Everyone knows the basics of a good presentation by now: look nice, have a clean set of slides, and keep your audience’s attention. Selling your business during a sales appointment is not much different, though it is a touch more complicated than your school day presentations.
Knowing how to use good appointment setting services is vital to your company’s success. The following tips for appointment setting best practices should help you get started.
Table of Contents
- Target your Audience
- Cater the Presentation Specifically to the Customer
- What are the Customer’s Pain Points?
- Don’t Sound Like a Salesperson
- Develop a Helpful Script
- Believe in What You’re Saying
- Ask a Few Probing Questions
- Ensure that Your Presentation Looks Professional
- Don’t Fret if You Don’t Make a Sale
- Always Follow Up
Target your Audience
In order to sell your business, you need an audience. You want to find potential clients interested in your product or service so that you can wow them with your presentation.
It can be difficult to pinpoint clients willing to give you the time it takes to pitch your product or service. Using appointment setting services can help you find people that could benefit from what you have to offer. This can save you the time and energy that goes into cold calling so you can focus on the perfect presentation to make the sale.
Cater the Presentation Specifically to the Customer
Imagine the last time you applied for a job. You probably rewrote your cover letter and resume to include keywords specific to that company and expressed how sincerely excited you were to join that team. The same principle applies to when you’re selling your business in a sales appointment.
Figure out what that customer wants and how you can best provide the service that the customer needs. Use keywords—appeal to what they need. The presentation you used for one customer likely won’t work for another one, so create a new presentation just for them.
In other words, do your research. You don’t want to get caught in a rough spot where you cannot answer the customer’s questions. If anything, you can impress them with your knowledge.
What are the Customer’s Pain Points?
The whole point of selling your business is to help fix a problem or answer a question for another company or customer. So, what kinds of problems or questions can your business fix for them? Can your business save them time? Money?
Think of the customer like a puzzle that is missing a piece. How exactly does your business’s piece of the overall puzzle fit and complete the picture?
You’re going to need to do some research for this part. Peruse the customer’s website and their social media. Read through their blog or their newsletters.
As an extra step, research the customer’s competitors and see how your business can provide a competitive advantage.
Don’t Sound Like a Salesperson
This tip might sound strange because if you’re a salesperson, aren’t you supposed to sound like one?
By “sound like a salesperson,” we mean using bombastic and colorful language and getting in the company’s face with guarantees and absolute language (e.g.”will,” “guaranteed,” “absolutely,” “always,” “never,” etc.). It is a bad thing to do at a sales appointment!
On the one hand, you want to sell what makes your business great, but you do it by being honest and explaining using easy-to-understand language. You don’t want to make guarantees because nothing is perfect.
Maybe it’ll help to think that your goal is to help, not to sell. You are trying to sell, in the end, but the biggest goal is to help someone with whatever you’re offering.
Don’t be afraid to put a little of your personality into the presentation. You’re not a robot, after all. You’re a human being with your own experiences and ideas, and you’d be surprised how well people will respond to that.
Using visuals like custom-made videos and content creation can help capture your audience and keep your message exciting and to the point.
Develop a Helpful Script
Having a general outline of what you want to say can make the sales process a lot easier. Once you get a handle on what to say, then you can add a little personality and even improvise a little.
Feel free to go off-script sometimes if you’re comfortable, but remember to focus on the script’s main points at some point.
Believe in What You’re Saying
Half the battle with making sales presentations is having confidence in what you’re selling. If you seem bored or unimpressed by your own business, then so will the customer you’re selling to. Remember that putting in a little personality, and allowing yourself to be excited about your business, can go a long way.
Ask a Few Probing Questions
Just because you should not talk like a salesman does not mean you should not ask some questions.
First, you need to discover what your customers’ pain points are. You would ask discovery questions to uncover these, such as “What is your current situation?” or “How would you describe the problem you’re facing right now?”
You might also ask a deep probing question like “What criteria do you have for closing?” This question creates a template for you to create a more detailed and direct sales pitch. The other company’s response must also be detailed and direct to speed up the sales process.
Whatever questions you ask, you want to be empathetic and understanding of the other company’s position. Being too direct and sounding like a salesperson can significantly harm your chances of actually closing a sale.
Ensure that Your Presentation Looks Professional
There are a few other ways to make your presentation its very best.
When creating a PowerPoint presentation, make sure you place your company logo in the corner of each slide. Make sure that each slide is relevant to what the other company is looking for. If the purpose is not immediately apparent, you should try to briefly explain why you included that slide.
Don’t Fret if You Don’t Make a Sale
Your public speaking teacher was right: your audience can smell fear from the moment you get up there. Except, a sales appointment customer does not have to buy into what you say. Nor are they obligated to sit through the presentation.
You might feel the pressure to make this sale pitch-perfect, which puts undue pressure on you. Remember, all you’re trying to do is honestly sell your business and see if the customer bites. Do your best, and don’t fret if the sale doesn’t eventually go through. Odds are you have done your best, and you’re just not the right fit for them.
Always Follow Up
You might have already guessed, but communication is vital for every step of the sales process. After the sales appointment has ended, always follow up with any key pointers or reminders for the customer. Remember to keep your language professional and respectful, rather than pushy. Again, while selling is an important aspect, the point is to help customers solve a problem, but first, you have to locate your audience.
Appointment setting services can help you find potential clients that are interested in what you have to offer. Selling your business comes easier when you know you have an audience that can benefit from your product or services.