I never want any of my sales presentations to become average, forgettable or predictable. I want each one to stand on its own, make an impression, cause a stir, invigorate the participants, call the audience to action, make them think about what you are talking about. Help them look at what you are talking about in a different way. In my world I was selling paper. Napkins, toilet paper and paper towels. Honestly, how could I make that interesting to the sales reps I was trying to motivate. Is there anything more boring than paper? Nothing in this world has to be boring. It goes back to passion. I believed in my products and had passion for the business and for the success of selling those products. It is not ok to present these products the way they have always been talked about. Whenever I was given the opportunity to talk about my products, I considered it my responsibility to get the most out of that time.
What do you consider when you put together a sales presentation? How much time do you have? Who is the audience? What will be the focus of the presentation? What products will I present? What do I want the participants to take away from the presentation? How can I make the presentation interesting, fun, unique, memorable? I will need to establish the goals of the presentation. Get the audience interested. Show them the most important points to remember. Finish by reminding them what you want them to remember and give them a printed recap of what you just covered in the presentation. We all at one time or another have given people things at presentations for no apparent reason. These could be anything… pens, penlights, golf balls, you name it. I think the best gift you can give the participants is the knowledge that you share with them. I try to not hand any of these things out until the presentation is over. I believe that the information you share is going to be much more valuable than any item you give them.
I almost always had too much material to cover in the time I was given. To me this caused the people I was presenting to pay very close attention so that they wouldn’t miss any key points. I always would tell them that this was going to move pretty fast and that I would be sharing a great deal of information today. Having said that I tried to limit the actual subject matter to a few key areas. Maybe it would be only napkins that day, or just toilet paper or just paper towels. Whatever it was I was going to share information that would help them not only understand the product and its features and benefits but offer fun ways to present it to their customers. Sounds easy enough. I hated to use power points because too many times you are reading slides to the audience. I always felt that it was much better to engage the participants by talking directly to them. I also felt that it was extremely important for these presentations to elicit responses from the participants throughout the presentation. I sometimes joked that there might be a quiz afterward so they would need to pay close attention. I believed that there were two things that were present with sales people. Most of them like to be involved in what is going on and most of them are highly competitive. As a presenter you can use both of those elements to make a successful presentation.
For my presentations many times there were dispensers involved. Let us take the case of the Xpressnap napkins. This is one of the most exciting paper products that has come along in the past 50 years in the paper industry. I always wanted participants to show me how to load these dispensers. Don’t assume that the people you are presenting to know anything about what you are talking about. You know what they say about assuming. It can make an ass out of you and me. A very true statement. I wanted these people to know how to load all of the different Xpressnap dispensers and there were three different ones, a stand model, a counter model and a table model. Each was unique and each was loaded differently. Getting people involved in the process of loading the dispensers was invaluable and gave them more confidence when they were presenting to their customers in the field.
I was responsible for the feature regarding advertising on these dispensers. It was called AD A Glance. You could create ads and put them in specific places on these dispensers. It still is one of the most exciting parts of Xpressnap to this day. We offered many templates to create the advertising in the different sizes needed. Selling Xpressnap was the most fun you could have selling paper. You were only limited by your own creativity. I would ask the participants to brainstorm different ways to use the advertising feature on these dispensers. I eventually put together a piece of literature that listed 22 different ways that the AD A Glance feature could be used to promote businesses, create goodwill, share information, etc. The fact of the matter is that this feature could be a revenue generator for the customers… they could advertise appetizers, drinks, entree’s, gift certificates, upcoming events, etc. Most of the time when I finished with the Xpressnap presentation the participants were enthused, excited and motivated to start selling the product. I don’t know about you, but for me, it was great to see the light go on in their eyes and see the kind of positive reactions that came out of those presentations. This is unfair because I am talking about a product that was so unique in so many ways that it lent itself to great presentations. This one is a no brainer but there is no reason why you couldn’t get creative and make other products exciting as well.
One of the other things that I did was create competitive situations. Maybe have a couple of participants or teams running a relay to load dispensers. Doing it correctly and quickly and beating the other participant or the other team. It was fun, engaging and a great way to learn how to load dispensers. One of the other things that I would do was have two teams involved in unwinding a roll of jumbo tissue. All that was needed was a piece of pvc pipe for each roll and two teams to unroll the jumbo tissue. It was always fun and crazy at the same time. It is hard to imagine how difficult it is to actually unroll 1000’ of toilet paper. All I know is that it never failed to be engaging and fun at the same time. The winners were rewarded and it was something that everyone would remember. Having 2000’ of toilet paper on the ground in a big pile was also interesting.
Any presentation needs to have a logical beginning, middle and end. When you are putting the presentation together don’t get lost in the weeds. Keep it simple and straight forward. Ask questions during the presentation and get real responses from the audience. Good questions about what you are presenting can lead to good answers and again engagement by the participants. One of my goals was to surprise the participants with the presentation, try to make it memorable and in the long run leave them with the idea that the next time I put on a presentation they would look forward to it. Never miss the opportunity to present your products to people. It is truly a gift and it will ultimately lead to your success. I believe that if your presentation goes well the people in the audience will be more inclined to sell your products and want to work with you. It is a logical outcome of making a quality presentation.
There is a lot more that we can talk about regarding presentations… I will leave that for another time.
