Any sales representative still operating under the traditional philosophy that sales presentations should focus on product and/or service features is definitely living in the past. The byword for effective presentations today is "customer-driven." This means laying intensive groundwork, far beyond "old school" standards. It begins with a thorough understanding of the customer's business philosophy, operations and needs, industry trends, front-running menu concepts, food cost expectations and other details that can give operators a decisive competitive edge. Critical to the success of a selling presentation is that the DSR and the customer have agreed upon objectives and commitments prior to the actual presentation.

Areas discussed:

• Positioning yourself for a successful presentation.
• Presentations begin with understanding customer profit opportunities and needs.
• Team selling, using all of your resources.
• Getting the customer involved in the presentation.
• The objective is selling your strengths, not bad-mouthing the competition.
• Selling from the customer's perspective
• Advanced presentation skills, including gaining a commitment from your customer

TRAINING AREAS:

Awareness

1. Exercise: develop a clear understanding of what presentations should accomplish
   1. Define objectives to accomplished by a presentation
2. Exercise: identify consequences of an unsuccessful vs successful presentation
   Case Study:
   1. selling the presentation
   2. gaining customer commitments
   3. understanding the effects of presentations on the customer
   4. presenting from the customer's perspective

Strategy

1. Exercise: create customer focused presentation strategy
   1. positioning ourselves for successful presentations
   2. develop an understanding of the customer's business opportunities and needs
   3. understand the desired affect of our presentations on the competitor?
   4. presenting from our strengths (the customer's perception of our strengths)
2. Exercise: set goals of the presentation and evaluate them in terms of:
   1. increased sales volume
   2. improved position in account
   3. demonstrating our strengths
   4. removing a competitor
   5. improved profit dollars
   6. reduced competitive vulnerability
   7. increasing customer's knowledge
3. Exercise: identify customer benefits in terms of:
   1. increased profitability
   2. learning about new products/technologies
   3. improving quality
   4. improving productivity
   5. improving employee skills
4. Identify impact on customer's organization and on the customer's customer

Tactics

1. Building team selling skills;
2. The coaching aspect of team selling
   1. preparing effectively and thoroughly
   2. asking the difficult questions
3. Getting the customer involved
   1. identify why customers involvement is critical to successful presentations
   2. Identify how to get the customer involved in the presentation
4. Develop selling strategies and tactics for presentations

Action Plan

1. Each participant develops a list of five highest priority presentations
2. Define team selling presentation partnership
3. Discuss follow-up plan with managers