Necessary skill depends on the situation

Actually, there are some types of presentation opportunities as shown in 4 types of presentation and necessary skill depends on the situation. In the case of customer meetings for a promotion or negotiation, listening skill is more important than speaking skill. We don’t need to speak like Steve Jobs, Simon Sinek, and Ric Elias.

The business meeting is different from an academic conference and panel discussion which are mainly focused on providing information one-way and is not necessary to be interactive.

Listening is more important than speaking in a customer meeting.

This is because it has to be interactive.

As I posted in 6 Tips for a business presentation, interactive communication is essential for a business meeting. If we are not interactive, we may be able to provide our information but we can’t get customer information and we can’t discuss anything and can’t propose anything. As a result, we can’t promote our product and negotiation won”t be successfully done.

No Listen No Understanding

To be interactive we have to understand customer interest first. If we don’t listen to customers we can’t understand customers’ needs and concerns. 

As I proposed in the post of The most important thing for a business presentation, listening is the most critical skill for a business meeting.

In other words, we have to avoid the common presentation mistake.

Don’t lose customer interest

I know a marketer who kept explaining the material during a customer meeting. He didn’t ask the customer anything, spoke for about 30 minutes, and finally asked, “Do you have any questions?” Of course, there is no question and comment from customers. It looks his presentation was one-sided and boring so customers seemed to lose interest and someone even left the meeting room in the middle of his presentation. I think he didn’t understand the customer’s problems and interests. So he didn’t get anything. What was the goal of his presentation? It was like a presentation at an academic conference.

Long story short, if we don’t listen to a customer, the customer lost interest in you and won’t listen to you. 

Don’t lose your trust

Let’s assume we have 3 kinds of products such as A, B, and C and our priority of meeting is to Get the information first then Provide information. So at the beginning of the meeting, we will get some customer information. If we know the customer is interested in product C, we can talk about only product C.

However, I saw many presenters do explain product A and B even if they know the customer is not interested in those products… In this situation, it’s good to explain and discuss product C first and then we still have time we can introduce product A and B just for customer reference.

Why do we ignore customer feedback? This is because we are not so flexible to change our plan. Before the meeting, we don’t know which product the customer needs. So we can’t prepare slides in advance and have to change our slide order and key point of each slide during the meeting. However, it’s not so easy.

So if we can’t explain our product based on customer feedback, it seems we ignore customer feedback. If we ignore customer feedback we lose our trust.

We need Speaking skill

If you imagine the great presenters, who do you think of?

As I wrote in  3 Must-Check presentations to inspire you, I picked up Steve Jobs, Simon Sinek, and Ric Elias.

Needless to say, they are great speakers. So we may misunderstand speaking skill is most important. It is true for public speeches such as the ceremony at Stanford University and TED talks.

I wrote the post about how to deliver a presentation. Please check How to deliver a business presentation.

Thank you for reading this post.