I have just come across a great post on how to mess up a sales presentation. It has a killer title and catchy graphic as well. You can read the original post by Geoffrey James here.

Of course I have to add to his list. These come from my own observations of software sales meetings. Here is my list of ways to give a bad software sales presentation:  

1. Start off the presentation by saying "I'm not good at selling" and spend the next 2.5 hours proving it.

2. Send a technical support person to deliver the product demo and have him spend 3 hours showing the CEO how to enter a sales order. 

3. Don't worry about understanding your prospect's business just proceed to show him every single feature of your product whether he needs it or not.

4. Use sample data for your demo that has absolutely nothing to do with the prospect's business.

5. Ignore everyone at the table except the CEO when you make your presentation. Why waste time making all of those other staff people feel like they matter?

6. Show 4 or 5 alternative ways to perform every task so your prospect leaves the room dazed and confused about what you were showing.

7. Talk about product features and don't worry about how those features might help your prospect in his day job.

8. Tinker with your computer right before the demo so that your screen is completely black when you go before the prospect. (This one comes from the experiences of yours truly, who in fact set every color, background and font to black right before a product demo.)

9.  Speak in a monotone and read from a script so the prospect doesn't get the idea that there is anything exciting about your product or company.

Got any to add to my list?  Extra credit if you were the presenter and you learned how to get better as a result.

 


Comments

Geoffrey James link
11/05/2008 11:25

Most of those are specific to software demonstrations -- which are particularly hard to pull off. Part of the problem is that many software sales folk think like engineers. And engineers always have an inside-out way of looking at a program. To them, the feature is the benefit, because the feature is what was programmed. I remember back when I was a programmer, I had a colleague who built a system management program where every command had one letter, most of which had no connection whatsoever to the function that the command performed. When I asked why, he told me: "For ease of use; what could be easier than typing one letter?"

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Ed Kless link
11/06/2008 14:11

#10 - Fire up Crystal Reports and solve a $4 million problem in five minutes and then give them the report for free during the implementation because you did "during the demo."

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