Grant Cardone's Top 10 Rules For Success (@GrantCardone)

5 Sales Presentation Tips From a Self-Made Millionaire

A great sales presentation is challenging to pull off but practice does make perfect.

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If you sell things, then you must present things -- there’s no getting around it. Customers have to see what you sell, what it does, and how it can benefit them. I can’t count how many sales presentations I’ve done over the last 35 years, so I’ve learned a thing or two about how to do them correctly. Anyone who wants to increase revenue needs to learn to present better in order to make more sales.

Here’s how to present like a pro:

1. Avoid product knowledge mistakes.

There are several problems with this.

A) You know too little about the product.

B) You share too much about the product.

C) You don’t know enough about the competition.

You can never know too much but you can certainly talk too much. Become an expert with your product and be able to discuss features, advantages, and benefits better than anyone. When comparing products, know how your product is different, know the advantages, and know how to make sense of the purchase.

Build your product up so much that people quit thinking about the competition. Your greatest advantage in selling anything is to be more prepared than your competition.

2. Control your presentation.

My goal is to get complete control while presenting. The way to gain control is by getting an agreement. Get the buyer’s full attention, get the product away from other products so they aren’t distracted, and present the product while in full control. 

Assumptions are my way of maintaining an attitude and language of agreement. It is projecting ownership into the future. Be confident when demonstrating and create mental ownership. The word assume means to take for granted or as the truth. You make an assumption of the future and project mentally where you want to go.

You need to project ownership with words during your demonstration. Use questions that create mental ownership. “Which course will you be taking your new clubs out on?” Mental ownership precedes every purchase and a big part of how you control your presentation.

3. Find what the buyer values.

If you are selling me a home, you’d make a mistake if you started from the inside of the home to do the presentation. To me, the most important thing is how the home feels and looks from the outside -- the view. Sure, I spend most of my time inside, but if you are selling me you have to know what’s most important and start there. “Sir, what’s most important to you in a home? The outside? Good, let’s start there, does that sound good?”

Tell your customer what you’re going to do and get an agreement. Be interesting and reassure the customer with any concerns. Break your presentation down into parts. Know where you’re going to start and end. Always get permission to give the presentation, address the time (how long it’ll take), invite any questions they may have, and start in the same place every time you give the presentation. You want stability for yourself.

4. Avoid lazy mistakes.

The biggest mistake salespeople do is not doing a demonstration. Another mistake is not believing that the buyer will buy. You don’t think the buyer can buy because you over qualify the buyer. This is another mistake. A huge mistake many make is thinking the demo does not influence people.

Whether you sell homes or phones, a mistake is taking the product you sell for granted. You begin forgetting some of the biggest benefits of your product. Other mistakes include believing the buyer when they say the price is most important. Price is never the reason why people buy something. Some make the mistake of using slang that a buyer doesn’t understand. Every industry has these words and it turns people off.

Let’s count where it all goes wrong:

Mistake: demonstrating without tying down the advantages and benefits to the feature.

Mistake: You don’t use enthusiasm. You go through the motions.

Mistake: You don’t know the why -- the real reason they want the product.

Mistake: You don’t build mental ownership.

Mistake: You don’t demonstrate what the product is worth. You should be showing how it’s double the value. If you have a $100,000 product, you want to do a $200,000 presentation.

5. Anticipate objections.

You’re going to get objections when you try and do a presentation.

“I don’t need to try it on”

“I don’t need to see how it operates”

 “I know all about it”

 “I don’t need to see this”

Don’t shortcut the presentation because this is where you build value. Understand that these objections are reactions, not valid objections. To handle these, you have to be committed to your demonstration. You have to know that your demonstration will be of value to your client.

A great sales presentation is more difficult to pull off than many people realize, but it’s also easier than you can imagine once you practice enough doing it right. Nobody is born a great salesperson -- it takes training. Over the years I’ve codified how to sell and I want to help you turn the knowledge I’ve gained into revenue for yourself.


Grant Cardone • VIP Contributor
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The Best Sales Advice I Ever Heard ?

