Why Demonstrating Your Capabilities Correctly Is Important In Sales | Professional Selling Training

In every commercial relationship, there is an appropriate time to demonstrate your capabilities to solve the problems of a prospect. Demonstrating your capabilities too soon will create the perception that your solutions are not client centric. Clients who do not believe you are addressing their concerns will not be positively impacted with your recommendations.

At the right time, written and oral proposals can be helpful selling tools. If you want your demonstration of capabilities to be competitive, keep in mind the following guidelines:

Focus on the Benefits the Client Will Receive from You

You must articulate your in-depth understanding of the client’s problems, needs, and wants. Your ability to prioritize these issues will clearly set you apart from many of your competitors. Benefits are only derived from explicit needs (wants), so you must ensure that your client’s interests are foremost. In reality, every clients want two types of benefits: financial (quantitative) and nonfinancial (qualitative). Make sure you include elements of both in your proposals.

Include Recommendations for Implementation

Specific approaches for services, products, approaches, or designs will be more convincing than generalities. You must tailor the specific approaches to assure the prospect he will receive the benefits you have promised. Show a step-by-step approach for action. Clearly state what you will do, what your client will do, and what happens if either party needs help doing his job.

Show Evidence of Your Past Successes

Testimonials or descriptions of past assignments can be powerful evidence that you can handle the client’s needs. Mentioning your experience with similar clients in the same industry is helpful. Discussing your access to other resources, such as banks or international alliances, can be helpful if you cannot help with the specific benefits the prospect wants.

Give Convincing Reasons Why the Prospect Should Choose You

Compare and contrast your firm with your competitors to show how you are uniquely suited to serve this client. While you shouldn’t speak negatively about your competitor, you can draw fair comparisons. For example, you could say, “That firm has a great reputation in working with governmental agencies, but their experience with sophisticated manufacturers is limited. You do want a firm you won’t have to train, don’t you?”

Conclusion

Using a written proposal document, PowerPoint slides, and other visual aids can be helpful in making successful presentations. However, you must not make the visual aids the presentation. Many successful sales presentations are made on a legal pad. Keep this in mind, so that your sales aids support the points you make, not replace you.