our partner’s sales star—I’ll call him Frank—picked us up at the airport. It was a rainy dreary day, which was an appropriate backdrop for what was about to take place. On the ride from the airport, Frank shared that the division president accepted his invitation to attend the presentation. Impressive. I was obviously in excellent hands and excited to learn from this sales pro.
Frank assured us that he had it covered. The plan was for him to “tee up the demo” (his exact words) with a brief presentation. He would run through just a few slides highlighting his company’s relationship with the account. That would give the committee a glimpse into how entrenched Frank was in other areas of their business and provide plenty of credibility to set up our demo. After covering this introductory material, Frank would introduce our company as a technology partner, and we’d conduct a full-blown demonstration of our “best thing since sliced bread” learning management system.
Are you getting uncomfortable yet as I tell this story? I am, and you should be. A lot could have been done differently up to this point. Even though I was the rookie with the ink still wet on my business cards, I knew better. Instead of speaking up about my discomfort, I took a pass and deferred to the supposed sales star. Heck, it was his account and he was the guy winning annual trips to Aruba as a consistent top performer. I was plenty confident in my guy, Mark. He is as professional as anyone I know, plus I had seen him masterfully show off the benefits of our learning platform. So even if I didn’t agree with Frank’s approach, I figured Mark could come in from the bullpen to earn the save.
We passed through security and were directed to the corporate boardroom. Not just any conference room, but The Boardroom. The room had more square footage than my house, and the gorgeous table easily sat sixty people. We began to set up, and within a few minutes the members of the committee entered the room. Unfortunately, we were more concerned about the Internet connection than we were about connecting with this team. That should have been a red flag. It certainly was a prophetic sign of what was to come.
We nervously got everything working and began to settle into premeeting small talk. Frank stood at the head of the table. The division president walked in, greeted everyone, and said bluntly, “Good to see you, Frank. I only have thirty minutes, then I need to leave.” He sat down in the chair closest to Frank. The train wreck that ensued is burned in my memory bank as vividly as any moment in my entire career. That’s how painful and life changing the lesson was. And it is why, to this day, I harbor such deep hatred toward the word presentation.
Frank went. And went. And went. Not a single question made its way out of his mouth—slide after self-focused slide. It was a sight to behold. It was a surreal, almost unbelievable experience. In fact, if you saw a cartoon strip or Saturday Night Live parody of his presentation, you’d conclude it had to be fictional. No one would actually do what Frank did that day.
First came multiple slides showing pictures of buildings on his company’s large campus. Yes, this actually happened. In the most impressive boardroom I have ever visited, in front of the division president of one of the most well respected companies in the world and a committee charged with selecting the very solution we sold, Frank put up not one, not two, but three slides with pictures of buildings to begin his presentation.
I looked over at Mark with big eyes. He was frozen in a catatonic state, and I wasn’t sure he would survive the meeting. I kept thinking, surely Frank is going to ask something of the committee. Something simple, something easy like, “Francine, Steven, Joyce, Joe, could you tell us why you were selected to lead the search for a learning management system?” Or maybe something even easier, such as, “What were you hoping to get from us today?” Would it have been too much to ask, “What business issues are driving this initiative?” Nothing. Nada. No questions. He was clearly too busy teeing up our demo.
Following the pictures of the lovely corporate campus came two slides with the logos of big-name clients that Frank’s company served. Really. Five slides in and I am having childhood flashbacks to The Gong Show. Only Frank is just getting warmed up, and there’s no gong in sight.
Slides six, seven and eight are beautiful flowcharts of his company’s performance improvement process. Frank waxes on eloquently about the company expertise in several areas. At this point, the committee is sitting silently, Mark is red-faced, and I’m freaking out thinking about how my little company flushed two grand of airfare down the toilet so that we could watch this joker in his black blazer worn over a golf shirt babble endlessly about his employer’s majestic buildings, clients, and processes.
Twenty-two minutes into Frank’s presentation, the division president is visibly frustrated. He interrupts Frank by saying, “I’d like to see the demo, please.” Frank speeds through a few more slides and turns it over to Mark. Great tee up, eh? Let’s just say that’s not exactly what we had in mind.
