Hear, See and Discuss: Are your Sales Presentations High Impact?
Posted on 04/22/2014 in Sales Presentation Skills
You can improve the impact of your sales presentations if you design your presentation to maximize the retention level of the audience. One of my favorite communication studies measured retention rates for three types of presentations:
| Presentation Type | Label | Audience Retention Rate |
| One-way information flow, no visual aids |
Hear | 10% |
| One-way information flow, well designed visual aids |
Hear and See | 20% |
| Two-way information flow, well designed visual aids |
Hear, See and DIscuss | 40% |
HEAR
If a customer
passively listens to you (meaning, only the salesperson is talking) and you do
not use any visual aids, the customer is hearing you but it is not very impactful. Retention is 10% or worse if a salesperson
simply speaks to a customer. Avoid this at all costs!
HEAR &
SEE
The retention level doubles to 20% if you use visual aids so that the
customer sees something in addition to hearing you speak. Never make a
presentation that doesn’t use some visual aids.
Be creative and use appropriate visual aids that fit your sales
objective and the customer.
Key tip! The visual aid should be "visual” – pictures, photos, well-designed charts, and so on are much better than content-heavy PowerPoint slides, which are not much more impactful than hearing only.
HEAR, SEE
& DISCUSS
Retention doubles again, this time to 40%, when the
conversation becomes a two-way discussion rather than a one-way presentation. In other words, make it interactive.
Interaction works wonders for the audience and the presenter. The audience becomes alive — you can literally feel and hear the energy level in the room increase when a sales presentation is interactive. From the sales presenter's point of view, interactive presentations provide accurate assessments of the customer's reaction to you and your sales message.
Even better, interaction almost always lessens the
nervousness of the presenter because it makes you feel as if you are speaking
with the audience rather than to the audience.
You might find our Teaching
Tips Webinar helpful because we provide details to help sales managers improve
their skill and comfort level regarding interactive techniques.