When you’re speaking in front of multiple prospects at once, you’re going to have to modify your sales presentation to take the group dynamics into account.

The first thing to do is to figure out the different personalities and roles in the room. There may appear to be someone who is the leader, who’s managing the meeting and whom you should address throughout most of your presentation.

But you’ve got to be cautious not to direct all your attention to that person, because that may alienate other people in the room who might have a huge influence on the purchasing decision. The best way to manage this is to be cautious and include everyone in the room in your conversation.

Determine the decision-making process

To be effective with any group of multiple decision makers, it’s imperative that you understand the unique process the group will use to decide whether or not to make a purchase. The easiest way to understand the decision-making process is to ask directly how the team functions.

Selling to multiple decision makers means a series of decisions must take place, not just one. Try to find out what each prospect wants answered. When you do that, you’ll be able to provide the information that’ll satisfy everyone’s needs, which will then result in a favorable verdict and move the process along smoothly to the close.

Take control of the meeting

It’s almost impossible to gain the consensus of a group if you don’t take control of the agenda. A good way to do that is to turn the spotlight on them before you begin your presentation.

Example: “Before I begin, I’d like to ask each one of you what you hope to gain from this conversation.”

If you haven’t taken the time to get everyone’s goals on the table before you begin, you’ll find yourself with real problems. Suddenly you’ll be fielding questions from all areas of the company and the meeting may get out of control. Then the group’s confidence in your presentation may plummet. You can avoid this by being proactive and asking for their objectives right away.

Deal with tough questions

A mistake that some salespeople make is reacting too quickly to confusing questions. When someone asks you a question, don’t be afraid to ask them to elaborate if it’s not clear what they really want to know.

If people ask questions because they don’t understand something in your presentation, slow down or back up. Take responsibility. Say something like, “Maybe I wasn’t clear on this particular area,” or “Let me give you a little more information about that.”

Don’t take sides

When members of the group start to disagree among themselves, don’t take sides. You need to go right into a facilitation role, and flush out all the issues.

You can use an approach such as, “From what I’m hearing, some of you have concerns with budget (or whatever the case may be). But what I hear over here is that you’re more worried with quality and delivery issues. Are there any other concerns I should know about.”

By getting all the issues on the table, you can eliminate arguing and take firm control of the meeting.

Training tip: Ask your sales pros to discuss their most effective techniques for dealing with multiple decision makers. How do they get every decision markers issues out in the open without allowing the presentation to turn argumentative and ineffective?

Tags: agenda, conversation, presentation, sales meeting