Sensing it was too far gone to redirect the meeting or begin engaging the committee members, Mark respectfully responded to the president’s request and began the demo. He executed a crisp, abbreviated demonstration of the platform and some of our flashiest custom-designed content. Honestly, he did a fantastic job under the circumstances. Miraculously, he didn’t come off as angry and flustered, and he made the best of an impossible situation. After about ten minutes, the president thanked us for coming and excused himself. Thud.
Mark took another ten minutes to finish showing off the system and then the room fell silent. Eerily silent. Sales star Frank sat quietly. The members of the committee all looked over at me, maybe because I had not said a word up to this point. Mark nodded at me. I glared at Frank like he was an enemy of the state. I should have said aloud what I was thinking to myself: “This is the guy who wins the president’s club trip every year?”
I took a deep breath and thanked the committee for investing the time to visit with us. Then I cringed, already anticipating the answer to the question I was about to ask: “Was what we shared today on target with what you are looking for from a web-based learning management system?” They answered no. They didn’t think it was what they were looking for. The committee thanked us and left us the room.
On the way back to the airport Frank kept talking, but I stopped listening after he declared how rude the committee was to us. His perspective was as laughable as his presentation.
As I said, this was the most painful and valuable experience of my sales career. And I’m so thankful it occurred. The next day I wrote an entire document recapping what took place on that expensive and frightful day in New Jersey. I promised myself and anyone who would listen that it would never happen to me again. Never.
Along with cementing my hatred of the word presentation, that day provided several meaningful lessons that I carry with me to this day:
No matter how senior or entrenched my selling partners, managers, or coworkers, I will never again cede control of the selling process to someone else. I am responsible for executing a solid sales process, regardless of who owns the account relationship.
When something doesn’t feel right that’s because it’s not right. Don’t go along for the ride, even in the name of education or training. Speak up. Ask hard questions. I have a good sales gut and need to trust it.
By sales law, a first meeting cannot be a presentation. Ever.
Even when asked to do a presentation, turn it into a dialogue by asking questions throughout the meeting, but especially in the beginning.
In all fairness, I must share one more thing about that story before moving on. Miraculously, somehow, some way, we ended up winning that deal. It took months longer than it needed to. But good ole Frank and the team found a way to get the train back on the tracks, which is a testament to the power of a deep client relationship combined with having a great solution. After dishing out all that abuse to Frank, I must give credit where credit is due. In no way does that excuse the total train wreck created by his complete bungling of that meeting. Every detail I shared is true. It really was that bad. And that horrendous experience served as a catalyst that put me on the path to my current life as a sales coach and consultant.
Redeeming the PowerPoint Presentation
While I have made it abundantly clear how I feel about the word, the reality is that a killer presentation, made at the right time and structured the right way, can be one of our most powerful sales weapons. And to ensure that the presentation gun is aimed at the prospect, not pointed so that you shoot your own sales effort in the foot, it’s essential that the focus of the presentation be squarely on the customer.
We have all suffered through terrible PowerPoint presentations on both sides of the table. We’ve been puked on by salespeople, and we’ve been guilty of puking on others. But let’s be clear: PowerPoint in and of itself is not evil. It’s what we do with PowerPoint that’s a sin. PowerPoint enables our tendency to create presentations that become monologues, painfully long monologues all about our company, our processes, our people, and our perfect solution.
I often tell people, “No one cares how smart you are or how great you think your company is.” In fact, that favorite expression of mine came out of that horrific meeting with Frank and the electronics company. I say it all the time to remind everyone within earshot that our presentations need not be about ourselves and our companies. The hard truth is that unless you’re selling for NASA or another rocket-science organization, do yourself a favor and lose the slides with the pretty pictures of your buildings. Trust me, they are not helping you advance the sale.
I propose a simple four-slide recipe that ensures the early focus of your presentation is where it belongs:
Slide 1: Title Slide
Slide 2: Suggested Agenda
Slide 3: Companies Turn to (Insert Your Company Name) When … (Here you’ll want to grab three to five relevant bullets from the “client issues” section of your power statement.)
Slide 4: Our Understanding of Your Situation …(List several items you have learned from discovery work up to this point.)
