Storytelling is about using narrative devices in communication and sales techniques. It is of particular interest for sales presentations, because it will help you gain client buy-in for your product or company. Storytelling is used by most large multinationals, including the world’s most powerful brands, like Coca-Cola and Disney, who see it as a way …

Sales reps tend to use sales techniques that present the facts: the features of their company, product or service. Naturally, these sales techniques will also seek to present these features in an advantageous light, or with a positive spin. And they will omit anything that might involve conflict. For instance, when sales techniques are used …

The current storytelling trend is based on a triad that I find particularly suitable for sales presentations. It can be applied to presentations very easily, and is what I use most often, because it adapts well to any sales situation. Step 1: Hook their attention Step 2: Spark the desire for change Step 3: Persuade …

What are sales techniques for, and what’s the most important part of a sales presentation? Sales people tend to think that sales techniques are for convincing clients of the advantages of our product or solution, and that the most important part of the sales presentation is the part where we present our product or solution. …

Every sales rep must decide between responding to needs and influencing when addressing a client’s request. And the sales rep must make this decision before preparing the sales presentation, because the sales techniques are not the same. They depend on the goal of the sales presentation: the sales rep must clarify what he or she …

In sales, there are four good reasons to use slides. Your sales presentation will be more effective with slides than without them if you use them: To explain, i.e., to make clients understand you To prove, i.e., to make clients believe you To summarize, i.e., to make clients retain your key messages To influence, i.e., …

The question is, can storytelling principles be applied to sales techniques, starting with the concept of good and evil? In storytelling, the bad guy is a character, for the most part antagonistic, who embodies Evil, or at least acts like he does. He is generally fighting against the “good guy”. This concept of the antagonist …

Let’s talk about company presentations for client meetings: the only reason for you to be presenting your company in a “live” meeting is if you have a complex offer or you need to identify the client’s needs and issues. Here I am first and foremost talking about this type of situation, but the approach would …

In this article about sales techniques, I am only referring to the templates used to create sales presentations for sales meetings, not templates for written presentations, which for the most part are suitable enough. With the growing use of computers, iPads and other tablets in sales, corporate communications departments felt compelled to impose the use …

The first article in this series described the four key principles for making high-impact charts for sales presentations. I used a sample bar chart to illustrate these four simple principles for optimizing a chart that is weak in terms of visual communication. In this article, we will look at the specifics of pie charts. Bar …

Realy inspiring for sales presentations, Garr Reynolds is back in this newly revised edition of his classic, best-selling book, Presentation Zen, in which he showed readers there is a better way to reach the audience through simplicity and storytelling. I have often been referring to this book particularly inspiring for the design of your sales …

We are often called upon to provide numbers in our sales presentations, either in table or graph form. We include the numbers because we believe they provide convincing factual evidence to back up our arguments. The question is: are we presenting the numbers in a truly convincing way? This is the first in a series …

“Dark backgrounds are better than light backgrounds for sales presentations”. This is a subject that comes up very often, and did again this week for me: Karine this article will make you smile, along with your 12 colleagues of last Tuesday, should you ever stumble across it on Google. The question is, why are dark …

The arrival of the iPad and other tablets caused a stir in the small world of sales. People began to say that this innovation would revolutionize the world of sales techniques and sales presentations. But is this in fact a revolution? That is far from certain. iPads and tablets have three clear advantages in sales …

We have seen that a live sales presentations have to be visual to be effective. It must use emotional impact to support and strengthen the sales representative’s logical arguments. It should therefore contain slides with maximum visual impact and a minimum number of words. The sales meeting should be a show, and the show won’t go …

iPads and tablets have advantages in sales presentations, but not always the ones we think. I am not talking about advantages for the customer when he or she is reading the presentation all alone on an iPad, that is another matter altogether – see these two articles is you are interested: Sales proposals on iPads …

There are three advantages to using an iPad or tablet for sales presentations (click here to find out more: http://newsalespresentation.com/sales-presentations-ipads-tablets-3-advantages). We have seen that these three advantages evaporate when presenting to customers seated around a table, or in meetings with multiple participants. If there were only advantages, even if they evaporated most of the time …

After sales presentations, sales representatives often send the sales proposal in PDF format, and more and more often, the customer reads it on a computer, iPad or other tablet. The first question is: does the customer in fact read it? Customers don’t read written sales presentations in PDF format. Written sales presentations in PDF format don’t …

 We have seen that there can be advantages to using iPads and tablets in sales presentations, in some cases and under certain conditions (click here to find out more: coming soon). If we are going to use them for sales presentations, we need to know what to change in our sales presentations to make the …

I’m no designer myself, I’m a salesman. I like sales and sales presentations. In chronological order, I’ve sold: jumping horses, sports equipment, business services, trade fairs and, for the past 15 years, solutions to help companies optimize their results. During that time I have trained 5,000 sales reps and 500 managers… So, no, I’m no …

Before talking about sales presentations… First of all, what is design? There is no simple answer. For me, design is what allows people to create solutions that help other people or improve their lives, even if just a bit. Design means paying attention not to the solution as such, but to how others will understand …

Contrast is one of the most effective ways to add visual interest to your sales presentations. Our eyes like contrast.  Audiences need contrast. Eyes immediately perceive the difference between the attribute of two or more things, and this focuses your customer’s attention. By contrasting an object against the others, you automatically create attention and bring …

Regarding sales presentation, We are currently witnessing a transition to a new era. 90% of sales presentations are deadly. We call this “The death of sales by PowerPoint”, where sales presentations are loaded with text. Presentations like this kill a sales rep’s effectiveness because they cannot be influential during the sales meeting. This is not …

As we head into 2012, I propose a look back at the top 10 most-read articles of 2011 on this blog. Whether or not you caught them when they first came out, this is your chance to review what you, the readers, found most useful this year for improving your sales presentations.     It …

Professor John Sweller demonstrated with his Cognitive Load Theory in the 1980s that our brains have two hemispheres, right and left.  The right side is emotional, reacting to emotions, mood, art, beauty, music and such. The left side functions rationally, is interested in facts and analysis, strong in math and data processing.   Cognitive load …