Win more high stakes deals. In this episode of Sales Talk for CEOs, Alice Heiman sits down with Yvonne Lines, a strategic presentation expert, to unpack exactly how B2B sales teams can win their most important, high-stakes sales presentations, the ones that make or break deals.
Yvonne shares her proven process for creating audience-centric, story-driven presentations that drive decisions and close business. This episode is packed with actionable strategies for CEOs, founders, and sales leaders who want their teams to win by making customer centric presentations.
You’ll learn to
- Research deeply. Know your audience, industry, and influencers before you touch a deck.
- Structure for persuasion. Use a clear outline, with a bold hook, three key messages, and a strong close.
- Make it a two-way conversation. Build in engagement and interactivity so the presentation adjusts in real-time.
- Expand or cut smartly. Prepare to go deep or skip slides based on what matters most to your buyers.
- Close strong. Leave your buyers with words they can repeat to sell internally.
- Practice with your team. Perfect the flow and timing, no more disconnected handoffs or info overload.
This isn’t just about slides, it’s about messaging that moves deals forward.
Watch below or on our YouTube channel
Rapid‑Fire Picks
Book Every CEO Should Read: Resonate and Slideology by Nancy Duarte
Podcasts to listen to
How Word of Mouth was All we Ever Used to Attract New Business
CEOs Can Craft & Deliver Compelling Messages that will be Remembered
Also mentioned
Nancy Duarte’s Ted Talk Nancy Duarte uncovers common structure of greatest communicators
Yvonne’s Advice for CEOs:
“Don’t be a seagull CEO, don’t fly in at the end and mess everything up. Get involved early, set the direction, then let your team run with it.”
Connect With
Transcript
[00:00:00] Alice Heiman: Welcome to Sales Talk for CEOs. Today’s topic is one everyone is gonna wanna tune into and possibly even take a few notes because today we’re gonna talk about those really important life changing. Sales presentations that your company does and you know, yeah, we wanna be really great at our sales presentations every day, but when it’s your most important [00:00:30] customer and you’re trying to change something, you’re presenting to them, or I really.
Big company that you’ve always wanted to work with, and now you have that chance and you and your team have to get in there and do a great sales presentation. So we wanna make sure that you are all equipped to do those really well, and that is why I. Today have Yvonne lines on the show to help us [00:01:00] learn about how to do the best sales presentations.
Welcome, Yvonne.
[00:01:05] Yvonne Lines: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.
[00:01:08] Alice Heiman: So first, let’s just tell the audience a little bit about what you do and who you do that for, and then we’ll jump into the topic.
[00:01:17] Yvonne Lines: So I focus on helping B2B sales teams, um, present to the best of their ability. So I actually have a creative background. I came from, um, I used to be a [00:01:30] creative director at a large media company here in Canada, and I am, that was about 10 years ago.
I left. That to freelance and I started doing graphic design. I moved into writing. I moved into strategy, and then got into presentations and working with teams to help them with their presentations. And it’s been really about help helping them connect with their audience in a way that’s really engaging and helps them close deals.
[00:01:58] Alice Heiman: Oh my gosh. Help [00:02:00] some close deals. What we all want, and I’m sure you have sat through as I have you prob probably not as many as I have ’cause I’ve been around a long time. Some really bad sales presentations. Yes, try to makes you wanna cry, right? Because you’re like, oh my gosh, you have this great team, you have this great product, and you did not get your point across to the audience.
You did not engage them. You did not spark some [00:02:30] curiosity. You just.
[00:02:33] Yvonne Lines: Skew information,
[00:02:35] Alice Heiman: skewed information all over the place, and then you leave and you wonder as a sales team why they’re not calling you back, why you didn’t get the deal. So we are going to fix that because this is so, so important. Now, I just wanna point out one thing to all of you listening and um, and it’s okay if you’re guilty of this ’cause I, I actually know that you are.
But I think, you know, a lot of times when we have. Big [00:03:00] presentations. One, we don’t give ourselves enough time. So two, we go, where’s the last deck we did for a big presentation? And everybody’s searching around for that deck. And then we find that deck and we try to mold that deck into something for this new situation.
And that is just the absolutely worst place to start. So let’s start there. We’re not gonna start with the old deck, so what should we do, Yvonne? Yeah.
[00:03:28] Yvonne Lines: So many people [00:03:30] start with a backwards process. It’s like if you were to rebuild your kitchen, instead of pulling out the cupboards and starting from scratch, pulling it back to the framework.
Designing it and making it the kitchen of your dreams. You just, you know, pull out a couple cupboards and retrofit it and stick a few pieces in here, and it never really feels quite right. It’s not your dream kitchen, right? The presentations are the same way. If you are pulling out an old presentation and trying [00:04:00] to, you know, throw a whole bunch of slides into it and just retrofit it to your new.
