We had a presentation yesterday to a huge company. I typically help with strategy, the building of the presentation, and the final editing for these. I am pretty anal about presentations, so I am always tweaking either the content or the way that I plan to present the content.

Yesterday I made a colossal mistake and one that I thought I would share with you, my loyal friends. I failed to go through what is usually a really normal process for me of putting myself in the audience’s place and going through the presentation in my mind. In my opinion, this is a must for any personal interaction that you expect be long and meaningful.

Having the other person’s perspective in mind is really important. It allows you to analyze what they care about most and in a sales setting, it will allow you to best tailor your message so that you can get the outcome that you desire. Areas of analysis for a sales setting should be:

• The audience themselves - Who is going to be there? How are they related or linked to one another? What are the things that are most important to them? What are their interpersonal relationships? Where is their specific pain? How are you going to take care of that pain? Don’t laser focus your message on only one person, unless it is an audience of one. Make sure you strike a nerve with each one in some way.
• The audience’s challenges – Do they understand their own challenge well and will they feel that you understand their challenges based on your presentation?
• The audience’s level of understand of the topic – Do they fundamentally understand the concepts being presented? If not, make sure that you alter the presentation based on the audience.
• The audience’s risk tolerance level – How risky of a proposition is whatever you are presenting to them?
  The audience’s historical buying patterns – In my world, I try to look at how my prospects typically engage on projects. Are they well-planned, multi-month or year programs, or are they more tactically focused and therefore engage on short projects.
• Does every visual or written component of the presentation further your cause? - If you are presenting case studies, examples, sample work, are those meaningful to them and their industry?

I am probably leaving a few things out, but you get the point. Thinking through how the content of a presentation will affect the audience is probably the most important thing you can do. For us yesterday, we would have avoided a particularly uncomfortable situation had we not missed this. We live and learn, that’s for sure!
Sell well, sell hard, or let me do it!

As an Account Executive, A.K.A Salesperson, probably the most important part of your job is to be sure to always be in the driver’s seat on every pursuit that you engage in. Letting someone else take the wheel is rarely a good idea, especially early in the sales process. Using the CEO to help you close the deal is one thing, but letting someone else drive your sales cycle and account strategy is a whole different ball ‘o wax.

The people on your sales team will lose respect for you. If they are the people putting in long hours during the days and nights and then turning around and making the pitch too, they will absolutely feel as if you are pawning your work off on them. You have to pull your weight or more.

The pitch will become someone else’s. If you are not participating in the process, then the pitch itself will be created by someone else’s, right? Of course. That said, they will likely need to make the pitch. It will also be close to impossible for you to be critical of the pitch. You are not engaged enough to be critical along the way, which is when you want to be critical, and you cannot be critical at the end, just before the pitch, because

1. the people that just completed all that work don’t really want to hear it, and
2. there is likely not enough time to make wholesale changes to the pitch.

There are no Monday morning QB’s in sales. If you’re playing Monday morning QB, it means that you have already lost the deal and you are likely on your way to losing a bit more. More on that later. The account strategy will be someone else’s. Early in a relationship with a new account, you have to begin to formalize an overall account strategy. What are we shooting for with an account in the next 3 months, 6 months, year? If you allow others to formalize that strategy for you, it will not be one that you are 100% comfortable with or confident in. It’s also important because any change is difficult, especially changes in account strategy.

You will appear, and will likely be, incredibly uninformed on what you are proposing to the prospect and the longer term vision for what you are proposing.

Eventually, you will be looking for another place to work. There will invariably come a time where the person that is driving all your deals becomes the owner of those accounts and your boss will begin to question why you are there.

Happy selling! Go close something!