INTRO SERIES

Basics of Dynamic Sales Presentations

An introductory guide to delivering outstanding sales presentations

A Publication of

LANCE TYSON

President and CEO, TYSON GROUP

Table ofContents

Introduction

1. Create An Outline

2. Talk To Your Audience

3. Know Your Subject

4. Being Yourself

5. Control Your “Butterflies”

6. Control Your Mental Focus

7. Control Your Environment

© 2020 Tyson Group. All Rights Reserved. 2

Public Speaking in Sales

You're standing at the head of a conference table with nothing but your laptop, a projector, and

your sales presentation. Assembled in the room are 20 executives, each with a $5M to $10M

budget. And they all want to know how you’re going to make their professional lives better.

Success is you leaving with a contract in hand. Failure is leaving with nothing more than a

perfunctory, “Thank you for your time, we’ll be in touch.”

What do you feel? Sweaty palms? Dry mouth? A queasy feeling in your gut? Tenseness in your

shoulders and neck?

Congratulations! You’re ready for your first sales presentation.

In conducting post training interviews, our clients have told us that they’ve experienced similar

feelings at numerous points in their careers. However, the majority of sales reps also tell us that

they welcome those feelings. That’s how they know that they ready to get in the game.

These feelings are physical symptoms of your emotional state. They can occur when you step

onto the biggest roller coaster of your life or when you are about to deliver a presentation that

has $500K on the line. The magic is not in eliminating these feelings and their symptoms, but

use them to enhance your performance.

So how do top sales reps turn that public speaking fear and anxiety into enthusiasm and

excitement. More importantly, can you learn to do the same thing? At Tyson Group, we feel that

if one person has learned how to achieve an outcome, others can as well.

Here are 7 activities we use in our coaching programs. These activities insure that all of our

participants start with the same foundation. You can perform these simple exercises yourself to

start gaining control of your next sales presentation.

Increase Your Credibility and Your Bottom Line

© 2020 Tyson Group. All Rights Reserved. 3

Create An Outline

In the course of your career, some of your sales presentations will involve sizeable deals and

require detailed material. However, you are a sales rep, not the head of state. The fate of a

nation isn’t going to hang on your every word. So, there’s no need to use a teleprompter, or read

from a written script.

When you are presenting the case for your product or services, you need the flexibility to

address questions, issues, and challenges that your prospect may bring up. In addition, you want

to be free to respond to the needs of your audience. To do that, you need to be aware of how the

audience is responding to your presentation in the moment. Don’t box yourself in with restrictive

requirements.

“You want to be free to respond to the

needs of your audience.”

For example, I attended a sales presentation where the sales rep prepared a beautiful proposal

and delivered it to a department manager. She then used it as a crutch and proceeded to read it

as her presentation. The manager stopped her after 2 minutes and said, “Don’t read me the

proposal. I can do that on my own time. Talk to me about this deal.”

Have your ideas outlined on cards, PowerPoint slides, or perhaps even a sales proposal. That

outline gives your presentation and your meeting a framework to present your solutions.

However, don’t use that framework as a restrictive crutch. You want to be free to interact with

your audience and build your relationship.

Use the outline to control the flow of your presentation. Don’t read from a written script unless

you really need the verbal precision. Remain free to address your audience.

Outline Your Sales Presentation

© 2020 Tyson Group. All Rights Reserved. 4

Talk To Your Audience

When sales reps feel nervous because of the size or nature of their sales deal, they use a variety

of coping mechanisms when delivering their presentation. One of the coping mechanisms I've

seen freshmen sales reps often use is to attempt memorizing their presentation.

“Make your presentation about your

audience, not about you.”

The challenge here is similar to the previous challenge discussed. When you memorize your

presentation, you aren’t free to observe and engage your audience. You’re trapped in your head

reviewing your presentation. When this happens, your presentation becomes about you and not

about your audience.

Again, for the presentations you will deliver, the fate of nations won't hang on the meaning of

your every word. You won't need to read from a written script or recite it from memory. Your

audience will be looking at your authenticity, your ability to engage them, and your passion for

your ideas. You can't do any of this if you are trying to recite your speech from memory.

Structure your speech around your basic ideas. Practice talking about those ideas until you

know them so well that someone can wake you up in the middle of the night and you can still

have a coherent discussion about them.

Trying to memorize your presentation will only increase your level of anxiety as you will be

worried about forgetting something. Know your presentation. Own it. Deliver it.

Talk to Your Audience – Don’t Memorize Your Presentation

© 2020 Tyson Group. All Rights Reserved. 5

Know Your Subject

As sales reps, one aspect of our job is to have extensive knowledge of our product, our services,

and our company. However, knowing this kind of information is not usually a problem for us.

From our interviewed clients, one of the biggest challenges that sales reps continue to face is

that they don’t listen to the needs or wants of their clients.

As the consultative sales rep, one of your responsibilities is to understand your prospect’s

business, their industry, their environment, their company, and the problems they want to solve.

During your presentation preparation, review every aspect of the proposed solution. This

includes your prospect’s environment, their application of your product or service, and how it will

change their environment. Then spend time judiciously streamlining the presentation to focus on

your call to action, also known as the close, and trim off anything that will divert from that

message.

Your extra preparation will give you confidence in handling any challenges that may arise during

your presentation. That preparation will also help you when you perform your Q&A session.

Develop reserve power for your presentation and you’ll never be caught off guard.