Slide 4 is absolutely critical because this is where we transition from the generic, broad statements in slide 3 to the prospect-specific issues we have uncovered prior to making the presentation. It’s our opportunity to show off the thorough discovery work we have completed thus far. We also benefit from the relationships we’ve built with various players and their constituencies in the prospect’s organization. The very fact that we can list these issues bears witness to the investment we’ve made to understand their business.
Once you have reviewed the data on slide 4, I want to ask you to do something dangerous and unthinkable for many salespeople: Convert this presentation from a monologue into a dialogue.
Tell the audience that you think it would be beneficial to stop at this slide for a while. Ask your audience for input. Where did you nail it right on the head? What issues did you misunderstand or not properly grasp? Even better, ask the most senior person in the room to rank or prioritize the items on that slide. Make every effort to confirm the assumptions you’re sharing. If time allows and the prospect seems willing, dig deeper with specific probing questions. See if you can reopen a wound or pour salt in one that’s bleeding, as we discussed in Chapter 11. That is, ask about the consequences resulting from the issues they face, and what might happen if they’re not properly addressed. Not only are we scoring sales points demonstrating our expertise by asking these questions, but we are again gleaning perspectives on how to best tailor the balance of our presentation. The more we can learn, even right here in the midst of a supposed “presentation,” the better we are able to customize our pitch.
Discovery Must Precede Presentation, so Insist on a Meeting
Every day, salespeople fail because they mistake presenting for selling. Presenting is not selling; it’s only a part of the sales process. Many salespeople are lazy and don’t want to put the hard work into researching accounts, developing relationships, and performing the necessary heavy lifting and discovery work before making a presentation. Others are not lazy, but simply prefer presenting because they enjoy the limelight and hearing the sound of their own voice.
The hard truth is that if we are not in a position to create slide 4 because we don’t have the necessary information, then we should not be making a presentation—even if asked to by the customer. Let me repeat that: If you have not completed enough discovery work to be able to list a handful of bullets describing the prospect’s current situation, then you have absolutely no business conducting a presentation. The fact that the prospect requested or even insisted you make a presentation doesn’t make it right or smart for you to comply. Remember, presenting is not a synonym for selling. The goal is to win business, not simply to follow the directions of a prospect.
So what can you do? Insist on a meeting before the requested presentation. Assert yourself. Let your potential customers know that you have a process for delivering maximum value, and that process entails several critical steps before presenting to them. Explain that if they want your best, they must be willing to help provide what’s needed for you to create the optimum solution and presentation specifically for them.
Will that be difficult in some situations? Absolutely. What I am proposing is a foreign concept to many prospects and salespeople alike. It’s easier just to comply and go along with the way business is typically conducted. Why rock the boat when the path of least resistance is to simply say yes, show up, and present the standard “capabilities overview” or dog and pony show. You know, kind of how I kept my mouth shut and let Frank completely derail that meeting with the electronics company. I certainly could have spoken up to challenge the process. But why suggest a smarter and more effective way of doing something if the traditional way is easier? The choice is yours. You can define your sales process to give yourself the best shot at differentiating your company and your presentation. Or you can default to the buyer’s process and do what you’re told.
When the Prospect Will Not Meet with You before the Presentation
Some of you are reading this and philosophically agreeing with me. However, you’re also thinking that I’m out of touch or don’t fully understand your particular situation. You would very much like to spend time with prospects before delivering presentations, but in your world, that is not reality.
For example, you are a small company calling on massive corporations that have layers of procurement personnel and pages of purchasing protocol. Standard fare in your industry is responding to requests for proposals within stringent guidelines. In many cases, the rules of engagement laid out by the prospect prohibit you from even speaking with key businesspeople at the company issuing the RFP.
It’s stupid and perplexing that a company actively prevents its potential business partners from developing relationships, performing important discovery work, and crafting a customized presentation and proposal. These companies have made the intentional decision that they don’t want your best work; they’re not interested in your creative ability to understand their situation; they’re fine with receiving a generic response. In effect, these companies are choosing a lesser solution for the sake of controlling the selling and buying process. It’s maddening. And all this is done in the name of fairness, under the banner of creating a level playing field, or in deference to some purchasing agents who took a few courses to become certified procurement analysts. It’s wrong. It’s stupid. But it’s the new reality many in sales must face today.
