Start the presentation with the buyer's own situation

You will be able to open a presentation by playing back the discovery summary and checking it with the buyer.

Most sales presentations are written before the seller has met the buyer. There is a company deck, perhaps forty slides long, and the seller picks the ones that seem relevant, adds the buyer's logo to the first page and walks in. The buyer sits through ten minutes of company history before hearing anything about their own situation, and by then they have started checking their phone.

There is a better starting point, and you already have it if you ran a good discovery meeting. It is the discovery summary: the buyer's situation, the problems in their own words, what those problems cost, what success looks like, and who has to agree. A strong presentation is that summary played back, followed by how you would close the gap.

This changes the order of everything. The first thing the buyer hears is not about you. It is about them, and it should sound so accurate that they nod along. Here is what you told us last time. You have three outlets and the books for each are done by a different person. Month-end takes your operations manager most of a week. Twice this year a supplier was paid late and you lost an early payment discount. You want month-end done in two days and one person accountable. Did we get that right?

That last question matters. Treat it as a real check, because things change between meetings. A new person may be in the room who sees the problem differently, or the buyer may have learned something since. If the summary is wrong, you want to find out now, before you present a solution to a problem that has moved.

Once the buyer agrees with the summary, the rest of the presentation has a simple job. For each problem they confirmed, show how you would solve it and what changes for them. Leave out everything that does not connect to something they said. This is the hardest discipline in presenting, because every seller is proud of features the buyer never asked about. A feature that solves nothing on their list is noise, and worse, it gives the buyer something to question that has nothing to do with the decision.

A useful test is to write the buyer's problems down the left side of a page and your proposed solution parts down the right. Draw a line from each solution part to the problem it solves. Any solution part with no line goes. Any problem with no line is a gap you need to address honestly, either with a plan or by saying it is outside what you do.

The same logic applies to proof. A case study only helps if the client in it looks like this buyer and had a similar problem. A testimonial from a large bank does little for a cafe group, however impressive the name. Choose one or two pieces of proof that match, and put them right after the solution part they support.

The presentation also has to work for people who were not at discovery. In a business sale that might be a finance head who will sign off the spend. In a household it might be a spouse. Plan a minute at the start to bring them in: a short version of the situation and a question about what matters most to them. Their answer may change which parts you spend time on.

Finally, a presentation built from discovery is shorter. Without the company history and the unrelated features, most fit comfortably into twenty minutes, which leaves the rest of the meeting for questions, concerns and a decision. That is where sales are actually made, and it is what the rest of this course covers.

Your task for this lesson: take the notes or summary from your most recent discovery meeting. Write the opening of your presentation as a summary of the buyer's situation in their words, ending in a check question. Then draw the problem and solution map and cross out anything without a line.

Write the opening of your next presentation as a playback of the buyer's situation, then draw the problem and solution map and cross out unlinked parts.

Course

• Present, handle objections, and close