Uh, prospect, it’s never going to feel quite right. So I always recommend starting from scratch. And honestly, by the time you try to retrofit it, you’re not, you’re not saving any time by not starting from scratch. I think most people do that just because they’ve done that in the past and they don’t really know where to start.
But if you start with an outline, just a [00:04:30] simple black and white slide deck that’s got, you know, what goes where on each slide. Um, start with your. Opening. You don’t, you’re gonna start with, you know, the cover, but you’ll have, instead of, you know, presentation to x, y, Z company, you’re going to have your main message right up front on your cover and really try to think, you know, like, what do people need to hear from you right from the start?
Use the real estate. Wisely and then get into [00:05:00] just black and white, white messaging of what’s going on, which slide, and then it’s really easy to switch it around and figure out, well, what’s the structure of your presentation? What messaging needs to go in there? What are my three key messages that I really want the prospect to know?
What’s my main message? Is it coming out? How can I structure this so that I can. Expand it where needed and contract it where needed, depending on the response of the, the prospect in [00:05:30] your presentation. So it’s more of a two-way conversation and it’s structured that way from the start, customized from the start.
[00:05:38] Alice Heiman: So a couple things that you said. One, a two-way conversation. Mm-hmm. That is what a presentation is. It’s not, you talk the entire time your team handed off from one person to the next, you know, to say the next part to you know, oh yeah, now Bob is gonna cover this slide. No, it’s a conversation and you have, that means you have to build in.
An [00:06:00] opportunity for the audience, right? Mm-hmm. To respond, to ask questions, and, and it’s not just, oh. So do you have any questions on that slide before I move on? No, you’ve got to really build this presentation so it’s engaging and there’s something to talk about. But I’m actually gonna go a little bit even before that because you said do an outline and absolutely they need to do that.
But I think the entire team needs to get the homework done, get the research done, to bring it to the meeting [00:06:30] where we’re gonna outline this presentation, right? Too many times I see salespeople showing up the meeting to start to work on the presentation. Without having done their homework. Well, even like who’s gonna be there?
What do we know about them? What have you read about this company recently? What have they posted about recently? Have there been any changes in their senior management? Like what do we need to know about this company at large and how they fit into their industry, how they fit in with their competition, who they’re [00:07:00] selling to, like all the stuff that you think, okay.
Of course we know that, but I have just seen it too many times, Yvonne. They show up without all the information. So before we even let them outline, what do you suggest that they do to come prepared to build that outline? You
[00:07:16] Yvonne Lines: know what I really like working with, um, clients that I work with over and over and over again because now they know to show up to our kickoff meeting with all that information.
Right. Ready.
[00:07:29] Alice Heiman: [00:07:30] But you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Because I mean, I’ve done a number, helped a number of teams with their presentation. Like, go back, we can’t do this. We cannot make an outline. You do not have enough information.
[00:07:40] Yvonne Lines: Yeah. Knowing your client, your prospect, who you’re, uh, pitching to.
You just, you can’t develop any key messages without really knowing who they are. And it’s not just, okay, well, I am presenting to the CEO and the um, uh, CFO and the tech person. [00:08:00] It’s okay. Well what are their, you are like, yeah, you can figure out their demographics, but what are also their psychographics?
Like, if you were to figure out what are their main challenges, not just with the company, but the people themselves at work. Like, are they just finding that they’re overwhelmed and they don’t have enough time to, uh, put things together? Like maybe it’s a, a software system that you’re selling, you know, maybe their real challenge is not.
What, uh, your [00:08:30] software does, but how it connects with everything, every other software piece that they have. And you need to know that before going into the presentation. Otherwise, you can’t customize it specifically for them.
[00:08:42] Alice Heiman: Yeah, and this is why I try to help sales teams understand not to present too early, and it’s even with demos sometimes it’s like it’s too soon, right?
We don’t understand enough. Now we’re gonna try to tell them something when we’re not prepared [00:09:00] because we don’t know enough right about it to get started. So. Okay, let’s assume they have really well researched. Not only do they know the company, the industry, their position in the marketplace, the people, they have come fully prepared.
Like you asked them to Evo and they show up and you say, okay, let’s start outlining. So we’re not making fancy slide decks yet. We’re just putting. A few notes on each slide as to [00:09:30] what that slide will cover, and we’re stating where we might stop and ask a question and inquire about something. Right. So tell us a bit more about the outline and how it goes together.
