If you’re going to be a successful sales person, you better be able to hold your audience’s attention during a sales presentation. We’re all pretty good at the opening, and the audience is usually pretty fresh and engaged. However, holding their attention throughout the entire time can be challenging. Most of the time, some of your key points are delivered in the middle of the presentation, making the audience’s attention more critical. Besides the obvious advice that you were taught in speech class 101, what can you do?
One technique that I’ve found very helpful is to give away gift cards for answering the right questions and interacting. I don’t mean $100 cards to Tiffany’s. Give away $1 Lottery tickets or $5 Starbucks cards – don’t take out a loan, just offer something to keep them engaged. The goal is to hold their attention, so the value is in providing something that rewards that behavior – it really doesn’t matter what the reward is (but don’t be too cheap). Let them know up front that you’ll be holding a contest at the end, asking three questions about your presentation. Offer the $5 gift cards for the right answers at the end (ask for hands or you’ll get the shouters competing with each other).
Make it fun, make it lively … your customers will love you for it.
