Welcome to the club; the club that now knows to prepare completely for the buyer’s “catch-em-off-guard” strategies. Don’t choke, be prepared! First time sales meetings are a lot like public speaking. If you’re scared of formal public speaking it might also be hard to think on your feet and respond when you should. If you choke in a sales position, how can you possibly promote your product? Try some of these suggestions to get more comfortable and prepared.
- Build the basic skill. If being asked a question during a pitch instantly makes you anxious, your problem isn’t a fear of public speaking. Your problem is that you do not know what to say — so you freeze. Start by never meeting a client unprepared. You know the product, so always prepare for possible discussions about it. When you’re prepared and confident about what you want to say, the responses become automatic. Write down what you want to say, and practice out loud. Step outside your comfort zone; see comfort as a base to build on, never as an end result.
- Practice for “What if?” Once you build your response skills, the next step is to foresee reasons that could cause you to choke. What if your PowerPoint presentation locks up? What if you get questions you can’t answer? Think about how you will respond. What if your 45-minute presentation is suddenly cut to 10 minutes? Think about how you’ll shorten it to ensure your main points are delivered.
- Visualize. You may never be faced with a power outage during a presentation, much less practice an outage, but you can think about what you would do.
- Create a mental back room. What will you do if you present a product and it bombs, or you forget your place during a presentation? Predict and rehearse the answers and store them in a mental back room. When the unexpected happens, mentally open that back room and take the rehearsed and confident response off the shelf. While everyone will assume you thought quickly on your feet, you’ll know preparation was the key.
- Benefit from narrow escapes. If the client “almost” touches on a sensitive subject, especially one you are not ready to address during today’s pitch, don’t just walk away thinking, “Wow, am I glad I didn’t have to deal with that.” Think through your response options, mentally rehearse, and create a new solution to store in that back room. If something almost happened today… guaranteed it will happen someday. Be ready.
You can apply this approach to almost any situation, business or personal, it doesn’t matter. To avoid choking you do not have to be brave. You just need to take a systematic approach to developing skills and gaining confidence.
When you do, bravery, composure, and coolness under fire will be automatic.
You can do this!
By K.B. Elliott
K. B. Elliott is a freelance writer for Salesheads.com. Working both sides of sales desks in the Detroit area for over 30 years gives him a unique perspective on the process. To read more of his blogs, please go to Salesheadsblog.com, and be sure to check out the postings for jobs in nearly any industry at Nexxt
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