What’s going on, we are going to be talking about my five top presentation tips you absolutely need to know to crush your presentations and close more deals. And before we go ahead and get started, make sure to get this video like, subscribe, turn on notifications and let’s go ahead and dive in. Now, the first tip that I have for you guys is that you always want to keep your presentation short. Now, some people believe that “oh, the more I talk to them, the more they’re going to like me” And the reality is, people don’t really have time to listen to you, right?

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So you shouldn’t be planning a one hour grand presentation unless that is standard in your industry. But if you’re selling, let’s say, marketing services, consulting services or something that’s more transactional. There’s no need to have an one hour presentation. So what I typically like to do is have a really tight presentation that’s like around 10 to 15 minutes.

And you’re really just talking about the customer pains and how you solve it. Right? And we’ll get to more of that in a second. But the main thing is keep it clear, keep it concise, don’t make it too long, and don’t waste people’s time. As long as you clearly articulate the value that you provide. Well, you don’t need to spend a lot of time as long as people get the point.

Now, the next tip that I have for you is you’re going to want to have to get a clear agenda for every single meeting, right? So whenever you are going to do a presentation. Before that presentation even starts, you have to make it absolutely clear what your goal is for that presentation and what exact steps you’re going to take to achieve those goals.

So before I do any type of sales pitch or presentations, I let the person know like “hey, you know, does it make sense for us to have a meeting where I can give you a presentation on what we’re about?” They’re going to be like “Sure” and then I’ll say “OK, well, here are the line items that we’re going to be talking about. Problem number one, problem two, problem number three, and we’re going to show you exactly how we solve them. Is that OK with you?”

And then they go ahead and agree to the meeting. Now, what will happen is that when you’re actually on the meeting, whether it’s a zoom call or you’re meeting the person in person, you basically go over that agenda again. So meaning every time you meet somebody for another meeting, you always want to go over the agenda. It doesn’t matter if you done it three times already in the past or from other meetings, you want to go over it every single time, especially in the beginning, cause people forget.

And if you just quickly, briefly go over the agenda, they’re going to appreciate that. Now, what will happen if you don’t talk about the agenda is that people will wonder, well, how long is this meeting going to last? This is kind of a waste of my time. What are we even doing here? Right? Especially if you have decisionmakers coming into the meeting and they don’t really know what’s going on.

Sometimes, maybe you’re talking to a lower level director and then they’re like “Hey, Patrick, this is really good, but let me go ahead and bring in the CEO”. So when that CEO comes in, they don’t know what’s going on. So you need to clearly articulate the agenda every single time. You never want to rely on the other party to know what’s going on. You basically have to spoon feed them in a way where they just understand exactly what’s going on. So always have a clear agenda. And the easiest way to do it is say “hey, in the beginning, I’m going to do this.

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We’re going to talk about your problems, we’re going to talk about the solutions. At the end, we’re going to do a Q&A and then we’ll see if it makes sense to move forward. Does that sounds OK with you?” And of course, they are going to say yes. Now the next tip that I have for you when it comes to destroying your presentations or not destroying, but doing well on them. Is to actually solve for pains. So the reason for why somebody will come into a meeting is because they’re trying to see whether or not you can solve their problems.

Some people wants to make more money. Some people want to save money. Some people want to save time. You know, those are typically the main ones that people will pay for products and services for. So you want to think about, OK, well, whatever my products or services are, how do I help somebody make money, save money, save time?

Usually it’s one of those three. Sometimes it’s other things, but usually it is one of those three. What I would tend to do in the meeting is focus on first clarifying what those pains are. Now, before you go into any type of presentation, the first thing you probably should have done is qualified your customer. It’s called qualification or discovery call, meaning you just talking with them on the phone and you’re just asking you a bunch of questions to understand what problems they have to see if that makes sense to move forward with an actual meeting or presentation.

So once you schedule that presentation, you should already know all of the challenges that your potential customer has. And so in the beginning of the meeting, you’re saying like “Hey, John, you know, last time we talked, you said that you have some challenges when it comes to productivity for your employees or your sales reps are not generating enough calls” or whatever it is, right?