[00:09:42] Yvonne Lines: Yeah, so once you’ve got all your research together, you wanna make sure that you’ve got. Usually I, I’ll interview my, my client and try and figure out like so much about their, their prospect and their relationship with [00:10:00] them and what their win themes are. Uh, I think a lot of your, your audience knows what a win theme is, but basically what their, their edge is over their competitor, um, and why this prospect may be going with them over somebody else who offers something similar.
Um. Uh, but then not just what their win themes are, but how it relates to the prospect. Because it’s one thing to say, well, we have the best software in the world, but it, your, your prospect is like, well, great, but how does that [00:10:30] relate to me? So then you have to translate it to be audience centric, um, and you’re wanting to narrow it down so that you’ve got three key audience-centric messages.
That’s it. No more. Otherwise, you’re going to get really into details that you know, you’re not, you’re not there to present all the details. You are there to, uh, solve some challenges with your solutions, but not every little [00:11:00] detail. Otherwise, you’re going to overwhelm your prospect. So once you figure out your three key messages, then it’s like, well, what order should they go in and how they fit together?
Um, and you’ll have a slide for, to introduce each of those three key messages, but then you’re also going to look at some details of how you can explain those concepts. And here is a great place where you can weave in stories. Um, so let’s say, you know, your prospect is really into. [00:11:30] Uh, sports, you can weave in a sports analogy that applies to, and then switch it around to show how it can apply to your products.
So, for example, um, thinking on the spot here, but if you’ve got, uh, people, uh, football, or sorry, soccer, if you’ve got people kicking the, the soccer ball all over the field and it’s just chaos, but your software is like. Uh, a really good coach that [00:12:00] can help bring all those players in together and strategize and move towards the, the goal and get the ball in the net.
Then, you know, that sort of analogy works. But if you’re presenting to an audience that isn’t into sports, then you need to know that ahead of time and come up with a story that’s more. Relevant to them or something completely universal.
[00:12:22] Alice Heiman: Mm-hmm. Yes, absolutely. And, and I think the stories are the key, right?
So you have a message and it just can’t be like, here’s [00:12:30] the bullet points about that message, right? People wanna hear a story about how that helped someone similar to them, um, in a similar marketplace, right?
[00:12:41] Yvonne Lines: So once you’ve got your three main slides with your key messages, you’d have some slides with, uh, story to explain your concept or details of how your concept works.
Or, um, you might have some sort of infographic to explain the, the [00:13:00] flow or the customer journey or, or, you know, any supporting details that ladder up to that key message. Those details are where you can expand or contract. If you find that during your conversation you find out more about your prospect and they start asking questions about one of your key messages, then dive in deeper.
If they seem to be completely ignoring another of your key messages, then move on [00:13:30] to a message that they really do care about or ask. Wait. Yvonne, are you saying
[00:13:35] Alice Heiman: I can skip some of my slides? I don through one.
[00:13:41] Yvonne Lines: This is where you really play off what your, how your audience is responding. Yeah. Um, so you cannot skip your three key messages, but you can skip the details or add details exp expand and contract as needed.
Yeah. A hundred. So I’ve actually had, uh, one [00:14:00] client I worked with said. They’ve got so many, it’s not so much the number of slides, but they’ve got so much information that they never get to the end of their presentation. And I’m just like, what? The ending can be the most important part. And they didn’t know how to work with those details and, and just have the three messages and then play with the length of the details.
Um, is the ending where you really get to, um, re reiterate [00:14:30] your. Main takeaway, and this is your chance to put words in the mouth. So, so many people will end with thank you, which is lovely. Love, gratitude. However, this is your opportunity to really make a message stick. So you wanna make sure that you’re ending with something really strong.
So you start with a hook, your, your main takeaway, what you want them to remember, you. But four, make a soundbite if you can, and you reiterate that at the end as well. [00:15:00]
[00:15:00] Alice Heiman: Oh yeah, absolutely. That hook at the beginning I think is so important and I know. You and I both know Nancy Duarte and you know, I’ve studied with her and other, you know, people who are really very expert at standing up and giving presentations.
And what we know that people remember is if you did something at the beginning, you know, that either surprised them or caught them off guard or got them hooked, right? And they remember the end, the middle, it’s kind of messy, right? And [00:15:30] the most important thing is those who. Listen to your presentation, need to then go do something after that.
And so we’ve got to leave them with the words that they can say to somebody else besides, oh, it was really great. You should see. Right.
[00:15:48] Yvonne Lines: Absolutely. Um. Putting words in their mouth, like that’s why you wanna end on something strong in a soundbite if you can, because the people that you’re presenting to may absolutely need to turn around [00:16:00] and talk to another decision maker or another influencer, and they need to say, you know, I wanna work with Yvonne Lines because she.