Know More About Your Subject Than You Can Use

© 2020 Tyson Group. All Rights Reserved. 6

Be Yourself

There are many great professional speakers out there that we can idolize and emulate. Zig

Ziglar, Les Brown, and Patricia Fripp are a few that come to mind. In addition, there’s always one

or two seasoned sales professionals in your company that all other members of your sales team

will try to imitate.

“The best speaker you can emulate is you.”

However, to perform at your peak level, the best speaker you can emulate is you. There are

styles you can copy and tactics you can use. But when you are in front of an audience, your best

strategy is to be yourself. Your audience is there to hear you, your ideas and your solutions.

They want to know what you bring to the relationship. Don’t disappoint them. Give them the best

personal performance of your career.

When you practice your presentation, remember practice makes permanence, not perfection.

Regular practice reinforces activities and turns behaviors into habits. In your practice sessions,

develop your delivery, style, technique, and timing. You don’t want these to be the focus of your

presentation. Instead, these should be the supporting platform for your passion and commitment

to your solution.

Remember, your prospects and clients care more about resolving their challenges, and not so

much about your perfect presentation.

Practice Being Yourself – Don’t Imitate Others

© 2020 Tyson Group. All Rights Reserved. 7

Control Your “Butterflies”

When delivering a new presentation, many public speakers forget that the manifestations of your

anxiety are physical. If you are experiencing physical symptoms of performance anxiety, such as

sweaty palms and a queasy stomach, you can counteract the effects with more physical activity.

Sometimes simple stretches will work for you. Other times, you'll require something more

strenuous. For example, in one of our training sessions, participants were required to give a

rousing presentation with passion and excitement. The last thing I wanted them thinking about

was their presentation delivery performance.

“Control the physical symptoms of your anxiety by

taking control of your physical activity.”

So, for this session, before each participant delivered their presentation, we had them hunker

down like a linebacker. Then, they had to get past my “blocking” assistants before they could do

their presentation at the front of the room. For 30 to 45 seconds, each participant tried to perform

an end run around their coach, and by the time they got to the front of the room, performance

anxiety was the last thing on their mind. They simply spoke with continuity, passion, and

excitement.

Remember, use physical activity to counteract and control the physical manifestations of your

anxiety and you’ll be better positioned to control the presentation.

Get Control Of Your Physical State

© 2020 Tyson Group. All Rights Reserved. 8

Control Your Mind

Also, direct your thoughts to support you instead of hindering you. Many first time speakers

focus on the outcomes that they don't want. They visualize events that scare their pants off, or

set themselves up for failure by mentally reciting how badly they will perform.

These are your thoughts, and despite the common mindset, you can control them. Envision a

happy audience standing up and clapping at the end of your presentation. Tell yourself that you

can command the presence of the audience and that you have the experience to speak on the

topic at hand.

The “experts” call it Pollyanna thinking if you visualize a pleasing outcome. They call it realistic

thinking when you think about an unpleasant outcome. However, the process is the

same. Thinking and visualizing your outcome is typically a prerequisite to attaining your

outcome, regardless of what you call it. Rest assured, you will get what you focus your attention

on. The only question you need to ask is which outcome do you want.

Mentally identify the outcome you want and then physically and mentally work towards achieving

that outcome.

Get Control Of Your Mental Focus

© 2020 Tyson Group. All Rights Reserved. 9

Control The Environment

As with any performance, you need to make sure that your equipment is working. In road racing,

coaches encourage runners not to wear new shoes for a big race. They don't know where the

pressure points are and the shoes haven’t been broken in. Best to put in a few “trial miles” on

the shoes before requiring them to perform in a race where the stakes are higher.

The same concept applies when you are delivering a sales presentation. Batteries go dead,

laptops sometimes lock up and become unresponsive, projector bulbs don’t light, whiteboard

markers go dry... stuff happens. It’s a part of the landscape.

In one session, I had a presenter whose laser pointer suddenly stopped working. The battery in

her pointer just died. She was prepared to go back to standing next to the screen and using her

finger to highlight points on the PowerPoint slide when I made a quick adjustment. I pulled the

battery from her mouse, which she wasn’t using, popped it into the pointer, and she was back in

action.

“Test your equipment before you need it.”

Before you step in front of your audience, make sure that all your equipment is working. You

want to get a feel for how you will use your equipment during that presentation and how your

equipment’s location will work within your presentation. When you are confident your equipment

works and how you will use it, you’ll be free to let your personality come through.

You have enough to worry about with monitoring your audience’s reactions and keeping them

engaged. You don't want to start wondering if your equipment is operational or if you could have

placed it in a more appropriate place.

Test All Equipment For Functionality

© 2020 Tyson Group. All Rights Reserved. 10

Enjoy The Process

Finally, have fun.

People gravitate towards speakers who are enjoying themselves and their work. No one wants to

be around someone who is always having a bad day. One of the more important questions you

can ask yourself when presenting is, “What’s the worst thing that can happen and can I live with

it”.

If you can answer ‘yes’ to this last question, then you’ll free yourself to perform at your best and

enjoy the process.

People work best not when they are trying to avoid undesirable outcomes, but when they are

reaching for their desired goals.

Know your outcomes and enjoy the experience.

Remember to Have Fun and Enjoy Yourself

© 2020 Tyson Group. All Rights Reserved. 11

Gain the Secrets of

Did you find these basic ideas useful? Do you

want to know how your presentation skills can help

you drive revenue? Then it’s time to take your

skills to the next level. Contact Lauren Snyder

today and discover how we can tailor a suitable

sales presentation program for your team.

LEARN MORE

Professional Speakers