So you list out the problems in the beginning. And then in that introduction for the presentation, you’re basically just saying “hey, you know, last time we talked, you had problem number one, problem number two, problem number three”. And then we’re going to show you exactly how we’re going to solve each one using our solution. And so for that presentation, all you really need to do is say “first thing we talk about is the first challenge you have is that your sales reps, you know, they don’t make enough phone calls per day. We have other clients that experience that and here’s what we found help the best”.

And then you kind of go into your presentation of how you solve that problem and you only want to talk about problems that the customer has already told you that they solved. Meaning that when you did a discovery call, that’s when you’re supposed to discover all of these problems. You don’t want to bring up any new challenges that the customer possibly does not care about. You only want to bring up the things that they absolutely do care about.

So it makes it an easy buy for them. So the next tip I have for you guys is that you going to want to allow the prospect to ask questions throughout the entire presentations, right? So a lot of salespeople, they make the mistake of thinking that they have to do this grand presentation and they have to just keep talking, talking, talking, talking until the customer actually wants to buy. The reality is that instead of talking so much, you actually want the customer to be asking questions because the more questions they ask, probably the more interested they are in how your solution works.

So when you’re directly answering the questions, you’re also directly solving the problems. And like we said in last tip, solving problems is the name of the game when it comes to succeeding in your presentations. So for me, you know, I make sure that before I do any presentations, I say “hey, you know, anytime throughout the presentation, if you have any questions or you want me to clarify something, feel free to interrupt me any time.

It’s absolutely OK because I am here for you”. And so when I open up that conversation that way it becomes less of a presentation, more of a conversation, right? And then they’re not afraid or they understand that it’s the culture that they can just interrupt you at any time. And of course, at the end of the presentation, they’re going to have a bunch of questions as well. And that’s where you solve them as well. Just understand that having the customer ask these questions during the presentation is 100% OK. The other challenge that other people have is that they might be like “yeah I said all the things that you told me to say, Patrick, but I feel like the customer doesn’t ask any questions.

They seem really quiet. They just nod their head and they’re not really that engaged” right? And this happens to a lot of sales people. So what I would recommend is that, as you go through little chunks of your presentation, what you want to do is you want to ask the prospect like “hey, you know, is this all making sense to you? Does this solve your problem? Do you see how this can help?”. So you ask these like little engagement questions throughout the presentation so that the customer will say “Yup, that absolutely makes sense”. And then you keep moving forward. And so at least there’s some kind of engagement.

Now, if something doesn’t make sense for that prospect, they’re going to say “Well, I kind of get what you’re saying, but I’m not sure if it’s going to work with what we’re doing because X, Y, Z,” right? And so by asking those many questions throughout the presentation, when the customer says those kind of things, then you can actually just solve those issues as they go on throughout the presentation, right? So always find these little pockets to ask these questions because sometimes you have to set the tone and let people know that hey, it’s OK to ask questions, right?

Sometimes when you say that people understand you, but they feel a little uncomfortable. So you just have to make them feel comfortable to ask these natural questions and then you just knock them out one by one. And in situations where let’s say they ask a question and you don’t have an answer to that, right? And that’s totally OK. So the first thing I would say that is Don’t be afraid when you don’t know the answer to the question. Because, you know, when I do sales calls, there’s a lot of questions I have no idea the answer to. And that’s fine. Right. And so what you do in those situations is you say “OK, thank you for your question. I really appreciate that.

I have an idea of how I might be able to help with that. But right now I might need to talk to my team a little bit more to give you the proper answer. Is it OK if I get back to you on that?” and what are they going to say “Sure, sounds good to me” right? And so after the sales presentation or meeting, you go back to your team and you say “Hey, this guy had this question, how do I answer it?” They tell you, and then you call him back some email or whatever it is, right? Never be afraid when you don’t know the answer, because you don’t always have to have the answers.

