Back in the day – the day being when presentations were a matter of overhead projectors or Carousel slide trays – my colleagues and I were given to understand that you couldn’t succeed in business unless you were a great presenter.
A great presenter, everyone knew, was polished — gleaming from the tips of his wingtips to the sheen of his perfectly coiffed hair. (It was almost always a “him” at the time.) A great presenter never stumbled, never said “uh,” never failed to dazzle. He had star power.
Some years later, I ran across a piece of research that forever changed how I thought about presentations.
It was a study conducted back in 1997 by David Reid of the University of Toledo and Richard Plank of Western Michigan University. They surveyed 481 buyers, asking them to think of a recent sales presentation they’d seen.
The buyers were asked to rate the skill of the presenter. And then they were asked, “Did you buy?”
"Sales Presentation Disasters: How to Avoid the Mistakes That Kill Your Chances to Make a Sale"
Slick doesn’t sell
Turns out, the more polished the presentation, the less likely it was to result in a sale.
How could this be? It appears that buyers enjoyed the show, but considered it just that: a show. And even worse, they weren’t the star of the show; the presenter was. So they weren’t as engaged as they could have been.
More down-to-earth salespeople, by contrast, did a better job of putting the seller in the spotlight. When they did, buyers weren’t put off by a few bumps and stumbles. It made the presenter seem like a real person, who was there not to perform but to help the buyer make a good decision.
Of course, no buyer wants to sit through a poor presentation. But what makes a presentation good isn’t smoke, mirrors, dogs, ponies, bells or whistles. It’s relevance. Buyers want to the presentation to be all about them – not about you.
Get the blog sent to your inbox free by entering your email address:
Pingback: The riskiest word in sales