Part of almost every sales presentation for your COTS or custom product will involve some manner of showing off how you plan to deliver and implement the solution. This post will discuss effective ways to present your methodology to your prospect.
Paint a Picture
As with any presentation you want to paint a picture of what it is you are bringing to the table. What better way to do this than to illustrate your point with visuals in your presentation? When I present, I prefer to not have a lot of words on any of my presentation slides since it gives me a push to speak naturally and not appear as though I’m reading off a script. When I present a methodology, I like to illustrate it in a way that my audience will quickly consume, digest then ask questions. At that point it becomes a much more interactive session where you can quickly and accurately ensure that they don’t walk away with unanswered questions. I usually start out with a high-level depiction of what a typical project schedule will look like, organized by phases, then drill down into each phase where I can get into the weeds on the specifics of the methodology.
Localize Your Presentation
Whenever possible, try to localize your presentation to the prospect organization or audience you are presenting to. Study their business beforehand and craft some examples in your presentation that would give your audience their ‘ah-ha’ moment and really identify and connect with what you’re presenting. Something as simple as building out a sample dashboard or status report with their logo embedded on the top is a great example of localizing your presentation. If you know why their last project failed, call out a point in your presentation where your methodology ensures that that point of failure is mitigated by how you deliver your projects. Little details like that add up to become far bigger than the sum of their parts and by localizing your presentation, you establish that connection with the audience.
Anticipate Questions
After doing enough presentations on methodology and implementations, you will begin to see a trend in the type of questions that are asked during these presentations. Take stock of these questions and gear your presentation to be able to answer those questions before they may even be asked. There is no replacement for having strong two-way interaction during a presentation but make sure that your presentation can answer as many of the questions before they are asked.
Presenting your methodology should feel like a conversation rather than a presentation. While personal presentation style has a lot to do with it, make sure that your presentations focus on painting the picture and telling the story. The finite details are not as important as the fundamental concepts and if you can establish a strong understanding of those fundamentals, your audience will guide themselves to understanding the finer details.
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