Please Don’t Judge Me (or your customers!)

The Case for Impartiality in Both the Supreme Court and Your Sales Presentation

The appointment of a new judge to the Supreme Court of the United States is seldom a simple affair, often involving a collision of perspective between opposing political forces. Through the process of confirmation hearings, the inquisitors (Senate Judiciary Committee members) seek to validate amid other concerns, that the appointee will bring uncompromised impartiality to the decisions they render while sitting on the highest court in the land. (Trust me. If it was your case brought before the Supreme Court, the issue of impartiality would be of greatest concern to you too.)

Okay. So what does impartiality have to do with professional selling?

One of the most insidious forms of bigotry in professional selling is economic discrimination. Economic discrimination occurs when a salesperson makes an unfounded personal judgment about how much they think or feel a customer can afford, and then they alter their sales presentation to offer lower-end more moderately priced options.

When it happens (and unfortunately it happens all too often in many sales organizations), “unfounded personal judgment” forms in the mind of the salesperson before any interaction with the customer has taken place. Inappropriate opinions regarding the financial means of the customer are made by interpreting mostly visual things, like, the clothing they are wearing or the car they are driving—or at its unthinkable worst, their gender, age, or ethnicity.

Economic discrimination is widely known as prejudging a customer.

Not only is prejudging morally reprehensible, it is also an extremely costly practice for both the salesperson and the company. The salesperson who prejudges the financial capability of prospects suffers the negative results of lower overall sales averages and reduced earnings over the course of their career. From the company’s perspective, the negative impact of prejudging customers is exponentially multiplied by the number of salespeople engaging in this practice—to which the true costs in lost revenue may never be fully realized.

(Prejudging left unchecked in the organization will cause sales to be lost altogether. As customers figure out what’s going on, they walk out and seek the services of a competitor—someone who is willing to treat them in a more dignified manner. Not to mention the damage this will ultimately do to the reputation of the business!)

Prejudging a customer is not to be confused with tailoring the presentation!

There are times when changing your presentation is appropriate. There is little in common between the negative practice of prejudging a customer and “tailoring” the presentation to fit the established needs and wants of the customer. One takes place without the customer’s knowledge or input, while the other is done under their specific direction.

You ensure the highest ethical standard through top-down selling.

The only way to meet the highest ethical standard objective, and eliminate even the unconscious possibility of prejudging a customer, is to make every presentation using a “top down” selling model. Always introduce your very best products and services first, irrespective of price, to ensure that every customer is provided an impartial opportunity to make their selection. It is simply the right thing to do.

Closing argument:

Whether you have a case sitting before the nine Supreme Court Justices, or one of your customers is sitting through your next sales presentation, the value of uncompromised impartiality should be given equal weight. Wouldn’t you agree?

Presentation Excellence

The Art of Becoming a Presentation Black Belt

Becoming a Black Belt in the martial arts requires hours upon hours of repetitive movement. A simple block, kick, or punch, is performed over and over again until it is entirely instinctive. When attacked, the martial artist is trained to respond without thinking. At this level of experience and achievement, there is simply no hesitation while the mind contemplates a response, everything is on automatic.

While training, students of the martial arts learn “katas” or “forms”, which, by definition are series of specific interconnected moves that resemble a sort of dance or ballet (minus the punching, kicking and blocking stuff of course). The purpose of practicing and executing forms is to tie together many individual techniques in a logical string of movements that is designed to train the student how to defend against multiple attackers coming from many directions.

Forms are used for training or exhibitions. In a true self-defense situation, the martial artist would not revert to a specific form they have learned to protect themselves. However, learning forms is of tremendous value to the development of martial arts expertise. What may happen in an actual self defense situation, is that the martial artist would draw from the mixture of techniques and forms he or she has learned and automatically link portions of each together into the perfect response to the threat— and it all happens unconsciously!

Much can be learned about presentation excellence from this martial arts analogy. What if you practiced not only what you needed to say, but how you delivered your sales presentation with the same degree of discipline as an accomplished martial artist? What would happen if your responses to customer comments and concerns during the presentation were handled automatically (because you were so well prepared), and yet perfectly crafted (so as not to come across as mechanical) to respond to each customer’s individual situation? What if you mastered the presentation, essentially becoming a Black Belt of sorts in your chosen profession— can you imagine how much more effective you would be?

Fortunately, when presenting the benefits of the products and services to customers, you will have no need to physically defend yourself. However, you are responsible for protecting “the message” so to speak, making sure that you’re delivering the information about your company’s products and services with the skill of a presentation expert.

