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Presentation Tips:  Know Your Clients Before You Present

This presentation tip is in the category:  The Perfect Sales Presentation Series

“Please do your preparation next time before attending the meeting”

Have you ever heard this line before in a sales presentation? I had the valuable experience to hear this line when I first started my career in sales.  I also had the mistake of proposing wrong solutions to clients because I misunderstood the number of employees in the company.  The result was that I was losing a lot of sales opportunities and created bad relationship with lots of my prospects.

I didn’t know why until I shared my experience with one of my mentors Nancy Chan.  She is a very successful multi-level marketing (MLM) sales team leader.  A lot of people have negative feeling towards MLM salespersons but I do not.  I know that MLM companies provide good sales training and plenty successful MLM sales leaders are very professional.

Nancy quickly pointed out to me that I did not spend enough time to know more about my prospects.  I should have spent more time to do research on my prospective company and contact person.

I have summarized a list of questions that we as sales professional should be able to answer before we deliver a sales presentation.

Client Company
  • What is the company size (globally, regionally and locally)?
  • What industry does the company operate in?
  • What are the competitors?
  • What are the company vision, mission and values?
  • Are they doing well in the market?
  • Do they currently have budget for your products?
  • Are they currently hiring?

 

Contact Person
  • What is the person’s current position?
  • How long did the person work in the company?
  • Has the person published any work? If yes, read the material.
  • Does the person have decision making authority?
  • What are the recent events the person has spoken in?
  • Where is the person originally from?
  • Where did the person get educated?

 

You can probably answer 90 percent of the questions by doing research on the Internet.  The remaining 10 percent could actually be gathered through your conservation with your contact person on the phone before the sales presentation.  If you have a friend or know someone through your alumni network who work in the prospective company, talk to every one of them and find out more about the company.  If your prospective client is a retail shop, go shopping in the shop and talk with the people there.  Your prospective clients will appreciate your willingness to know more about their companies.

You will also need to know clearly why your contact person would like to buy from you.  Here is a list of some examples.

Need
  • Follow headquarter decision
  • Follow company management decisions
  • Be the leading-edge group in the profession
  • Follow industry trend
  • Pain elimination
  • Time saver
  • Promotion opportunity
  • Better PR

 

Try to know more about your contact person’s needs before the sales presentation.  Alternatively, keep asking questions at the appropriate timing during a sales presentation to identify their needs.  This will increase your probability of closing the deal at the end.

After I have started doing research on my prospective customers, I have significantly increased my closing rate.  Not only that, I have eliminated the possibility of any potential embarrassment of know the wrong facts and proposing wrong solutions to my prospective clients.