Giving a great “tour” sales presentation
Salespeople need to know that a tour isn’t just a presentation, it’s an opportunity to discover customer needs and turn the features of your product or service into a benefit for that customer.
Learning good sales techniques takes practice, and learning how to give a “walkthrough” sales presentation is essential to the sales process.
A great walking presentation is not a canned presentation. It has been said, “A good presentation doesn’t work because it’s canned; it’s canned because it works.” That’s what a walk should be: not canned, but planned. Salespeople need to know where they are going all the time. Hopefully, they can help guide the customer down the path to the sale.
Before we can attempt a presentation, we need to understand what a “feature” is and what a “benefit” is. A feature is what something is, a benefit is what something does. Let’s use car sales as an example. So let’s take a look at some car selling techniques. A “walk” occurs when a salesperson pulls a vehicle out of the line of cars in front of the dealership. The seller opens the doors, the trunk and the hood. They start the car and run the air conditioning in the summer (or the heat in the winter). They pick up the customer and tell him about the vehicle as they walk around it.
The aerodynamic styling of a vehicle is a feature; great gas mileage and a quiet ride are the resulting benefits. Many salespeople are good at rattling off features, but not at explaining why the customer needs them, for two reasons. One is that they don’t know enough about the car and the other is that they did a poor job of qualifying the customer’s needs. Ask your customer questions. Ask what they want from their next vehicle and listen to what is said.
How can a salesperson rave about the double steel cargo box if they don’t know what the customer is going to use the vehicle for? they can not
In a typical sales situation, a salesperson might say something like, “Yes sir, this car has everything you’re looking for: a fuel-efficient engine and Bluetooth hands-free communications system. It also has ABS brakes, limited-slip rear axle, and field handling. It all sounds great, right? Wrong. There’s nothing your salesperson has told this customer that 1,500 other salespeople, brochures, and internet research haven’t already told you.
So the customer looks at the seller like a deer in headlights. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, except what he’s probably thinking: “I can see all these options, Mr. Salesman. Tell me something I don’t know.” He’ll see, when the salesperson recites the cornucopia of knowledge from him, it’s not a question, so he doesn’t really advance the sale. He is just repeating what the customer told him he wanted.
The customer’s only response is: “Yes, Mr. Seller, I see that you have everything I ordered. How much does it cost?” Or worse yet, the customer may say nothing. The worst thing that can get into a tour presentation is silence. When there is silence, there is pressure and in the sales process we do not want pressure. As I have mentioned many times, the only common point that a client has is the price. When you stop talking, all they can say is how much… or goodbye.
To run a great tour, salespeople need to remember what the customer wants to know more than anything: “What will you do for me?” Until you tell the customer that answer, they probably aren’t listening.
Going back to the walk, how long did it take me to recite the above options, 30 seconds? What do I do now? I’m out of things to say. There are obviously many options and I could probably go on for a while, but even if I could memorize them all on each model, the customer would yawn. Why? Because he wants to know what you will do for him. If salespeople are just going to rattle off options, they’d be better off handing a brochure to the customer and shipping it to their destination. The brochure is better than a salesperson will ever be at the functions. For God’s sake, they break down the passenger compartment in cubic inches! When it comes down to it, does the customer care that there’s 28 inches of legroom? No. But you’ll be interested to know, “Thanks to the transverse-mounted engine, Mr. Customer, when you and your family take that trip to Colorado this summer, you’ll really be able to stretch your legs!” That’s how you sell legroom. Note: Without asking good questions, how could I make the above statement? But here’s the good news: You can make that statement even more powerful in two ways: by upselling and ordering.
There are many ways to move the sale forward, but here are a few. These are simple phrases that keep the customer following you:
“Let me show you this feature on your new Ford Explorer.”
“Let me show you this”
“Let me show you one more thing”
“Great, follow me.”
Ask for the order, it’s quite simple, for example:
“That’s a feature I’m sure you’d like, isn’t it?” The customer says: “Yes!” The salesperson says, “Great, follow me” or “Great, now let me show you one more thing.”
The above question is one you should already know the answer to. Use it with a feature the customer wants, eg seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, etc. A customer just won’t say no to seat belts.
During the sale, it is always closing; in sales terminology, that means you’re always asking the customer for the order. For example, a very successful salesperson in a 20-minute presentation will ask the customer in several different ways, more than a dozen times, if he wants to buy the vehicle.
Some of the best closing techniques to use during a sale are called tie-ins. Some call them test closures. A tie is simply a question at the end of a statement that demands an answer. Instead of saying, “Those airbags are a wonderful feature.” In the eyes of a customer, this is just an opinion. But, if I add, “are they not?” At the end of that statement, it forces the client to respond, hopefully in a positive way.
Or, “On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest rating, how would you rate this vehicle so far? What would it take to make that number a 10?”
However, sometimes a customer may say something that implies they don’t like the vehicle. For example, “Oh, that looks like another thing that’s going to break.”
One way to handle these “objections” is to approach the problem with the “Feel, feel, find” response. For example, you might respond by saying, “I can see why you might feel that. Lots of people have felt the same way, but once you figure out the engineering behind it, you’ll see how beneficial this can be for you.”
These few tips will build the foundation for a confident presentation.
– Know your product inside and out, research what is being said about your product on the Internet.
– Meet the needs of your client in the initial greeting and qualification.
– Present with confidence and link features to your needs.
– Help your needs become your wants.
– Remember to refer to competitive brands and create value.
– Get the most out of your product experience when you present and SELL yourself and your product.
And remember, selling is a process of listening to customer needs, finding solutions to their needs, building value into your product or service, and giving them the opportunity to purchase that product or service that meets their needs.