3 Essential Elements of Successful Sales Presentations—An Interview with Tom Kennedy

RainToday.com's Podcast: Marketing & Selling Professional Services

Before you give a presentation—before you even think about launching PowerPoint—you must know three essential things: audience, result, and message (ARM).

Your presentation, whether it's a sales presentation or a keynote, is always about the audience, says communications coach Tom Kennedy. It is never about you or your company. You want to know where your audience is coming from and what you can learn from them.

"It's always about them. The 'I/me' talk is terrible. The 'let's start with about us'—they don't care about us. They don't want to hear about us … unless [it's] about us and what that means to them," Kennedy says.

Once you know your audience, you need to determine what result you want to accomplish and then what your message is. Define those things first and then build your presentation around them, Kennedy says.

Listen as Kennedy defines ARM, explains the biggest mistakes people make when giving presentations, discusses how to make presentations more engaging, and previews his upcoming webinar, Persuasive Presentations: How to Capture the Hearts and Minds of Buyers.