More Show and Less Tell in Your Sales Process

Depending on what you’re selling and who you’re selling to, or maybe you’re cutting out a commute, you may have some extra time on your hands to refresh or reinvent your sales process and selling tools.

Here’s a great place to start.

This past week, I was reviewing a pitch deck for a young seller wanting some feedback. She is in a business development role in a small service-based business company and her executive team has created a pitch deck to explain their differentiating advantages and explain the ROI of working with them versus competition. They’re confident that she should use this in her meetings with clients.

What I noticed immediately with this deck (and with their website too), was a lack of “me”, if I was their potential customer. The deck started with a slide with their company logo in brilliantly branded cohesiveness. The following slides shared some compelling graphics and lots of text … but there was nothing that reflected the customer. Customers can’t “see themselves” in the company’s story.

I’ve reviewed many pitches and proposals on behalf of my clients over the years and this isn’t uncommon.

It seems in our eagerness to sell to people:

We Tell People all About Ourselves Instead of Showing Them

• Show them that you understand who they are and what challenges they face (in testimonials, photos of people in the industry you’re selling in to, in your blogs and messaging)
• Show them that you’ve been successfully solving problems for others like them in the past (with testimonials, client shout outs, case studies, photos)
• Show them you’re interested in working with them (by asking questions, by listening)
• Show them how you care (your process, reflect shared values, focus on community or giving back)
• Show them you’ve done your homework and have visited their website, their social pages, respect THEIR branding, understand their customer base (in your conversations, emails, messaging, pitch, proposal, or contract)

Prospects are looking at everything you do as a preview of what it’s like to work with you.

If your sales process makes you the star and leaves your customers out, they’ll project that you’ll be short on attention to them, inflexible—or that you don’t understand how to work with them.

Review your customer and prospect interactions, from your website to social media, pitches, and proposals—do they see themselves reflected there?

Now is a great time to make some changes and freshen up your approach.