Is, uh, strategically creative or whatever it is, you know, but you can’t have them just lost in the wind. I wanna work with Yvonne Lines ’cause I don’t know, she just felt great. Oh, this sounds great. Yeah. You know, it’s not gonna work. You’re not, you’re not going to get the follow through aspect of it if you [00:16:30] don’t make it easy for them to turn around and talk about you.
[00:16:33] Alice Heiman: Yeah, so they have to be able to remember the key points. And so those have to be short and sweet, right? It’s like they should be able to repeat those and then the details, no, they shouldn’t re be able to repeat the details necessarily, but they should be able to re repeat those main points. And definitely, like you said at the end, something that is.
Powerful that they can say beyond. Oh yeah, it was [00:17:00] great. Right. So let’s talk about that a little bit. How do we end strong? What are some of the methods that you use to help people have a strong ending message?
[00:17:12] Yvonne Lines: Um, this is where AI really comes in handy because you can, you know, use it to brainstorm.
Making your message really pithy and strong and catchy and memorable and sticky. Um, so you take [00:17:30] the, your three key messages, it’s all going to ladder up to one main takeaway that, you know, I mentioned you wanna work with Yvonne because she’s strategically creative. Um. So if, if that’s my one main message, then I can go into chat or Claude or Perplexity or whatever and ask for help.
Like, what are, these are my three key messages. This is the, the feeling that I wanna get across. This is, um, who I’m speaking to. Um, [00:18:00] and especially if you’ve already done some research on your audience through chat, then they’ve got, they’ve got that in the profile, then it can. Come out with words that you may not even have thought of that are really punchy and maybe they use alliteration or they really stick in your mind somehow and it’s just like, yes, that’s it.
That’s what I wanna say. It’s so much easier now to come up with something creative that sticks when you’ve got tools With ai, it’s so true,
[00:18:27] Alice Heiman: uh, because our creative minds, you know, [00:18:30] sometimes work and sometimes it’s like, ah, I can’t think of anything right now, but. AI can always help you think of something, which I do love, but what I like at the end of a presentation, you know, is for them to be able to walk away and say, if we use this solution that has been presented to us, it will make us faster, better, easier.
Right. Something right? Like mm-hmm. I now understand that using this [00:19:00] solution you’re showing us. Is going to give me this result. And I think it’s important because a lot of times the salespeople are still kind of stuck on features and benefits when what we really have to talk about is results.
[00:19:15] Yvonne Lines: Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And we mentioned earlier about being audience centric. So is the results specific to that audience? Yeah. Which is why you’re doing all the research ahead of time. Like what are their specific challenges [00:19:30] and how is your solution? Going to solve them, and then how do you help them visualize a future with your product or service and working with you?
That’s better than they have now. And you’re only going to know that if you know who you are speaking with. Sometimes it’s really hard to know exactly who’s going to be in the room and who the decision makers are, but that’s why you’re having a two-way conversation while you’re in that presentation because.
You should be figuring it out or knowing a little [00:20:00] bit more about them as you go along. And then you can know like, what are the results that this person wants? What are the results that that person wants? And you know, one person may want. To have a streamlined process that, uh, means they can leave at five o’clock and take, you know, spend time with their family.
One, the other person might want something different. They might be completely focused on profits. Um, and sometimes you need to [00:20:30] marry the two and sometimes you need to answer those. Uh, completely separately. Mm-hmm. But it’s, uh, it’s important to do that research ahead of time so that you know.
[00:20:40] Alice Heiman: Absolutely.
And then when you hear them, because you’ve given them the opportunity to talk throughout your presentation and you hear something that perhaps you didn’t know before or it sounds a little different or, oh, maybe something has changed. You don’t just blow by that to get to your next slide. Right. You dig into that.[00:21:00]
Yeah. If you don’t have then time to cover your other three uh, points in detail, that’s okay. Mm-hmm. You still wanna make sure you watch the time and get to the end where you can summarize because they’ve heard your three main points. They may not have heard the details of all of them because you have followed their path, rather than making sure you hit every slide right.
You’ve gotta watch the time and make sure you get to the point where you can do your summary and wrap [00:21:30] up and leave them with those words.
[00:21:32] Yvonne Lines: Yeah, exactly. And it’s fine to ask as you’re going along. Like, let’s say you’re getting a really great, uh, in-depth conversation. It’s fine to ask, you know, we’ve got five minutes left.
Would you like to speak about this topic or should we continue, um, with more details on this topic and, and or do you have more time for this conversation? And you know, as the dialogue [00:22:00] goes, you’ll figure out your narrative as well. So you need to be prepared with stories and details and. Uh, all kinds of information in case you’ve got, you know, a finance person in the room or the, the operations person in the room, or the tech person in the room or whatever.
