When it’s time to give your next sales presentation, here are my favorite tips for making powerful, charismatic, and engaging sales presentations.
#1 – PLANT YOUR FEET SQUARE ON THE GROUND
The way you hold your physical body during your sales pitch communicates a great deal of information about you to your audience. Studies have shown that a person will unconsciously interpret approximately 55% of the meaning of your message from physiological cues in their body position, posture, and facial expressions.
Deliver your presentation from a position of trust. Stand with your feet directly between your shoulders. Distribute your weight evenly between your legs and plant your feet firmly on the ground. Keep your arms relaxed at your sides until you are ready to gesture.
Shifting your weight from one leg to the other communicates a lack of confidence to the audience. This unconsciously manifests itself in the sense that if you ask someone, a typical response might be “he didn’t seem to believe in her company” or “I’m not sure I can trust her.”
Try balanced and unbalanced speaking postures right now, and see which one makes you feel more confident and prepared for your next sales presentation.
#2 – ELIMINATE YOURSELF
It is your job to guide the audience. The reason they are there to get something from you. So you have to guide them where you want them to go. If you want people to be excited about your product or feel a sense of trust in you and your company, you must first create this emotion within yourself.
How do you do this? Easy. Do whatever it takes to get excited. Jump up and down. Clap your hands. Play your favorite music at full volume. Give a high five to your sales partner. You can do this where the potential customer won’t see you (in your car, on the customer’s stairwell, in the bathroom, or outside the building). What do you think a rock star or an actor does to warm up before going on stage?
The idea is to start your presentation in an absolutely excellent state. Get this right and the audience will follow you wherever you want them to go.
Special Tip: Use this technique before making important phone calls so that you are “on” when you make the call.
#3 – AUDIENCE WARM-UP
Another thing great rock stars do before they go on stage is do warm-up acts. The job of a warm-up act is to make the audience feel receptive to the energy of the main act.
You can achieve this same effect simply by playing music before you start your presentation. Many laptops have CD players these days, or you can use a boom box. The type of music you play will depend on your audience and the emotional state you want to get your audience into. Just think how this will set you apart from your competition’s outdated PowerPoint slideshow.
#4 – START WITH PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
The more relationship you have with an individual or a group, the more receptive they will be to your message. One way to build rapport with your audience is to ask them questions within the first few minutes on stage.
Ask one or two questions that most people can easily answer (but don’t put anyone on the spot too much). Questions like “How far did you come to get here?” and “How long have you been working in this field?” Easily start the conversation and start building a relationship between you and your audience.
#5 – MAINTAIN EYE CONTACT WITH INDIVIDUALS
You probably know that you should do this. Now here’s why and how.
The more frequently you change the location of your focus, the more new information your brain absorbs. Your eyes are the visual sensory input system for your brain. Shift focus quickly enough and often enough, and you’ll overload your brain to the point where you’ll forget where you are in the presentation. aaaaaaaaah!
Keep your focus on what you want to say next by fixing your visual focus for short periods of time. Do this by completing a thought or sentence (whichever is easiest for you) while maintaining eye contact with a person. Move eye contact to a new person with each new thought or sentence.
© 1999-2004 Shamus Brown, All rights reserved.
