Hate Preparing for Your Sales Presentations? Here’s a Straightforward 7-Step Checklist

By Alex Dripchak

There is a reality in sales that continually confounds me: most salespeople resist preparing for sales presentations. And regardless of why—be it overconfidence, complacency, ineptitude, or just plain laziness—it is perilously misguided, as a little preparation can go a long way toward a successful presentation.

So if you’re a salesperson who resists preparation, here’s a straightforward 7-step checklist to a great presentation.

7 steps to preparing for sales presentations

1. Visualize the end result

From Olympic gold medalists to A-list actors, almost everyone at the top of their craft practices visualization. Success magazine calls visualization “concentrated dreaming” and contends that it builds courage, combats negativity, bolsters creativity, gathers energies, and fosters purpose. And if that’s not enough to convince you, check out Oprah Winfrey and Jim Carrey chatting about their own passion for visualization.

As a salesperson, think of visualization as envisioning excellence, with three specific elements necessary for you to succeed:

• Segments. These are the many separate parts that can lead to your end goal. This includes presenting, informing, reviewing, discussing, and responding to questions.
• Checkpoints. They occur within segments. This includes constant check-ins, probes, recapitulations, and pivots.
• Gates. Various indicators of a client’s level of interest. This includes body language, facial expressions, and forward-looking questions. And just like physical gates, they create the openings that actually let you inside.

So as you visualize, deconstruct these three elements, and then, step-by-step, reassemble them to identify and remedy any weak links.

2. Reverse engineer prior winning formulas

Think about similar presentations and ask yourself what worked and why. Be specific, scrutinizing critical moments that, one by one, added up to success.

But don’t stop there. Contemplate presentations that didn’t go well, too. This way, you can examine the gaps between the two experiences. Also, don’t overlook the power of win-loss analysis—a treasure trove of insights and information.

3. Mitigate customer concerns

No matter how much a customer likes a solution, they are going to have concerns. The three most common concerns can be bucketed into three categories:

1. Explicit switching costs: implementation fees, integration charges, early-termination expenses

2. Implicit switching costs: another item on an already “full plate,” anticipated (or scapegoated) resistance from the direct end users, pressures from company higher-ups

3. Buyer’s remorse: regrets on having made the wrong choice, the dread of tackling an all-new approach, worries of the “what ifs” if the decision fails

The best way to address such concerns is to amplify the voice of others. First, satisfied clients that may have once had similar concerns, and second, your in-house implementation team, who can share success stories with metrics like customer engagement reports and service-level agreements (SLAs).

4. Heighten the sense of gain and build commitment

Sure, you can try to incentivize clients with “carrots” such as discounts, special promotions, and giveaways. But you’re bound to build more buy-in by getting everyone on the customer's team involved and inspired.

Involvement starts with connecting their team with your team, including members of your executive team. This helps quell concerns about the overall relationship should one member suddenly depart from your team.

Inspiration is about building a tangible vision, or a sense of gain, for your deal champion’s future. This might be a job promotion, an employee bonus, or a career-growth opportunity, such as being invited to serve on your company's client advisory board or to speak at a company conference. What’s most important is to make it a metric that matters to them personally and professionally.

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• How to Predict and Solve Business Problems Before They Happen
• Preparing a Financial Presentation for Lenders
• How to Write a Cold Email That Gets Results
• 9 Superstar Traits Every Salesperson Needs to Beat Fear and Rise Up

5. Eliminate superfluous, self-focused, and “salesy” language

An all-too-common problem in presentations is superfluous information. It’s one thing to try to underscore your key points, and quite another to be verbose and repetitive. So as you prepare for a sales presentation and go over your presentation drafts, be objective and judicious in spotting such issues.

Another persistent problem is self-focused language. The answer here is to comb through your presentation drafts with a critical eye. If any part, big or small, puts the focus on you rather than your client, get rid of it.

And then there’s the issue of sales-y trigger words and phrases. It would take an entire article to cover them all, but you know the ones: “cutting edge,” “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” and “I’ll be honest with you,” among others. Any one of them has the power to negate everything you’ve said, not to mention they supply naysayers with the ammunition they need to shoot down your presentation.

Similarly, watch out for needless adverbs like “very” and “totally,” as well as annoying speech fillers—“um,” “uh,” “er,” “ah,” “you know,” etc.

6. Practice presenting as a team when preparing for sales presentations

Team presentations require extra preparation. This is because clients view a cohesive, carefully choreographed team as skilled and professional, and a disorganized team as amateur and untrustworthy. When presenting as a team, prepare how you will transition to other team members, being clear about who’s coming up next and what they’ll be covering. For example: “Now I’ll be handing it over to Joan, who will be walking us through the specifics of XYZ.”

Also, communicate a sense of ease and familiarity within the team, as most clients find that reassuring. This means if a client overhears you talking among yourselves, they’re hearing old friends picking up from where they last left off—not strangers small-talking at a business networking event.

And finally, make it clear that every member on the team has an express role and purpose. By showcasing your specific synergies, you’re demonstrating that you’re a well-oiled machine working in unison. One way to accomplish this is to make sure that each team member addresses the questions aligned with their particular area of expertise.

7. Have a contingency plan for (technical) difficulties

There’s nothing worse than to painstakingly prepare for a presentation only to have a technology that you took for granted go woefully wrong. Too often this is a seemingly simple thing like cell reception, Wi-Fi connectivity, or an HDMI interface.

Sure, your client may say they understand, but don’t interpret their polite gesture for something more. No matter how sympathetic they might seem in the moment, they’re almost certain to compare you to your better-prepared competitors.

Bonus tip on preparing for sales presentations

Finally, here’s a parting piece of advice: in complex selling, not all hours are created equal. Consider your preparation hours as you would dog years. For every hour you may spend in prospecting, spend seven hours in preparing for presentations.

Success awaits!

RELATED: 4 Rules for Sales Follow-Ups That Really Connect With Clients