By Dr. Joanna Martin, International Speaker & Speaker Trainer
Melbourne, Australia
3 Tips for Overcoming Logistical Headaches when Selling from the Platform:
During any sales presentation the aim for most entrepreneurs or business owners is how to inspire your audience to such a level that they take up the offer of your next step. With integrity, you want to make as much profit as possible whilst keeping the transactions as stress-free as possible for you and your customers.
Being a successful speaker is not just about how powerful you are at delivering your presentation – it’s also about the organization of your sales processes in the back-end of your business. Time and time again, I’ve noticed female speakers tend to excel at inspiring their audiences to take action but often fall a bit short in how to manage
the sales transactions in a smooth, effortless and elegant fashion.
So here are some practical sales tips to help make sure ALL aspects of your next presentation run as smooth as silk.
Presentation Sales Tip 1: Order Forms
For any sales of bigger ticket items, you’re going to need some order forms with some legally binding terms and conditions. It sounds simple but believe me, get this wrong and you will miss out on sales.
So sales tip number one – make sure you’ve got more order forms than you think you’ll need as some customers like to keep a copy for their records. Also pay attention to the information you asking your customers for when they fill in your Order Form? Name, email address, postal address?
Presentation Sales Tip 2: How Are Customers Paying You?
If you are doing a sales presentation have you given any consideration to how your customers are going to pay you? So sales tip number two – think about your payment methods.
Are you taking cash? If yes, remember to think about what you’re charging and what change you might need. For example, if you’re charging $47 for something, it’s pretty likely people will hand over $50 so make sure you’ve got plenty of $1 notes on hand. Might sound like common sense, but gets tricky if that’s the one thing you forgot to pack and it’s a Sunday and the banks are shut.
If you’re taking credit cards, there’s no cash involved but there are other issues. Do you have your own merchant facility? Or are you running everything through PayPal? There are fees involved for each so get plenty of information.
When are you processing payments? If you’re processing them after the sales presentation, you may want to refrain from giving out any physical product or bonuses until people’s orders are processed and cleared. This avoids any difficulties afterwards.
Presentation Sales Tip 3: Payment plans – Yes, No, or Never?
Sales tip number three – are you going to offer your customers a payment plan? The up side of payment plans is that they offer more flexibility for people to purchase your products who might otherwise not and means that overall sales are likely to be higher as a greater number of people can buy.
The down side, there will be people who default on their payments, whose cards expire and fail and who have changes in their life circumstances that mean they won’t be able to pay on time. This will take you (or someone in your team) TIME and EFFORT to follow up and manage.
What’s your refund policy and guarantee? Think about it BEFORE you sell the product, know it, clearly state it, then stick to it.
Summary
A little bit of planning about what systems you are using in your sales presentations will make your product or event launch run smoothly. So next time you plan a presentation, by all means spend time on making it as inspiring as possible but also put some attention on the business side of it too. Have a think about what information you’re collecting from your customers and how you are using it and how you can maximize your sales in the most efficient way possible.
Dr Joanna Martin is an international speaker who having built her own 7-figure business through speaking, is now sought after by new and experienced speakers alike to help them increase their impact and income from speaking. To receive your free copy of the Presentation Profits Blueprint go to www.ShiftSpeakerTraining.com/blueprint