Research indicates that most salespeople put 80-90% of their time into presenting and demonstrating and leave only 10-20% of their time for other things. Professional salespeople, however, spend only 40% of their time presenting or demonstrating; not more than 10% prospecting; and about 50% of their time qualifying and planning.
Let's look at these figures one more time. The professionals spend half as much time demonstrating or presenting as the average salesperson does, yet we find that he or she still manages to turn in at least twice the volume. And this is a conservative figure. Actually, the professional partnerships in between four and ten times as much business as the average salesperson will. It's not uncommon for a single salesperson to outsell the entire bottom half of the sales force, and keep on doing it month after month, year after year.
So what is it that the true professional does to stand above the rest? By far the greatest difference lies in his or her attention to and ability at planning sales, at selecting and qualifying the right people to sell to, overcoming objections and closing, and at describing and obtaining referrals.
So as important as presenting and demonstrating is, if you do it with the wrong people because you did not qualify properly, it's all for nothing. If you're working with the right people, but you let their objections beat you because you have not prepared properly, it's all for nothing. And if you have no capability in closing, you're working for nothing. If you can not close, many sales you could and should make will go to the next competitor who comes along because you built the structure for the sale but could not close the door before he or she got there. You have to be a strong presenter or demonstrator to sell consistently. You also have to qualify strictly, handle objections consistently and close strongly.
There are three things you should cover in your presentation:
1. Tell them what you're going to tell them. This is your introduction.
2. Tell them what you're there to tell them. This is your presentation.
3. Tell them what you just told them. This is your summary.
That's the outline of all successful speeches, presentations and demonstrations. In other words, we use repetition. We do not say exactly the same thing three times, of course, As outlined above, we begin by introducing our new ideas, then we cover our points in depth and relate them to our future clients' interests and needs and finally, we draw concluding from our points and indicate the direction that things should take.
Repetition is the mother of learning, yet average salespeople do not like repetition. For one thing, they have used their material so many times that it's stale to them. All too often, average salespeople have gone worse than stale on their presentations and feel it would be better off buried. The professional, on the other hand, never tires of phrases that work, ploys that sell, and ideas that make sense to his or her buyers.
There is no doubt about it, one of the keys to the professional's greater skill at presenting or demonstrating lies in his or her ability and willingness to use repetition effectively to reinvigorate every point. He or she does not mind repeating the sales point because he or she knows it leads to repeated sales to the same type of clientele.
So think in terms of tell, tell, tell and remember: Repetition is the seed of selling.