Are you getting in the way of your own sales?

How to Create Your Customer Avatar [FREE TEMPLATE]

• Buyer Persona
• Marketing Persona
• Customer Avatar
• Target Market

These are the phrases that are used interchangeably to describe the fictional, generalized representations of the persona that is most likely to buy from you.

It is critically important to the success of your marketing, sales, product development, and delivery of services that you have a deep understanding of who your customer avatar is. You've likely heard the phrase, "You can't hit a target you haven't set." This applies beautifully to the importance of having a clearly defined customer avatar.

Having a deep understanding of a clearly defined customer avatar will help you:

• Determine what social platforms they are spending their time on so you know where your business should be present and active.
• Be more effective in your advertising. Your marketing dollars will be well spent when you know where to advertise and who to target to maximize your exposure.
• Better connect with your avatar with your copy because you will have an understanding of their pains, pleasures, desires, and wants.
• Deliver and develop better products/services because you are able to anticipate your markets’ needs, behaviors, and concerns.

Creating your avatar

So, having a clearly defined customer avatar is important; the question is, "How do I create one?" The good news is, that creating a customer avatar is not difficult to create if you ask the right questions.

"What are the right questions?" you ask. You are in for some tremendous value because I have created a complete template to help you create your own customer avatar. This template makes it easy to compile all of your information, knowledge, experience, and research into one beautiful and presentable format. 

Download your customer avatar template now and begin the journey of successful marketing, sales, product development, and delivery of services that will knock the socks off your perfect customers. 

Now, you could download the template I have created and begin filling it out right away, but the most effective customer avatars are created with information based on market research as well as information that you gather from your current customer base. I would suggest that you take the time you need to gather the most accurate information you can to develop your avatar. Use surveys to capture feedback from your existing customers. Ask Your Target Market is also a great solution to survey a larger audience base. Adding a Custom Audience Pixel to your website is also a great way to track and learn more about people who have visited your website. Interviews are also a great way to capture valuable information. Interviews can allow you to dive deeper into the answers that are given by asking "why?" Asking "why" allows you to uncover the behaviors that drive them.

Multiple avatars

By now you might be thinking, "What if I have more than one avatar?" Having multiple avatars is perfectly fine. In fact, most businesses will have more than one ideal customer, especially if they offer more than one product/service. The best way to define your avatars is to tackle them one at a time. I would suggest that you start with the market that brings the most profit to your business (good idea, right?). Through this process, you may even find yourself realizing that your business is too broad and that you tighten up your product/service offering so that you can really develop your niche and position yourself to deliver your best to that market.

Negative avatars 

Creating a negative avatar can be as beneficial as creating your customer avatar. A negative avatar is a generalized representation of the persona that you don't want as a customer. Having an understanding of who you don't want to serve as a customer can sometimes make it easier to know who you dowant to serve as a customer. If you decide that you'd like to start here I would suggest that you think of that one customer that was a total nightmare for you to work with and document all of the things that made the relationship unsuccessful. The key here is to focus not on personal characteristics of why the individual was not easy to work with, but rather on the reasons why they didn't make a good fit for your product or service (such as pricing was too much, the probability of increased churn, or that they were not properly equipped to be successful long-term). 

Start defining your avatar

1. List out your avatars demographic traits: Examples of demographic traits are age, sex, education level, income level, marital status, occupation, religion, and average family size. This area of defining your customer avatar is typically easy to define.
2. Psychographic traits: Psychographic traits are a little more complicated and require a deeper understanding of your Avatar. Psychographic traits are based on values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle. Examples of Psychographic traits are: wants a healthy lifestyle, values time with family, doesn't have much time, uses Pinterest to do home DIY projects.
3. Name your avatar: Naming your avatar humanizes the profile. If you are targeting both men and women you will want to create both a male and female name.
4. Put a face to their name: Find a picture online in stock photos that best represents what your avatar looks like visually.
5. Design a dossier: A dossier is a one-page collection of information about your avatar that includes the name, picture, information, and story about your avatar.
6. Write a story about your customer avatar: Image you are your avatar and you are journaling about the discovery of your product/service. What were they thinking before they bought your product? How were they feeling? Why were they feeling that way? What were they looking for? What were they hoping to solve or accomplish? How did they find you/hear about you? How did they feel once they purchased your product/service? 

