In our second part of persuasive selling we are going to talk about the summary (the previous article can be find here). Each part of the presentational format is essential. And explaining what each part means, can often be done with a paragraph or two. But some parts of persuasive selling require more detailed explanations. And the “Summary” is one of those parts that require this thoroughness.
Your Summary is Your Hook!
The summary is what hooks your customer. It comes at the beginning of your presentation. It is what gets her interested in your proposition. It is built on understanding her needs and aligning how these needs mesh with external factors. Therefore, the summary can be quite simple or it can be more thorough. For instance, during my first few years in the business, all of my presentations were short and delivered in a grocery aisle. I had to understand exactly what those motivating factors were for my buyer and get to the point right away.
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Buyers Want to Be Confident They Are Getting a Good Deal
Since most of my buyers were managers, assistant manager or aisle clerks, the factors that they cared about were around profitability and moving cases. They cared about things like mark up and margins. They wanted to be confident that any deal they agreed to, would make money for the store. And so, my summary was short and sweet and centered around profitability.
For instance, on one sales call I wanted to build a end cap of my fabric softener brand and I was trying to persuade the grocery clerk to allow me to do so. Since I knew he was a margin driven person, I simply asked him, “How would you like to lower the retail price on your number one fabric softener brand, and at the same time, increase your margin by five percent?” That was all that I needed.
Align Your Summary with Your Buyer’s Level of Responsibility
As my responsibilities increased and the folk that I had to present to had more buying responsibilities than just for the grocery department of an individual store, so did the thoroughness of my summary. There were times that my summary included industry and consumer trends and how those trends impacted the category; which in turn influenced the shopping behavior of customers in the store. On other occasions, in other jobs, I talked about government regulations, Wall Street’s influences, demographics, supply chain, inflation, etc. The purpose was simply to let the buyer know, how external factors were impacting the vertical in which he competed, and how I could help him continue to grow the business profitably.
Those factors could be positive or negative. But , regardless of which, I had to show my buyer the opportunity that those factors presented for her. Let’s look at another example.
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Include Compelling Information That Makes It Easy for Your Buyer to Say “Yes”
Back in 2013 I had the opportunity to call on a buyer with the United States Army’s Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA). I was selling a “Better For You” product. This meant that what I was selling had some nutritional value and health benefit. This was a refrigerated product. Frozen foods and refrigerated foods are difficult to get a product into. Why? Because these products require coolers and coolers are expensive. Secondly, the space in coolers is limited. There’s a lot of competition for that space. So, knowing that space limitations would be a primary objection, I decided to make sure that my summary included information that was so compelling, it would eliminate the space objection before it came up.
My summary included the state of fitness among American youth during 2013. In fact, through research I found that many young adults from ages 18 – 25 would not qualify for military service based on fitness. The fitness levels of our non-service military age population, at that time, put us at a national security risk. I did quite a bit of research on this and on current programs that were designed to get our military personnel to eat better. Coming in the door with a nutritional product, that didn’t add to health concerns, and was moderately tasty, was all I needed to make the sell – along with hours of research for my summary.
In Summary
So you see, when you summarize the situation, you are building a persuasive story that will help your buyer see how he benefits by buying into your proposition. You are simply building a story and then answering the “so what”.
In my next post I will jump into the next two parts of the persuasive selling format – the idea and how your proposition works. See you soon!