But if you don’t know all the information about them going into the presentation and you never will, like, the more you get to know them, every time you have a touchpoint with them, you get to know them a little bit [00:22:30] better. You can adjust your presentation to meet their needs accordingly.
[00:22:35] Alice Heiman: Yes, absolutely.
And I do think that we need to, in sales, especially today, understand it is a long game, longer than you probably want it to be, but it’s not one presentation and oh my gosh, they’re gonna buy from us. Right? Getting that presentation at the right point in the customer journey, and then what’s gonna come after that.
To keep them interested and engaged [00:23:00] and learning about the solution and, and making a decision, right, to keep moving forward. So I think positioning that sales presentation is important too, just because some com big company that you wanna work with so bad asks you to do a sales presentation, doesn’t mean you should.
And you’re thinking, oh my gosh, what are you talking about? How could we say no, but. We need to teach them how to buy from us and doing a sales presentation as the next thing may not be really the best [00:23:30] thing. And so we need to be prepared to guide them. Oh, understand, you’d love a sales presentation to all these people.
Here’s how that would work. We would first, you know, wanna have a conversation with these two people and be able to get some more information from you. And then we would be able to put together a proper presentation.
[00:23:50] Yvonne Lines: Absolutely. And you know, I’ve worked with one client, um, it was for a request for proposal presentation, and [00:24:00] they did their due diligence leading up to this presentation, to the point where when they got to the presentation.
The prospect actually said to them, you know what? We are not taking this any further. We know we wanna work with you because you’ve taken the steps to build towards this presentation and really understand our needs, and we feel like you’re the only one that gets us. So congratulations. Here’s the business.
[00:24:28] Alice Heiman: Right, because Exactly. Because [00:24:30] every other team that got asked to come and do a presentation is just gonna say yes and show up.
[00:24:34] Yvonne Lines: Yeah, that’s, and
[00:24:35] Alice Heiman: we’re not gonna do that. Yeah. ’cause we can’t, we can’t do a proper presentation when we do that. Right. All right, so there’s another important thing I really wanna make sure we cover, which is, uh, how exactly how much information about my company do I need to put in this presentation?
Because Okay. I know you’re gonna laugh, right? Because you’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. It’s like the first 20 slides are all about. [00:25:00] You know, my company, my product, my service. Right. It is like, and even diving into company history ’cause we think it’s so important that they know 25 years family owned or you know, founded by founder and, and I think founder stories are important and can be told in like 30 seconds.
Right? But I mean, I see these decks with. Slide after slide after slide before we even get to what the customer wants or needs. You know what they [00:25:30] told us? But on the other hand, I’m like, yeah, they probably need to know a little bit about your company. So what’s the balance there? How do we get a little information about our company in there?
[00:25:43] Yvonne Lines: You’re killing me here, Alice. Like, it is so true. I worked with so many people, it was just like, here’s all about me, me, me, me, me, me, me. But it’s like being on a first date. If you. I really like this person. And you’re like, let’s say you go out for dinner and [00:26:00] you talk all about yourself. You know, all your interests, all the, your history, the fact that you were in a club when you were a kid, and you know your high school history and people you’ve dated before, people with testimonials that say you’re awesome, like.
And you’re not paying attention to your dates interests, like good luck getting a second date. Like it’s not likely to happen. And it’s the same with presentations. You’re talking all about [00:26:30] yourself, your history, your um,
[00:26:34] Alice Heiman: I got a page with a hundred logos on it of all our clients for you. Here you go.
[00:26:40] Yvonne Lines: Yeah.
It’s like this. These are all the people I’ve worked with before. And aren’t I wonderful? It is not. This generation is the most of the decision makers that are here in this world today are, they want to know all about them. They want everything personalized. They care a little bit about you. You [00:27:00] know where they’re gonna be polite, but mostly they wanna know what you can do for them.
That’s where they want you to spend their time. They can Google you, they can, uh.
[00:27:11] Alice Heiman: Well, they already have, right? They’ve asked the people they know, they’ve Googled, they’ve used ai, right? They, yes. They already think at least they know a lot, right? They have gathered a lot of information. Whether that’s useful or more confusing, that’s a whole nother day of us having a [00:27:30] discussion.
But anyway, they have done their homework before they got there.
[00:27:34] Yvonne Lines: Yeah. Um, and at least they’ve done a little bit of homework and the rest of it, they don’t really need to know. Especially if you are in, say, a request for proposal situation, or you’ve already sent a written proposal, you’ve already sent some materials ahead of time, you don’t need to review it.
