Have you taken a look at your sales presentation lately? How does it stack up? Are you asking questions, that you DON”T already know the answer to? Last night I spoke with a salesman at the mall that totally stuck his foot in his mouth, you aren’t going to believe this!

Last night I was at the mall, picking up a few books, when my wife decided that she wanted to go into the Yankee Candle Store. We had our Five year old with us that just loves to put his hands on everything, and with the amount of glass in that store, I decided it best if I waited outside of the store for her.

In front of me was a Sprint kiosk. We all know how aggressive cellular sales people can be and the guy behind the counter was no different. I was holding my sons hand and leaning against the wall when he said, “Who is you cell carrier?”

“T-Mobile I said,” trying to act uninterested.

“Oh, and what phone do you have.”

“The HTC Sensation” I responded, ” But I just got it, about a month ago, and have no intention of switching.”

“No problem,” he said. “How often do you use the internet.”

“All the time.”

“Really? Come here a second I want to show you something that will blow your mind!”

I took a look in the candle store and saw my wife still shopping so I thought, why not! Once at the counter he asks to see my phone, so I showed it to him. He acted unimpressed and shows me one of his.

“Like I said before,” I started. “I have no intention of switching, I really like this phone.”

“No problem, I just want to show you how fast the internet is. Do you have YouTube on your phone?”

I tell him that I do and he proposes a speed test. We bring up the same video in a YouTube search and he says, “This is going to blow you away, on the count of three we will click on the video and you will see how much faster Sprint is than T-Mobile.”

At this point I figure Sprint is going to win, I mean why would a salesman paint himself into a corner if he didn’t already know what the outcome would be. Not only did my phone win the speed test, it did it with ease!

Looking slightly embarrassed he says, “I’m going to go sit in the corner now.”

“Why would you do that if you didn’t know the outcome?” I said.

Switching the subject he asks me how much I’m paying then proceeds to sell me on price.

Let that sink in. What just happened there? What could this guy have done different? For one, he could have known what was going to happen before he did it. Some people may argue that maybe Sprint wins 7 times out of 10, but then I would ask them, “What about the 30% of the time where he looks like a fool?”

We all know that sales is a numbers game, so why would you start off your presentation by cutting out 30% of the people. Why turn off 30% of your prospects?

I ask you this? Where in your presentations are you turning people off? What can you do in your own presentation to increase the likely hood of making a sale?

Where can you tighten up your presentation? Let me know in the comments below.