As long as you sound like remotely competent during the presentation, you’re good to go. So the next point we have when it comes to nailing your presentations is actually having clear next steps. So at the end of every meeting, what typically happens is like people are like “OK, great, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate you”. And then like that’s it. And then it doesn’t go further than that. While you are in the presentation, whether it’s on Zoom or in person, you have to have the clear next step at the end of the call. So what I would typically do is I would say “OK, so we went over the presentations and you know, we answered all your questions. What typically is the next step for you guys to move forward with something like this?” So I’m asking them a question.

What do you need to happen to make this deal happen? And usually they will tell me exactly what They will say “We need to talk it over with X, Y, Z, we need to get approval” whatever the case is, and then those are my next steps. And I’ll say “OK, well, when are you going to talk to your boss? When are you going to get the approval? Is it OK if I follow up with you on a certain day if I don’t hear back from you” right. So whatever those next steps are, you just need to ask the customer what they want to do and then whatever it is, you basically do those things until the deal is done. Now, if they’re trying to drag out the deal and it’s taking a long time, all you got to do is reel it in by saying like “OK, interesting that you say you want to talk to your boss about this two weeks from now.

I’m just curious to know, you know, why two weeks versus like getting it done sooner because I feel like that would probably be the most beneficial to you in terms of saving time” And then they’ll be like, “oh, that makes sense to me. Let me talk to him tomorrow” right? So whatever it is, like you always want to shorten the sales cycle because you know, you don’t have to wait two weeks for someone to talk to their boss, right? So always find ways to shorten it. It’s OK to kind of suggest that they hurry up, right? In the very respectful way and the way you do that is you you know, make it so logical.

Like why do you need to wait one month when you can just do it? This week will save time for everybody. Isn’t that better for you? And they’ll be like, Oh yeah, of course. So that’s pretty much what I would recommend in those situations. Now, at this point, even if you set the expectations or what will happen after that presentation There’s some situations where the prospect doesn’t really want to follow up with you, and sometimes they may be confusing, like why we went through all that trouble and I did all this presentation stuff, why aren’t you following back? But the thing is, you don’t know why they don’t, right?

It could be an infinite number of reasons, but here’s what you can do to prevent that at the end of the meeting, right? What I would typically do is I would say “Hey, you know, it sounds like, you know, we’re a really good fit to work with each other. Sounds like you really want to do this. But a lot of times when you have these conversations, some people sound very excited, but in the end, they actually don’t move forward. And sometimes they literally just ghosted me. It seems like you’re excited. I’m not saying that you’re going to do that, but I want to ask, is there any reason for why you wouldn’t work with us?”

When you kind of position it like that. If the person has any objection that they secretly been hiding but they didn’t want to tell you because maybe they were too afraid or they felt like it was a lot of trouble to tell you that that’s the moment they’re going to tell you. So they might say like “Yeah, you know, we really love everything you have, but, you know, we’re really thinking about working with this other person because we really have a relationship with them, blah, blah, blah”. So it could be any reason, right? And then that’s your objection.

So on that end of that meeting and in the call, that’s where you’re going to handle that objection. Right? And so you always want to get these like these hidden black swan objections usually at the end of the call, and then you want to squash them right? After you squash the objection, you want to ask it again and then you say “OK, well, now that we got that out the way and it seems like you really want to do this and doesn’t seem like there’s anything blocking you, is there anything potentially else that would prevent you from moving forward with a deal like this?” And then if you have another objection, you squash it. If not, then they’ll say like, no, I think that’s everything.

Then you say, OK, so would you say that you’re actually ready to make a decision now? They might say yes and sign. They might say no. They may say, Oh, no, we’re not ready because we need to. And then it’s like something. And then that’s when you know the next step. Always, always, always ask. Because if you feel it in your heart and you know something is weird, just ask about it. Because if you don’t ask it, you’re going to lose the deal anyway and you’re not going to know why. But if you have the moment and the opportunity to ask, you have an opportunity to also handle the objection and seal the deal. And so I’ve said those are going to be some of my best tips when it comes to nailing your presentations.