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"Two heads are better than one" is generally true and helps us get stronger outcomes than we might get alone

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"Two heads are better than one" is generally true and helps us get stronger outcomes than we might get alone.

Although the title to this discussion is Making a Sales Presentation, this assignment will only cover two specific sections in a meeting: uncovering need/budget/decision-making process and the closing question. Those two sections are where most deals are lost. For example, if you find out that the person you are meeting with isn't the only decision-maker, if you proceed with the presentation you will likely be told, "Let me talk it over with my partner and we'll get back to you." Hint: If you do a good job in discovery, all the pressure of the closing question will be on the buyer (not you) where it belongs, because you will already know the outcome (yes).

Scenario for this Discussion

You are a salesperson for website building business, Awesome Design Media Inc. Although you have a full range of marketing services including SEO, branding, videography, print media, mobile apps, and more, your prospect is a small B2B firm with $400,000 annual sales that sells Window Cleaning commercial services (no residential) in northeast Atlanta called Window Shine. It has been in business for three years and still has the original website that was built by a friend of the owner as a start-up business. The owner, Chad Reynolds, is a decisive, direct, no BS guy (think Eagle from your Communications discussion) and has grown tired of his old website and feels he may be losing business to competitors because of it. He has a young energetic Marketing Director that he hired, Valerie Martin, who left an ad agency that she worked with for five years right out of college, and she is the one who prompted Chad to look into this. She is high energy, impulsive, creative (think Parrot from your Communications discussion) and is eager to get started on many marketing initiatives, but has decided this is the one that their brand can be built around and needs to be the first to update. You have been speaking with Chad and he and Valerie both connected with you on LinkedIn so you found out more about them and their backgrounds from your internet search. Both of them will be in the meeting.

You are at a first-time meeting at their place of business in Suwanee, GA. They have a small interior conference room, comfortable, with a table that seats eight, and a big screen TV with video and presentation capabilities. They agreed to meet for an hour at your request. Your company has never made a website for a commercial window cleaning business but you do have several similar sized clients in your portfolio to use as examples of your past work and results. You have run some preliminary numbers and feel a new website can easily garner another $100,000 in sales for Window Shine in the first year due to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and exciting landing pages. After you sit down with them, you quickly build rapport and ask them to mutually agree on the agenda for today. They agree the conversation will stick to website/SEO initial setup only, think an hour is long enough but are flexible if you need to extend to 1.5 hours, they have questions about you and your company, what kind of services to expect, and how it will be updated. You have questions about their needs, budget, and how they make decisions so you can determine if they are a good fit for Awesome Design Media or not. They both said they could tell you "no" if you said something they felt wasn't a good fit, and were okay if you told them you didn't think you were a good fit, but they also agreed that if they did feel it was a good fit, they were prepared to commit after a presentation today. They both understand that a contract can be signed on an agreed upon budget before any design work begins.

Post A

Based on what you know, write down questions you will ask regarding the NEED, BUDGET, and DECISION-MAKING PROCESS. I do NOT want you to make a full sales presentation. Before you make a presentation, you need to know IF you need to make a presentation by UNCOVERING those three important areas. Do not start with rapport building questions, you are past that and now you are ready to get down to business.

1. List the questions, in order, that you would ask.These can be specific questions as well as open-ended questions about what you need to make the presentation. Think in terms of 7-8 questions on the need, 2-3 on budget, and 2-3 on decision-making process.(So to repeat, you are in the middle of your meeting. Do not list questions on rapport building, and do not make a presentation yet. This is pure discovery time.)

2. Now here's the scenario: Assume you have gathered the answers to your questions in part 1. You make a brilliant full presentation and have identified/met objections and done a scale approach to a trial close and he was a 9 (out of 10). Chad looks anguished, and is giving buying signals that he is ready to do something to solve the problem. In fact, that worry you had after explaining that his budget would need to be $12,000 - $15,000 is no longer a concern. Valerie has assured Chad that is what it will take for this to meet their expectations. You are now ready to close.

What one question will you use to close the deal?