Recommending Change:
A Presentation Worksheet

Note: To be used in conjunction with the Selling Wheel model

Before the Presentation:

• Selling must start well before the meeting where you present your recommendations. Selling is done in every part of the project and doesn’t end until the product or service is thoroughly owned by the client.
• Prepare your presentation with your clients’ needs in mind, not your needs. The best persuaders sell completely from their clients’ perspective. You are not selling professional or technical solutions; you are selling business solutions to client needs.
• Ferret out your client’s needs. If you can present your recommendations as solutions to your clients’ problems, you will make it easier all around.
• Ferret out your clients’ probable reservations and resistance—the sooner the better. What can you do to anticipate your clients’ reservations and build in solutions to their concerns?
• Discuss your presentation with a number of ‘reality coaches.’ If the presentation is crucial, get feedback and improvement suggestions from a number of diverse sources who are in touch with your clients’ thinking and feelings. (Strangely, the least helpful coaches will often come from people you are in closest contact with—your professional colleagues. This is because they tend to look at your recommendations similarly to the way you do.)

What do you need to do to before the presentation?
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At The Presentation Meeting:
1. Establishing Rapport & Credibility

• A basic issue is trust. Trust is based in your clients’ emotions. You need to sell yourself— establish human-to-human contact—before you can sell your recommendation.
• Participant analysis: (Note the word ‘participant,’ not the passive ‘audience.’)
  – Who will be participating? Who needs to participate for commitment?
  – What do they know about the project and your recommendations?
  – What do they expect?
• How will you get the meeting started:
  – Secure your clients’ participation?
  – Get off the mark quickly?
  – Establish whether you want participation throughout the presentation or at specific points.
• How will you (re)establish trust and rapport:
  – Establish and maintain eye contact.
  – How will you quickly establish credibility?

What do you need to do to get the presentation off to a strong start?
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2. Establishing or Re-establishing Need

• From your clients’ perspective, they must see how your recommendation will solve their problems. Clients must see how your recommendations connect to their business needs.
  You need to establish or re-establish the business need. If you have thoroughly clarified the expectations and commitments, it may merely be a matter of reminding participants of your agreement.
  Think of the multiple clients in the room. What would each client group see as the business need?

How will you establish or re-establish the business need in your clients’ eyes?
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3. Presenting Your Data and Analysis

• You must establish a logical basis for your recommendations from your clients’perspective.
• Professionals like to show off their professional stuff, making this the centerpiece of their presentations. If this part of your presentation takes more than 1/6 of the presentation time, you may be overdoing it.

How will you briefly present your data and analysis so that it helps your clients to buy your recommendation?
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4. Selling the Best Option(s)

• How will your recommendations solve your clients’ needs? You must show how your solution will benefit your clients within their own frame of reference.
• Present not only the features of your recommendation, but also the benefits.
• If you have multiple clients, keep in mind that a benefit for one client group may not resonate for another.

How will you present the features and benefits of your recommendation within your clients’ frame of reference?
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5. Dealing with Reservations and Resistance

• Clients will naturally sense the risks and downsides to buying your recommendation. In fact, if they don’t see any, you may have a problem.
• Expect your clients to feel resistant. It is natural and OK. Don’t resist the resistance.
• These risks and downsides will either be directly expressed openly as reservations, or indirectly expressed as stalling or runarounds.
• You need to support your clients by actively listening to their reservations and helping them surface their resistance.
• You need to support your clients by showing them how you can help them implement your recommendations in their ‘real world.’

What will you do to help your clients express their risk concerns and resistance?
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6. Change Plans and Close

The most common reason your recommendation is ‘left hanging’ is that you didn’t ask for action. As sales books put it ‘The most common reason for no sale is that it wasn’t asked for.’

• Be a ‘full cycle’ consultant. Follow-through is extremely important. Lead the most challenging process—change.
• What are the next steps for you and your clients?
• How will you ensure transfer of ownership? Think of personal transitions for your clients as much as technical changes.
• How will you follow through?
• How will you support your client with the change?
• Remember that the closing tone of the presentation determines the feelings your clients will have about the entire presentation.

How will you ask for action and encourage follow-through?
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See related items:

• 5-step Consulting Model
• Selling Wheel
• A Checklist of Typical Client Benefits
• Checklist for Establishing Rapport
• Expertise Delivery Model in a Strategic Context

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