FAIL-SAFE Some salespeople will never feel comfortable stepping away from their presentation to turn on a computer. “Our top sales rep doesn’t use a laptop,” Esler says. “He was doing $2 million a year and we just never switched him.”
Some, on the other hand, can learn to like laptops. Even love them. Still, they need to be able to wing it when, for whatever reason, they don’t have the laptop to rely on. “We train all the salespeople on laptops,” Kuplicki says. “We also train by the book, because technology can fail and you have to be ready for that. I want technology to be an aid to the sale. I never want it to control the sale,” he says.
Even though Alure’s salespeople have both laptop and pitch book in the car, “the reality is that the use of the pitch book is extremely limited. The salespeople we hire are thirsty for bigger and better. They want better resources at their fingertips,” Kuplicki explains.
Those resources include, for some contractors, PowerPoint presentations or hybrids that use elements of various technologies to structure, control, and strengthen the sales presentation.
To help reps sell the Owens Corning basement finishing system, for instance, Alure loaded onto salespeople’s laptops a variety of PowerPoint presentations, video clips from Owens Corning, photos of company installs, and various news items referencing Alure. It’s a pitch book, with video.
And the sales manager at the $10 million window company, who was thwarted by rep resistance, is currently replacing the CD with a “business-style PowerPoint presentation that’s more like an electronic pitch book.”
“It will have bulleted items that the salesman uses as a memory-jogger,” he explains. “That way, he’ll be doing all the talking, but it will keep him on path, which is critical. He can choose not to use it, but that will be more difficult if the stuff you want him to cover is right on the page.”
One other advantage: Creating a PowerPoint presentation will be a small fraction of the cost of creating the original CD presentation.