Takeaways

At the most basic level, developing a customer avatar will help you become more effective in your messaging which will help you to cut through the noise in marketing today. Using your customer avatar in combination with a solid Lifecycle Marketing Strategy is a surefire way to explode your business growth. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you begin creating your customer avatar:

• Create a negative avatar first to gain clarity about whom you know you don't want to serve as a customer and who doesn't make a good fit.
• Give your customer avatar a name, face, and a personal story to bring him/her to life. Be as specific as possible, the more details you have the more you and your perfect customer will connect.
• Tackle one customer avatar at a time.
• Create your avatar based on market research and customer feedback rather than your own opinion and perception.

by Misty Kortes

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Stop Missing Out on Sales By Using These Closing Techniques

Are you missing out on sale?

‘Compelling scientific evidence’ that being stressed makes you FAT says inventor of the revolutionary 5:2 diet

Worrying about your weight? Then stop now - because it's that very stress which could be making you fat, according to the inventor of the revolutionary 5:2 diet.

Dr Michael Mosley says there is now 'compelling scientific evidence' that stress wreaks havoc with our bodies and predisposes us to putting on weight.

Speaking in The Mail on Sunday's new 'Life' section, he advises dieters to relax.

He explains: 'Research has shown that chronic stress leads to increased hunger, comfort eating, self-loathing and disrupted sleep.'

'To lose weight and keep it off, it is important to reduce stress – and all the comfort eating that goes with it.'

In a two-part health plan starting in 'Life' tomorrow, Dr Mosley outlines practical tips on how to minimise stress and so make losing weight easier.

One essential is getting enough sleep – which has twin beneficial effects.

Firstly, sleeping well minimises levels of so-called 'hunger hormones' the next day. Secondly, it cuts levels of the stress hormone cortisol too. Both lead to less comfort eating.

To demonstrate the vital role of sleep when it comes to dieting, he and diabetes expert Dr Eleanor Scott of Leeds University subjected 20 volunteers to a sleep-deprivation experiment.

They had to endure two nights when they went to bed three hours later than usual, to see what impact a lack of sleep had on their eating habits. After that they had another two nights when they went to bed at their normal time and could sleep as long as they liked, with their eating monitored the following days.

Dr Mosley also took part in the study, full results of which will be revealed on BBC Two's Trust Me, I'm a Doctor this Wednesday at 8.30pm.

He recalled: 'It was pretty grim.'

Besides feeling dog-tired after the two very late nights, he was also 'unpleasantly surprised' by how hungry he was.

'The same was true for all my fellow volunteers – everyone complained about having had the munchies.'

One volunteer piled through 10 custard cream biscuits - for breakfast.

He explained: 'Sleep and stress are closely linked: being stressed leads to problems sleeping, and problems sleeping make your stress levels soar.'

Dr Mosley helped popularise intermittent fasting, where dieters restrict their intake to just a few hundred calories for one day or two days a week, in his best-selling book The Fast Diet

Sleep-deprived people consume on average 385 calories extra per day, according to another study – about the same as a large muffin.

But he said the solution was simple, 'a couple of nights of good sleep'.

Dr Mosley helped popularise intermittent fasting, where dieters restrict their intake to just a few hundred calories for one day or two days a week, in his best-selling book The Fast Diet. Since its publication five years ago millions of people around the world have adopted the '5:2' diet.

To read more expert advice on diet from TV's Dr Michael Mosley see The Mail on Sunday's brilliant new Life supplement.

 By Stephen Adams for The Mail on Sunday

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Coaching and the GROW Model

Biggest misconceptions I find in business is coaching vs mentor. Most are unaware about how coaching really works. If you thought you know what coaching is and your not 100% sure here a nice little introduction to the GROW method.