Don’t assume that your, your prospect hasn’t read it. Maybe they have, maybe they haven’t. Maybe they’ve just skimmed through the parts that are relevant to them, but treat them as [00:28:00] intelligent people that really want you to spend your time. Solving their problems, you know, as opposed to talking all about you when they say, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Like, sure, you can start with a tiny bit. Um, you know why? Like if you are saying that you’re happy to be there, why are you happy to be there? Like, what does that industry mean to you? What does, uh, that company mean to you? Uh. [00:28:30] Reflect it back on your audience again. Yeah. How
[00:28:33] Alice Heiman: does it apply the fact that you’re 20 years old as a company?
How does that apply to them? Why does it even matter? Right. So if you’re going to say it, you’ve gotta weave it in to what’s important to them. Like maybe, you know, they had told you they had a bad experience with a startup. Well, we’ve been around for 20 years now, and we’ve helped. You know, over a hundred companies like yours with this same challenge done with that, now move on.
Right? But [00:29:00] weave it into what matters to them.
[00:29:02] Yvonne Lines: Oh, it’s such a relief hearing you say that. It really is. Um, yeah. Uh, it’s your opportunity to refer, to talk about their challenges that you can solve with your solutions, and as you’re talking about your solutions, that bit of history about you, it’s going to come out.
Um, often they’re just saying, tell me a bit about yourself, because what else do you say? How do you kick it off? If you are not taking control of the [00:29:30] presentation and not starting it off with a strong hook, then, you know, what else are they going to say? They don’t have, they don’t, they’re not prepared with the hook themselves.
That’s your job. So, um, yeah, your experience should come across in your case studies or other stories or the way you present yourself. And the way you solve their challenges,
[00:29:51] Alice Heiman: right? So we don’t need five slides about our company, and in fact, we don’t need any slides about our company because we can weave it [00:30:00] in and it, it’s so much more applicable and they get it when they need it and where it fits versus.
You’re going to just go through these slides that they’re not gonna remember any of it anyway. Right?
[00:30:11] Yvonne Lines: Yeah. You’re invited in because they know a little bit about you. Yeah. They wanna know more.
[00:30:16] Alice Heiman: Your reputation is good enough to get in the door, and that’s, that’s awesome. Yeah. Okay, great. So we can ditch all those slides about our company.
Start with a great hook because we’ve done our research, we’ve done our homework, we [00:30:30] know what is gonna get their attention. Um, we’ve made this beautiful outline so we know what our, uh, three key points are that we wanna get through. We have the details on those, specifically how this solution will help them.
Those are the details of our three key points. Mm-hmm. And then we. Stop along the way, uh, to engage them. So let’s talk about that and, and I’ll just say before that and then of course after the three key points we have to leave time, you know, look at the clock. [00:31:00] 10 minutes. Okay. We got it. Ask ’em if there’s anything else they wanna discuss, especially if they got really stuck on one point and really dug into that, which is fine, but we need that five minutes at the end to wrap up and, and get those words right for them to be able to leave with.
So, um, because sometimes we don’t have, we get 30 minutes, we get 45 minutes. It’s not a lot of time to do a presentation. Uh, how do we. Take what we’ve [00:31:30] prepared and weave the questions in so they get a chance to respond to what we’ve shown them, but not have this get outta control and go, you know, way too long.
And then we can’t get to the end and we’re like, ah, it’s time we’ve gotta go. You know?
[00:31:46] Yvonne Lines: Uh, yeah. You know, that comes with practice and just, uh, knowing that the follow-up can be really important and a great place for details. So, you know, it’s hard sometimes when you’ve got, say, a long talker on your [00:32:00] team or one of your prospects is a long talker to interrupt them.
It’s a lot easier when it’s on your team to prepare for that ahead of time and, and let them know like you’ve got this amount of time to talk about this subject in detail. You can go less, can’t go more, uh, unless you know it’s given. But when the long talkers your, one of your prospects. It’s a good opportunity to listen, but it also takes a lot of tact to steer [00:32:30] them in a direction where you can follow up with more details, um, and then keep moving on to make sure you hit those three key messages in your main takeaway.
Feel free to dump some of the the explainer stories and some of the details, but get those messages across,
[00:32:47] Alice Heiman: right? So it’s just like, yes, we’re gonna get to that. Let me give you these three key points and then I’ll come back. But you’ve gotta have that confidence to really interrupt politely, [00:33:00] right?
[00:33:00] Yvonne Lines: Yes.
And know that, you know the follow up is really important as well. If you’re feeling like there, you’ve got so many details that you didn’t get across, you can follow up with those details. And if somebody’s at like getting really into the weeds on one topic, but you haven’t got to your other points yet, then.
You know, politely interrupt and let them know that they will have all their questions answered in a follow-up on the next [00:33:30] day or next few days or whatever.
[00:33:32] Alice Heiman: And I think you said something that’s critical practice, right? I never see teams practicing enough, like run through this presentation several times with some people who are pretending to be your audience.