Yes, I concede there are going to be times when we are absolutely prevented from meeting with prospects and denied the opportunity to understand their situation before having to present to them. There are also some unique industry norms where making pitches and presentations are par for the course.
I coach a local, fast-growing, boutique advertising agency. The founder and CEO had thirty years of experience on the client side before she launched this agency four years ago. She and her team brought me in to help design a business development role. While they have continued to grow at a rapid clip from word of mouth, they’ve not been very successful proactively acquiring new accounts.
The CEO informed me about an upcoming pitch the agency would be making to a potential client. In the agency world, pitch is the equivalent to my favorite word, presentation. I knew where the conversation would end up, but I couldn’t resist my chance to upset the apple cart to make a point.
I asked a few questions about the prospect and why this company had invited my client in. No one was sure of the answer. Then I asked how they would know what to pitch if they were unsure about the prospect’s situation. After some hemming and hawing about it “just being the way things are done” when companies are looking for new agencies, my client finally admitted the truth. They were going in blind to do a capabilities overview and a dog and pony show (their exact words). I had to smile. Wow. A company we have never spoken with and don’t know anything about asked us to come in and make a pitch to be its new agency. And without pushing back at all, we just said yes and plan to charge ahead blindly? Hmmm.
My client got the point, and we ended up having an enlightening conversation about how to better handle these types of opportunities. My bottom-line recommendation was a bold alternative to the typical “spray and pray” pitch that was the norm. The agency’s executive team members would still show up for the pitch, but now they’d treat the hour as if they were conducting a slightly abbreviated version of the sales call structure (outlined in Chapter 11). In other words, if the prospective customer cannot or will not meet with us before the scheduled time for the presentation, then we should convert the first portion of the presentation into the discovery session we never got to conduct.
The following example could apply to the RFP response, to the agency pitch, and even to the situation I once encountered with Frank and the electronics company. For the sake of continuity, I’ll stick with the agency story and share my recommendation about how to smoothly and slyly avoid presenting before understanding more about the prospect.
The salesperson who will be leading the “pitch” meeting should take charge after introductions and rapport building. In a very calm and confident manner, as if she handles these discussions every day without resistance, the salesperson should lay out the agenda for the hour, as follows:
We’re thrilled to be considered as a potential new agency and business partner for your company, and we look forward to discovering if we are a good fit for each other. Here’s how we like to work.
We brought all kinds of goodies with us … case studies, storyboards, comps, a few examples from our portfolio. We have a few slides outlining our philosophy and approach to helping clients grow business, and we have about a dozen client websites that we can pull up. Honestly, we probably have four hours of content we could share. So, in order for us to present the most relevant and valuable information to you, we’d like to take the first fifteen minutes to get a handle on why you invited us in and what you’re facing in your business today—including threats, opportunities, shifts in the marketplace. And if you’re willing, we wouldn’t mind hearing about your experience with the current or previous agency. We understand if you may not want to “go there,” but sometimes clients like to share on that point, so we can incorporate the pieces you like and stay far away from those you don’t.
Then, based on what we hear, we will be able to spend the remaining time presenting our best and most appropriate stories, examples, and methodology, and we can skip over areas we don’t think would interest you. So, if that’s okay, let’s do this: I’m going to ask Stephanie, our CEO, to take just three minutes and share the highlights of our agency, why she started the company, and the reasons many of our clients selected us to help grow their business. Then we’ll spend some time asking a few questions and hearing from your team so that we can decide, on the fly, what makes the most sense to present. We have found that our prospective clients appreciate this approach. Plus, it provides a little bonus entertainment as you get to watch us create the pitch in real time and argue among ourselves which are the most relevant stories and ideas to share.
To me, that’s the difference between presenting and selling. Does it take guts? You bet it does. Will you set yourself apart and leave a memorable impression on the potential client? No doubt about it.
Break the Mold to Set Yourself Apart
For those of you who are highly relational, low-conflict, rule followers, I am sure this idea of partial noncompliance makes you uncomfortable. I understand this approach may stretch you a bit. Sure, it would be easier just to show up and do what everyone else is doing. Pitch away. Easier, yes, but not safer. There’s nothing safe about going head-to-head against four competitors who are all using the same strategy and trying hard to differentiate themselves with slight nuances in their presentations. I would argue that it’s a more dangerous approach with a lower chance of winning.
