It’s no secret we aren’t big fans of PowerPoint. But there is a role for it. So the question is, when is it ok to break out the projector, dim the lights, and risk putting your audience into deep REM sleep?
Here are three simple questions to answer that will help you decide when your buyer can suvivie a little PowerPoint poisoning:
1. Where are you in the sales cycle?
Each sales process names the various stages differently, but I like to use the tried-and-true “Interest, Consensus, Evaluation, Decision” or the “ICED” model. In a nutshell, PowerPoint is with few exceptions a no-no in the Interest and Consensus phases. Firing slide bullets at your buyer in the first or second in-person meeting could be fatal to your chances of moving the sale forward and certainly doesn’t help you qualify pain or understand key buying criteria.
However, if you’re in the Evaluation phase, slides can be helpful in presenting detailed competitive data and other information on capabilities that would be too time-consuming and detailed to present on a whiteboard.
In the Decision phase, you may need to get a final meeting with the C-level to close the deal with a final whiteboard presentation. Connecting emotionally and passionately with your buyer and demonstrating your capacity to be a trusted advisor is critical at this point. Your customer is going to buy, and all else being equal they will buy from someone they trust and connect with, as plenty of studies show. Integrating TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) elements into your whiteboard can be particularly effective for this final discussion, whether in person, over web conference or at lunch on butcher paper.
2. Who is your audience?
There are really two elements to this question. What level and how many? If you are meeting with a technical audience in the first couple of meetings it doesn’t really matter what presentation technique you are using; you’re selling too low too early and are probably column fodder (check box evalution vendor to justify existing vendor or buying decision). But if you’re meeting with technical influencers in the Evaluation phase, PowerPoint is great for presenting information like this. As we discussed above, PowerPoint with VPs or the C-level is verboten.
If you’re meeting with a small group, whiteboarding is always preferable. But using PowerPoint is especially dangerous when presenting to large groups. In our next blog post we’ll discuss how to whiteboard using Tablet PCs in front of groups of 100s or even 1000s.
3. How prepared are you?
Whiteboarding is great, but only if you are thoroughly prepared. You can’t draw something on the whiteboard that’s not in your head. If you can’t get up on the whiteboard (or any other drawing surface) and own your content, having slide bullets to prop you up is bad but not as bad as giving your buyer the impression you don’t thoroughly know your own product or service.
The bottom line: PowerPoint is a last resort - but carry around one of those tiny projectors just in case.
Tags: enterprise selling, PowerPoint, sales enablement, sales methodology, sales process, sales readiness, sales skills, whiteboard, whiteboard presentation, whiteboard story, whiteboarding, WhiteboardSelling
