Overview : Sales professionals are greatly empowered if they have fantastic public speaking skills. Read how public speaking will enhance your sales skills & ability.
Improving your public speaking skills can improve your earning capacity by 50% – Warren Buffett
If you’d like to boost your earning potential, the wise and legendary billionaire Warren Buffett has some great advice for you: master the art of public speaking. Buffett once told a class of business students of Columbia Business College that he would pay anyone in the room $100,000 for 10% of their future earnings. If they were great presenters, he would raise his bid by an amazing 50%! Buffett strongly believes that excellent public speaking skills makes an employee far more valuable.
But why does warren Buffett value public speaking skills so highly? What makes presentation skills so invaluable? The answer is fairly simple: people who have mastered the art of public speaking are generally far more confident than their peers, and they are therefore better brand ambassadors and sales people!
Sales is the bottom line, and possibly the most important skill for any business to succeed, and Mr Buffett knows this. For without sales, there can be no clients, and no profit.
Watch this short clip where Warren Buffett talks about the importance of public speaking skills in business: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHBRIzhbQ10
It stands to reason that some sales people are also naturally good public speakers. The reason for this is that sales is a naturally extroverted activity and profession and it usually attracts more extroverted personality types, especially the Driver personality type, which conveniently is also target-oriented. Sales is about meeting and breaking sales targets, and Driver personality types are lucky in that they are completely target-obsessed and they are also resilient (so rejection is water off a duck’s back).
The problem is that approximately 50% of the world is introverted and the trend in Sales has gone from the direct hard sales techniques of the late 20th century, to the softer relationship-oriented Soft sales phenomenon that is now the norm in our early 21st century world.
Whether you are an introvert or extrovert, sales skills can be learnt and polished. Learning how to be an excellent public speaker is probably the best and most effective way to fast track your sales skills and ability.
Investing in your public speaking skills can prove to be far the best investment you can make in yourself. No matter what your career, the essentials of self-confidence and the ability to deliver and sell your ideas effectively will always ultimately determine your potential to succeed.
Let’s explore how public speaking training and skills can help to build you and your sales teams. There is no other capacity builder quite like it.
Public speaking builds self confidence
Self-confidence is the most important quality for sales people and sales teams. It stands to reason that if you do not believe in yourself, nobody else will. We all need to ‘sell ourselves’ and encourage clients to like us and buy into us as people, before we can introduce our particular products and services.
Nothing can build your sales team’s confidence like public speaking courses. Presentation skills courses teach you the skills to confidently and assertively stand in front of large audiences to sell your ideas. We also teach you stress management techniques and show you how to control your nerves and anxiety. Negative thoughts can be re-framed and powerful people emerge at the end.
Learn how to make a great first impression
The TED Talks books will teach you that the highest impact points in any presentation are your first and last impressions. In public speaking, we call these your introduction and conclusion. Presenting is all about learning how to mask your nerves, and then hooking your audience’ attention with a clever and creative attention-getting hooks.
And if your hook is clever and engaging enough, you will have already sold your value proposition before you even start. Isn’t that first prize in the sales arena?
Learn how to connect and build a relationship with your clients and audiences
A presenter needs to learn how to engage and build a relationship with the audience. Unless an audience is engaged and interested, they are simply not listening to you. It is the same for sales. You need to mentally and emotionally ‘hook’ your clients.
Learn how to build a sales story / investment case
A ‘sales spiel’ is simply the storyline or an investment case or pitch in our public speaking world. Public speakers need to become experts at constructing speech story lines, pitches, or even shorter ‘elevator pitches’ in order to master their art.
The tighter and more convincing the storyline, the better the speech. The stronger and more compelling your sales pitch, the more credibility it has, and the more convincing it will be. Again, public speaking skills translate into excellent sales skills.
Learn how to think on your feet
Sales is all about learning to be spontaneous, handling objections and having the ability to think on your feet. There is no better way to learn to be spontaneous or to be more agile than on public speaking courses. Our public speaking programmes will teach you how to construct thought, think on your feet, and be a far more creative lateral thinker.
Learn how to handle objections
Sales people need to be able to handle and overcome challenging objections. The same skill applies to presenters.
Financial and investment presentations are all about qualifying and mitigating risk, and handling any objections that investors may have. The skills are the same, but public speakers learn how to handle opposition on a far larger scale in public. This is a great learning and practice for the real thing.
Learn how to influence
Whether you are selling or presenting, it all falls under the greater topic of influence and impact. Every time we present we realistically are trying to gain buy in for our ideas, products and services. There is no better way to learn these skills than to learn the art of public speaking.
Learn how to speak and influence the 4 personality types
Communication Guru public speaking courses will teach you about your own authentic presentation style. On top of this, we also teach you how to speak the deep subconscious language of your clients, audiences and stakeholders which makes it far easier for you to influence and to sell to them. There are 4 different subconscious sales languages – it is essential that sales people learn how to speak these languages.
Finish with a great Call to Action
The most important 3 words in any successful sales executive’s life are: “CALL TO ACTION”. There is nothing more important than making this vital call in order to close your sale.
Unless you ask for what you want, the chances of getting it are almost impossible. The same applies with pitches and presentations. You should always have a Call to Action at the end. A cliched “thank you” is sadly a complete waste of time.
Give them something to remember
Our instructor led public speaking courses in South Africa and abroad teach sales teams the sales skills about how to make an impact out there in the market, and how to make sure that your product or service is remembered. Making an impact and being remembered leads to an effective sales process, and our sales training courses are instrumental in your sales management processes.
If you want to improve sales, or be a top performer, or for more information on our various public speaking and effective sales programmes, e-mail the Communication Guru John French at john@johnfrench.co.za
Here is a link to Communication Guru, John French’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-french-73499939/