The achievement of presentation excellence does not occur without effort, it requires personal discipline. In order to be fully prepared to handle whatever concerns a customer may throw our way, and to move fluidly through the presentation connecting one important point to another— to achieve presentation excellence— takes a “Martial Artist like” commitment.

Now Grasshopper, you know all you need to know to become a “Presentation Black Belt”. Practice your presentation daily, practice until it is reflexive, then; practice it some more!

Growing Your Personal Sales Income

More on Presentation Mastery

Your sales compensation may be based on salary, hourly pay with production bonuses, straight commission, or a combination of “any of the above”. Regardless of how you’re paid for the sales you make, it is a safe bet that your earnings will somehow be either directly or indirectly tied to the total sales revenue and bottom line profits you generate for your company.

Make sense? Then you’ll also agree with this next statement: Sales professionals who consistently produce more total sales revenue and bottom line profits for their company will earn substantially greater incomes over the course of their career.

Okay, easy enough to understand. Now, there are really only three ways to increase the number of sales you’re currently making and grow your personal sales income, and here they are:

Increase Your Presentations
Simple! Increasing the number of presentations you make (assuming that the quality of your presentation remains consistent), will logically increase the number of sales you make and your personal sales income will grow accordingly.

Increase Your Closing Percentage
Also simple! When you increase the number of sales you make in relationship to the number of presentations you make, guess what goes up again? Your personal sales income!

Increase Your Average Sale
And lastly (drum roll), still simple! When you increase the size of your average sale per contract, your personal sales income will surely increase as well.

Here’s the bottom line: If you focus on improving your results in just one of the three areas we have discussed, you will undoubtedly make more sales. However, what would happen if you focused on improving your results in all three of the areas we have discussed? Wouldn't it dramatically increase the number of sales you’re currently making and therefore dramatically grow your personal sales income?

Interestingly enough, you only need to do one thing exceptionally well to substantially improve your sales results in all three of these areas and grow your personal sales income. Yes, that’s right, just one thing. The answer is master your presentation!

Most likely, you can readily see the correlation between improving your presentation skills and the positive effect that it would have on your average sale and closing percentages. What may not appear so obvious, at least at first glance, is how improving the quality of your presentation will actually increase the number of future presentations you will make.

So, how will improving the quality of your presentation lead to more future presentations? It will happen through an increase in the number of quality referrals you will be able to acquire. When you deliver a masterful presentation, your customer is far more likely to reward your professionalism by providing you with a high-quality referral to go along with the sale you just made. It is a simple matter of trust. The more professional you are― the more trust your customers will place in you.

Mastering your presentation creates a cycle of success that leads to substantially increased personal sales income, regardless of how you’re paid for the sales you make!

Never Shortcut the Presentation

People Reject What They Don't Understand

Many sales are lost, not because the product or service didn’t fit the customer’s needs, nor as a result of an inferior product line— and regardless of what they say, not because the customer couldn’t “afford it” or “needed to think about it”— but because the salesperson lost the customer somewhere along the way. They confused them. And, when a customer is confused, they will not buy, because people reject what they don’t understand!

Customers are providing you with a clear indication that your message lacked clarity when you hear something like this: “Well, you really did a great job and you’ve given us a lot to think about. We’ll talk it over and get back to you”. After all, what are they suppose to say to you? They probably won’t be so candid as to say, “You know, we were actually ready to make this decision right now, but frankly, you confused us when you were talking about that drop-interest financing option. We’re going to need some time to see if we can figure out what you were saying before we make a mistake that could cost us money.”

To the uninformed, the “we need to think (or talk) about it” response is an “objection”, so they leap into the objection handling mode and hope that that last seminar on closing they attended was worth the money. It seldom dawns on them that it may be something else— that they may have simply confused the customer or failed to make a compelling argument for buying their products or services.

If something is missing, or seems vague, customers simply will not buy. This is one really good reason why you should never shortcut the presentation. Clarity is important. Customers need to hear the full story in order to make a truly informed decision. If you shortcut the presentation, skipping over points that later you find out may have been important to your customer, it will be tough as nails, if not impossible, to effectively rewind the presentation and straighten out any confusion you may have caused in your effort to speed things along earlier. Basically, the customer awards you a single opportunity to get it right. You don’t want to waste it by attempting shortcuts.

Salespeople often have a tendency to speed through the presentation to get to the more exhilarating part, the close. Rushing through the delivery (essentially shortcutting the presentation) is a dangerous practice that risks confusing the customer; which in turn leads to substantially lower closing percentages, lower sales averages, and higher cancellation percentages.

The solution is to slowdown. Always keep in mind that no matter how many times you’ve given the presentation, it is the customer’s first time hearing it. Make sure that your message is clear and your customers will have less to “think about” at the end of your presentation!