Public Speaking and Presenting
Sorely Neglected Sales Management Skills
As part of my consulting practice I attend dozens of sales meetings
and national conferences with my clients. To get things off to a
rousing start, my clients frequently hire motivational speakers.
There may also be a demonstration of the latest and greatest CRM
system. Then its on to the nuts & bolts stuff: reviewing the
products, compensation, order entry, an overview of the sales
process, and so forth.
Unfortunately little time is ever spent at such meetings showing
how managers can help their staff improve the basic every-day
skills needed to accomplish their jobs. Public Speaking and
Presentation skills are among those that are the most sorely
lacking.
The sad truth is that many managers don’t have these
fundamental sales skills themselves, so they cannot be expected to
teach them. It is not their fault. In banks, for example, account
managers (aka relationship managers/RM’s) are typically green
eye-shade credit folks with limited interpersonal skills who get
plucked and deposited into an account management role with an
up-sale requirement. When a manager of this group is needed,
he or she will also be culled from the ranks.
I have often considered developing a Speaking and Presentation
Skills course for sales and support staffs but came to the
conclusion (not sure if its right or wrong) that most companies
would not pay for it since it was not the glitzy stuff but basics
that they expect their management team to just know. The only thing
I can recommend if you are interested in pulling yourself up by
your own bootstraps in this area is to develop an internal training
program similar to what I did with my staff when I was a sales
manager (and what I teach at an advanced seminar at a local
college). Here is an overview of that process:
My first task was to review their academic experience looking for
three things:
- Speech classes
- Acting Class (no kidding)
- Business and Public Speaking
“Working the audience” is where acting classes prove to be very valuable. In the first semester acting class you learn about how to watch and imitate people so you can play a role. The most important part of this from a sales effectiveness standpoint is watching people and reading their emotions and character types. These are the same listening skills needed to relate to customers individually and in groups of all sizes.
To help them get to the next level, I did advanced work with my staff both at client meetings and during our own sales meetings. For example, on a weekly basis I would randomly select one of the sales or technical staff members to do an impromptu board based presentation on the status of an account. This presentation included:
- Discussion of the company and it decision-making process.
- Their qualification status and where we stood in the sales process.
- A discussion of the opportunity, the next step and most importantly, how to accomplish it.
- What resources the company and any partners needed to apply to the opportunity
- And time frames.
Audiences do not cooperate with you. It’s not in their nature. They are always throwing things at you from left field; so controlling the audience is critical. To do this, you need to know your material cold, without reading it so you can: talk to it, get back to it when distracted but be able to answer off the wall questions or defer them to later point in the presentation. (You also have to remember who asked the question, so when you finally arrive at the answer, you can acknowledge that person.)
These are difficult skills to teach. It usually took a year to eighteen months to get my sales staff proficient in this area, but the time and effort were well worth it.
Now here’s an instructive tale: A mother once traveled many miles on foot bring her young son to see Mohandas Gandhi. The boy was obsessed with eating sugar and the woman wanted the Mahatma to tell the boy to stop doing it. Gandhi told her to bring him back in two weeks and he would do what she requested. When she did, he instructed the youth to refrain from eating sugar because it is such an unhealthy habit. When Gandhi was finished, she took him aside and asked why she had to two weeks for him to do that. His answer was that before he could teach the boy, he needed the time to give up the unhealthy habit himself.
Public Speaking and Presentation skills are among the most valuable you can instill among your staff. If you don’t have them yourself, then you can’t teach them. Find a way to acquire them, and then teach others.
About the Author: Jay Bauer is President/Senior Process Consultant for STI Systems, Inc., a firm specializing in the development of CRM systems that dramatically improve the operational effectiveness of small to medium sized organizations. He has taught business and professional speaking early in his career and continues to teach this topic and develop course materials related to it for both his staff, clients and as part of a local college Business and Professional class where he teaches a section on presentation skills.