We are in sales. Making friends with the rule-writer by complying with every request is not the goal. The objective is to win the business. And our best chance of winning occurs when we understand as much as possible about the prospect’s situation before rushing into a presentation. It’s even better if we can set ourselves apart and pique the prospect’s interest by deploying a smarter sales methodology.
Imagine you are getting ready to hire a professional to completely remodel the kitchen in your thirty-five-year-old home. You did your homework and selected four professionals, all with outstanding reputations. Three came to your house with very similar approaches. They all brought nice binders with pictures of previous jobs, gorgeous brochures from premium cabinet manufacturers, and letters of recommendation from clients in your zip code. Every one of the three was courteous, professional, and apparently highly qualified for the project. Each spent some time measuring and plotting your current kitchen layout on graph paper. For the most part, their pitches were alike, although they all emphasized slightly different aspects of their expertise.
Now imagine that the fourth guy competing for the remodeling job, whom I’ll call Jerry (since this is a true story about my kitchen), took a totally different tact. Jerry came in with a big confident smile and asked if it was okay for him to nose around our kitchen. He’s opening pantries, asking about the age of our children and whether we may get a dog in the future. Jerry spins the old Lazy Susan and wonders aloud which of those little appliances are used most frequently. Then he points at the oddly placed, boxed soffit on the far wall and declares without shame, “That’s weird. I wonder what’s in there.” He runs out to his truck and comes back with a skinny little saw, a mirror, and a flashlight. Just before cutting into it without permission, Jerry asks how likely we are to do this project in the near future. The moment we assure him that we are absolutely going to remodel this old kitchen, he begins cutting a hole big enough to insert his mirror and flashlight.
Jerry sweeps up the drywall dust from his cutting exercise and sits down next to us at the table. He does not open up a binder or start handing out cabinet brochures. Instead, he looks at my wife and asks, “What is your vision for this room?” Without pausing, Katie points to where she imagines an island with stools. “I see my kids sitting here after school, eating cookies, and telling me about their day.” Need I go on? Jerry won our business. Slam dunk. Not even close.
So back to my question: In sales, are you safer following the crowd and the rules, hoping to differentiate yourself with slight variations in your presentation? Or is that actually riskier than breaking out of the mold in an attempt not only to set yourself apart, but also to best connect with your prospect?
Jerry did an extremely nice job on our kitchen, but it was his sales ability that I’ll never forget. The second he cut into my wall I made the decision to hire him. It wasn’t just that he was so bold. It was that he had to know what was in that soffit in order to craft the solution. What a great visual demonstration of why discovery must precede presentation! The same applies to the question he asked my wife. I’m sure he didn’t expect her to reveal her lifelong dream of having the kids at home, eating her cookies while sitting at the island. But the moment she said it, he also knew it was over. (And I bet his price went up a bit, too.)
I like to think about how different that painful day with Frank and the electronics company might have been. What if instead of Frank kicking off the presentation with nine boring, self-focused slides, I had requested that he allow me five minutes to get the meeting off on the right foot? I could have stood at the easel with the giant blank pad and marker, or just sat at the table with a clean sheet of paper. Either would have worked fine. I could have started by thanking Frank and his fine company for introducing us to his important and valued customer. I could have looked at the division president, thanked him for attending, and shared that in order to provide the most value for his half-hour, I needed to use the first five minutes to ensure the next twenty-five would hit the bull’s-eye. Then I could have turned to the committee members and asked so easily and innocently…
Why did you invite us in today?
Why were you selected for the committee, and which business issues are you hoping to address with a learning management system?
What does success look like a year after installing the new system? How about three years?
If there was one thing you would like to come away with today, what would that be?
Be leery when you’re asked to make a presentation, or when a prospect you were not pursuing requests that you come in and make a pitch. I don’t know who decided that selling meant standing at the head of the table and lecturing potential customers, like you’re the college professor and they’re the students. Presenting is not selling. It is only a part of the selling process. And by sales law, an initial meeting shall never be a presentation. Never.