Sales Effectiveness Breakfast Event Series: Friday 23 April 2010

Are presentation skills really that important?

Like many people, you may find it challenging to translate your face-to-face communication skills into presentation skills when presenting to a group. Whether you’re responsible for delivering a presentation from the marketing department or creating your own sales presentation, the majority of presenters rely heavily on logic and analytical thinking. This thinking is reflected in the predicable and linear text, graph and bullet point intensive presentations we’re all familiar with.

While logic and analytical thinking are important, the real power of a great presentation lies in the sensory engagement and emotional connection created with an audience. Persuasive communication is “human” communication. To achieve your objectives, you need a broader understanding of the learning experience and a more holistic approach to the entire presentation process.

We do know that a presentation is often the go/no go point in a sales cycle, no matter how much effort has gone into the process to that point.

Why? At a presentation you face emotional barriers that must be confronted and dealt with before you connect with an audience. We’ve seen numerous sales opportunities lost purely on a lack of professionalism or differentiation in a presentation. Don’t let that happen to your valuable opportunities.

John Barraclough & Warwick Burgess are directors of Presentation Space – an e-learning organisation which is changing the face of blended learning in the business environment. They bring over 50 years combined experience in the world of business, sales and marketing to the programs they build. This experience uniquely qualifies them to talk about the dramatic shift that has recently taken place in how organisations – and individuals – present themselves and their products to others.

In this not to be missed event session, John Barraclough and Warwick Burgess will demonstrate how you can open more doors and win more business by creating and delivering persuasive sales presentations. Every time.

John and Warwick will show you how you can:

• Connect emotionally with your audience
• Produce a compelling presentation for different sales situations and different groups – that help you win business
• Understand the skills that are essential to delivering winning presentations

Does using this approach mean I’ll miss those “natural” salespeople that I really need in my team?

Why do all sales teams have more underperformers than they should? Whilst there are many factors – a key one is how people are initially selected, and then how they are retained. The last 10 years has seen the maturing of the science of behaviour – especially as it relates to job fit and job selection.

Sales Directors/Managers continue to accept it is “normal” that 20% to 35% of their sales force perform at an unacceptable or sub-standard level.

The question is why? Not surprisingly the answer in nearly all cases is that managers do not want to admit that they employed a poor performer and do not want to admit that they do not know how to fix the problem. The end result is that this very expensive issue is not addressed.

The good news is that by objectively measuring the critical success attributes of proven top performers, management teams can:

• Increase the success rate of selecting future high performers by up to 300%
• Understand why existing poor performers are failing and address the core issues
• Develop customised strategies to retain top performers.

Mark Purbrick is the Regional Director for Profiles International – a global leader in the development of job-fit assessments. They’ve supplied over 50 million assessments for over 50,000 client organisations in 122 countries around the globe.

In this session Mark will demonstrate that there is a better way to select and retain top performers and that there is a way to objectively understand why poor performers are poor performers and why top performers are top performers.

Mark will use extensive research data and case studies to demonstrate how you can:

• Increase your success in selecting top sales performers by focusing on job requirements and how people fit different sales roles
• Ensure you have the right strategies in place to retain top performers
• Develop processes, interventions and strategies to help poor performers
• Avoid the unhappy (and expensive) situation of having the wrong salesperson in the wrong sales job