Mm-hmm. Who will interrupt you and say weird things and ask you questions and derail you. Right. Practice. And I’m not saying okay, for every single sales presentation you do, but we’re talking about the big ones. This is the customer you [00:34:00] really want. Right? This is, or the customer you really wanna keep or grow, or it’s the prospect that you would love to land, right.
When, when the stakes are high. Mm-hmm. You gotta
[00:34:12] Yvonne Lines: practice, especially if you’re with a team, you need to have that sense of team cohesion. I had a client once that they had a high stakes presentation and they nailed it. They felt they nailed it. All the information and their feedback, they didn’t win the job.
[00:34:30] Their feedback was that it didn’t look like you were one team working together, which broke my heart because I know this team and I know how much they support each other, but they didn’t come across that way in the presentation. I suppose they probably did the, you know, one person talks for 10 minutes then and so and so is going to talk about this next and then pass it on as opposed to p When you practice that just naturally [00:35:00] gels and you come together and you, you know, you can have a little banter between each other.
You can feel like a cohesive team. So that practice is really. Crucial for one of these high stakes presentations. Also, a lot of salespeople who are super experienced, of course, they don’t wanna practice. Why would you? Right? But if you are with a team, you have to realize that you’re helping the rest of the team understand what you’re going to say, gel with [00:35:30] what you’re going to say, gel with you personally.
And if you’ve got less experienced people on the team, they’re going to be learning from you as you’re practicing. Also, some of the things that you are saying, you’ve said for years and years and years may not be relevant to that client. And you’re so used to saying those things and saying things in a certain way.
It’s in that practice where one of your teammates may say, you know, what do you really mean by that? Or is, is that really relevant to this client? And [00:36:00] they’ll call you on it. They can’t call you on it in the middle of the presentation, but in the practice they can.
[00:36:06] Alice Heiman: Yes, absolutely. The other thing I love about practice is timing.
When you just, you put this deck together and you’ve always got way too much, there’s just never a time when you don’t have way too much in your deck. I’ve just never seen it. We do tend to grow. You ex, you know, you expect that you’re not gonna cover everything and that’s fine, but if you pr it’s like, Hey, we have 30.
To do this, and we also have to get some of their questions [00:36:30] in you practice, and then you’re like, oh my gosh, there’s no way. So we start cutting slides, right? It’s like this topic is not as important as this topic. And you actually hone your presentation by doing that practice, just like you said, by hearing what each other says and maybe helping them say it a little bit differently or saying maybe we don’t need that.
And you see, can it actually fit in the time that you have to present
[00:36:55] Yvonne Lines: because. Another thing, one of my pet peeves is people really [00:37:00] try to stop, talk really fast, and then they stumble over the words and then you can’t understand what they’re saying because they’re trying to hit their timing. Slow down cut thing.
Cut out the parts that are not relevant and people are, your audience is going to understand you. Better than if you try and talk really fast.
[00:37:17] Alice Heiman: Yeah. And this don’t feel like this is your only chance to share anything or ask any questions. That’s what I’m saying. Sometimes you are not ready to present yet because you don’t have enough information to do a good presentation.
[00:37:30] And we don’t also want them to think that this one presentation is enough for them to decide. Right. This is one step in their buyer journey. There are going to be more, and it’s our job really as a selling team to help them understand how to buy from us in the very best way so they get the very best result because somehow we think magically everyone knows how to buy from us.
But if they’ve never done that before, how on earth would they [00:38:00] know? Right. And they might think they know how to buy from us, but we know that they don’t. Right. And so it’s, it’s a give and take, right? Because they have to do certain things on their end. We have to do certain things on our end. And it’s our job as a seller to guide that buyer journey so that they know what to expect next and what is the best way.
And yeah, in some cases. It might make them mad if you say, yeah, we can’t present until we’ve done [00:38:30] these things. Mm-hmm. But if that’s the case, you probably didn’t wanna sell to them anyway, because that means you’re pro. If they’re not letting you prepare properly, you are just one of three bids they needed to get so they could choose the one they already had chosen anyway.
[00:38:43] Yvonne Lines: That’s a good point. How frustrating, because you put so much effort into these presentations and lasher, even if you don’t win, you might, you know, get a foot in the door so that next year you do win or, or whatever. But really, if you’re going to put this effort in, [00:39:00] you want to do it well.
[00:39:02] Alice Heiman: Absolutely.
Absolutely. And to do that, you know what you need to do. So don’t rush to be ready to present when you don’t even really know what to present. It’s just gonna put you in a bad situation. Right. So do the preparation you need and let them know, yeah, we would love to do that presentation for you. Here’s what we’re going to need in order to be able to do that.
