Barry –

I won’t take personal credit for the ideas we report. They have come from our research, observing top performing sales professionals, recognizing patterns of behavior and then searching for academic studies from various disciplines that would explain the repeated successes of the sales professionals we observed.

One of the reasons too much presentation can be harmful is that it places the sales person in the role of “lecturing professor” a position of superiority over the customer. Research on interpersonal relationships, specifically trust building has significant data to support why that is harmful. In short, many of the techniques we have been taught to do in selling, are at odds with what other, more formal disiplines have found leads to success. I would agree that there are many sales consultants that provide far too much anecdotal content, but rest assured, we at Prime Resource Group have done our due diligence and what we are reporting is statistically significant as a contributor to success.

A note to Bakin – You want to leave them remembering that you asked them questions they never thought to ask themselves. You want them to remember that you understand their situation better than anyone else they have spoken with and therefore they are left with the impression that you are the most equipped person to address their problem. We call it “exceptional credibility,” and you will achieve that via a conversation, not a presentation.

You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting 15 people who have brilliant, even revolutionary sounding ideas for what to do – or what not to do – during presentations, during the sales cycle, etc. However as someone whose education was in the hard sciences, I still believe that shouldn’t place much value in novel ideas or opinions unless they are backed up by some kind of impartial research. Does anyone do this (I certainly haven’t seen it).

Instead we typically get “experienced” consultants telling us about their “20 years in the field” and all of their successes. Unfortunately, they can’t know if they succeeded because of or in spite of their approach, or if it just wasn’t a significant factor. While those experienced, successful experts will vigorously defend their opinion, it’s simply a form of “argument from authority” which, if you’re wondering, is listed under “logical fallacies” in your logic textbook.

So Jeff, you have some interesting ideas – do you have any kind of evidence or research to back it up? What you say seems reasonable, but I’d want a bit more than that before I adopt your approach.