6/30/2017 Top Ten Presentation Tips for Technology Pre-Sales Professionals - WhaTech

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Tips for Technology Pre- Communication

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difference in the way pre- sales technical

consultants present, especially to non-
technical audiences. So, if you’re in a
boardroom, pitching for business or find
yourself with a microphone at a conference,
here are my Top 10 Professional
Presentation Tips for Pre-Sales.

1. Stop talking about yourself, your

company, how passionate you are about
your new widget and start talking about the
audience. Passion is compelling, but it’s not
hard to become the bore at the party if you
focus your presentation on your world rather
than the client’s; Simple rule: if you’re still

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6/30/2017 Top Ten Presentation Tips for Technology Pre-Sales Professionals - WhaTech

talking about yourself and your technology

after 5 minutes, you have become the self
indulgent talking to the self interested

2. Voice matters (1). If you have a flat

voice, it will only sound flatter 20 minutes
later. The audience will then be thinking of
ways to get out of the presentation, rather
than staying. Practice modulating your tone
and volume. It’s OK to be louder. It’s not
screaming, it’s interesting to listen to.

3. Voice matters (2). Talking fast about

virtualization and 1EEE802.11 compliance is
natural with two of your best engineering
buddies and a beer, but business audiences
(especially senior decision makers) can’t
take it all in. The issue is if it’s too quick and
we don’t get the language, it’s as if you
haven’t said it at all. Add three times the
number of pauses as you think normal and
ditch the techy speak. Don’t slow your
delivery –just add pauses.

4. Don’t Jargonise Them. Yes, I know this

is obvious in 2013, but it still happens far too
often. The TLA’s, HCAP, BHAG, AFUK
language may work for some but it is not
perceived by the majority of decision
makers as important.

5. Watch the Slides – I’ve seen

presentations where the presenter had 92
slides in a 60 minute presentation. Stop it –
you’ll go blind. It just becomes a total
distraction – and totally prevents the
audience form clearly understanding your
key messages, You should be able to get

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6/30/2017 Top Ten Presentation Tips for Technology Pre-Sales Professionals - WhaTech

your point across with a simple Whiteboard

description.

6.Tell stories – It amazes me that so many

companies have great case studies around
the use of the technology, yet become more
formal in a business setting and leave all
that natural storytelling ability behind. Tell a
story about a client’s result, rather than
putting up slides about functionality. Tell a
story about your research into the client’s
goals, rather than just boring facts about
features and product sets.

7. Talk outcomes, not process. Pre-sales

tend to be really poor at saying ‘right this is
the bottom line – if you pay us $50K per
month, we’re going to cut 15% off your total
expenditure over 2 years. Yes, I know it
depends and you have to install the bloody
thing and make sure it works but if you don’t
present what success typically looks like,
why should they get excited about it.

8. Don’t Mitigate. You don’t need to be

defensive because your competitor has one
lousy feature out of 100 that you don’t.
Avoidance and mitigated language such as
probably, maybe, perhaps, hopefully just
makes you sound uncertain. Concentrate
boldly on what you can do for the client, not
what can’t.

9. Use visuals and creativity not boring

slides. Use pictures, images, YouTube
videos to make your case. It freshens up the
whole presentation and makes you stand
out.

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6/30/2017 Top Ten Presentation Tips for Technology Pre-Sales Professionals - WhaTech

10. Practise. Yes, I know it’s boring but

there are pre-sales people that will spend
three hours checking the diagrams,
preparing the choice of font, inserting
reveals and fades and 10 minutes
rehearsing their content over their Weet-Bix
in the morning, If you don’t rehearse, where
do you find your mistakes?

Elliot Epstein

As CEO of Salient Communication, Elliot is

a sought after keynote speaker and
corporate trainer who has coached and
trained over 4000 people including CEOs,
senior management and successful sales
teams throughout Australasia and Asia
including Hong Kong and Singapore.

Elliot is a specialist technology sales

speaker and trainer for high profile
corporates having spoken at over 1500
conferences, workshops and break-out
sessions on presenting, selling, negotiating
and pitching for leading companies such as
HP, Alcatel – Lucent, Commonwealth Bank,
Hitachi, Computershare and SEEK. He is
renowned for ensuring presentations are
engaging, interactive and relevant to
winning business in competitive markets.

He is an advisory Board Member of

Generation–e, one of Australia’s fastest
growing IT companies.

Elliot is based in Melbourne where he lives

with his wife and two expensive children

For more information :

salientcommunication.com.au
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News From

Salient
Communication
Category: Sales
Company profile: As an authority in coaching
sales people and leaders, we apply over 25
years of experience in business, sales and
corporate consulting to over 4000 CEO’s, senior
executives and sales teams throughout
Australasia and Asia. Clients include Forbes 100,
ASX 100 companies, BRW Fast 100 companies
and award winning SME’s, all who use Elliot’s
Salient Approach to get real world results and
immediate ROI. Challenging the ‘cruise control’
thinking and old fashioned prescriptive
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