And like you said, that one client that won that RFP before everybody even had a chance because they had done so much [00:39:30] preparation on the front end, they’re like, wow. This has been an amazing experience already. Of course, we wanna work with you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:39:38] Yvonne Lines: Oh my gosh. All right. So, and I can tell you, um, that that same, uh, client, um, when I started working with them, they were winning about half their bids.
And after using this process, they started winning about 80% of the bids. It makes a huge difference. [00:40:00] Makes
[00:40:00] Alice Heiman: a huge difference, yeah. Being prepared for the presentation meeting that you’re gonna do to put it all together. Right. Getting that outline, everybody agreeing, getting the right words in there. Not too much.
Just the right amount, making sure there’s opportunity for them to interject, ask a question, respond, and then practicing. So you, you are used to working with each other and doing what I call tossing the ball. So [00:40:30] it’s not like now Ben will talk about the strategy. No. It’s like, oh gosh, Susie, you’re, um, you’re the one who knows that best here.
Uh, why don’t you talk about that for a minute? Right? Yeah. Or even saying, Hey, Yvonne, on that third point, interrupt me and say that thing that you always say about it. Okay. You know, like practicing that.
[00:40:50] Yvonne Lines: Yeah. And the number one thing that I, I can’t re, I can’t say this enough, is be audience-centric. Know what your audience needs [00:41:00] from you and focus on solving their problems.
[00:41:03] Alice Heiman: Yeah,
[00:41:04] Yvonne Lines: absolutely.
[00:41:05] Alice Heiman: Oh my gosh. Well, we’re both so passionate about this, but you know, everyone that’s selling today who is selling to companies larger than themselves or big prestigious companies, they’re all going to be in a position where they’re going to have a high stakes presentation and they need to be way better prepared for those if they wanna win more.
And like you said. [00:41:30] Had one client was about 50%, but by doing this methodology, they got up to 80%. Imagine that’s huge for your company to win that many more deals.
[00:41:40] Yvonne Lines: Yeah, it’d be amazing. And honestly, if you put this much effort in, you wanna win. Right.
[00:41:46] Alice Heiman: I wanna win for sure. Okay. Well just before we go, I have a couple of questions that I’d like to ask you, and the first one is, what is a book, especially regarding presentations, right, that you think [00:42:00] every CEO should read?
[00:42:02] Yvonne Lines: Okay. I know that this person has been on your podcast and you are very fond of her. Nancy Duarte, her company, Duarte um, dot com, and she, they’ve got a few books. Uh, resonate is a really good one. Slideology is another good one. But as a resource in general, they’ve got webinars. They’ve got online courses.
They’ve got. Articles. Uh, she’s on several [00:42:30] podcasts. Um, look her up, look up her company, what they stand for. Everything that we’ve just talked about right now is in line with what she teaches as well. And she
[00:42:39] Alice Heiman: has a TED Talk too, so I’ll put the links to the podcast that I did with her. And her Ted talk in the show notes for everyone because the, it’s just like absolutely.
For doing presentations. You gotta, you gotta know Nancy, right? You absolutely have to know Nancy.
[00:42:56] Yvonne Lines: Okay. You actually know her.
[00:42:59] Alice Heiman: [00:43:00] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do actually know her. Oh, she’s, you know, she’s, I’m like a huge fan of hers, but we’re also friends ’cause she’s just done so much in the field of presentations.
And anyone who doesn’t know her story look it up because, I mean, she started like way back on a Mac, you know, doing presentations for people and she’s done some presentations for some very, very famous people, so. Very cool. All right. And then the last question, what does [00:43:30] every CEO need to know to win in this market?
[00:43:35] Yvonne Lines: So I would say I wholeheartedly endorse a sense of of adventure in life and presentations. So be open to change. Recognize that the market has changed is a different generation. And I don’t know if you can swear on this show. I can. You can. Don’t be a seagull that comes in at the last minute. [00:44:00] Shit’s on everything.
So get involved from the start. Set your team up well from the start, and then let them run with it. Because if you come in at the end, you’re going to be confused about, oh, well we’ve always done things this way, and now you wanna do it. And I’m, I, I’m, I’m not really getting it. So change everything.
Whereas if you set them up from the start with the principles of being audience centric, having a main takeaway and [00:44:30] three key messages, and then let your team run with it, then I think you’ll be in really good shape. Awesome.
[00:44:38] Alice Heiman: Oh my gosh. Yon, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was really fun to talk with you about this topic because like I said, we’re both very passionate about it.
[00:44:48] Yvonne Lines: We are. Yeah. This was a joy. Thank you so much for letting me share my knowledge. All right, well, I will talk to you
[00:44:55] Alice Heiman: again soon, I’m sure. Take care.
0 Comments