Should You Give Sales Presentations or Have Sales Conversations? (Part 1)

Interesting question: Should you give sales presentations or have sales conversations?
Over the next couple of weeks I am going to share my thoughts around this subject and in the spirit of the post I will ask you to participate in the conversation. Feel free to comment, send me your thoughts and pass this on to others to join in the conversation.

So here is the starting point – if you are in sales, or involved with people for that matter – you are an influencer. I believe influencers should have one focus and that is on the other person. Meaning on your audience.

If you want to influence – it’s not about you, it’s about them.

So let’s go back to our theme. A sales presentation by definition is a monologue. While a sales conversation is a dialogue. If you want to make it about them – they have to be included.

I know we have all done this before. We give a sales presentation (a monologue) and then at the end we say – “Do you have any questions?”

There is nothing engaging about that model that makes it about them and makes them a part of the conversation.

If an influencer’s focus is on them – then an influencer’s purpose is to engage.

Your prospect, client, customer, or audience has to be engaged or they won’t buy your product, act on your idea or implement your plan.

So how do we engage our audience? (be it an audience of 1 or 1000)
There are several ways to do this and we will discuss them ongoing over the next couple of weeks – but it starts with the mindset of influencer and making them involved.

In sales – you need more sales conversations where the audience is engaged in a dialogue. A monologue only gets you so far.

Until our next conversation ….