It’s true: if your sales pitch isn’t air tight and laser focused, you won’t see the results you want from your presentation. In other words, your potential client will be ready to move on to the next product or service, leaving you and your lousy pitch in the dust. 

What makes a sales pitch lousy and what steps can you take to avoid them?

Tim Wackel, Founder and President of The Wackel Group, is here to ensure you never fail a pitch again. 

On this episode of Evolved Sales Live, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with Tim to discuss how to deliver highly effective sales pitches and presentations that will keep the sales flowing in.

Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!

Meet Tim:

Tim Wackel is the founder and president of The Wackel Group, a training and consulting firm dedicated to helping organizations find, win and keep customers for life. He combines more than 25 years of successful sales leadership with specific client research to deliver high-impact programs that go beyond today’s best practices.

Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!

Jonathan Fischer 0:04

It is time for another power packed episode of Evolve sales live. Welcome back. I'm Jonathan Fisher. If you're a sales leader, it's all about the numbers, increasing the amount of appointments qualified prospects pipeline closed business, it's all in your obsession, and efforts to boost these numbers are usually focused on tactical improvements or personnel. But what about your pitch? We've all been through boring drawn out on motivated demos, presentation sales calls. But what if that's you or your people? Are you missing sales by missing it with your pitch? Well, today's guest is the perfect person to help us up our game. Tim Wakil leverages decades of experience in sales leadership, starting when he was top producer and 10,000 person sales organization, and moving on to executive leadership of a fortune 500 company and a fast growing Silicon Valley startup, which he was instrumental in bringing to a successful IPO. Today, he works as a trainer and consultant helping companies large and small increase success. And his client list includes many blue chip companies such as Allstate, Cisco, HP, Raytheon, and many others. And lucky for us, one of Tim's favorite things to do is help fix lousy sales pitches. Great to have you with us today. Tim Wackel.

Tim Wackel 1:20

Thank you, Jonathan, appreciate the introduction.

Jonathan Fischer 1:23

So a quick reminder to our audience being live, we invite you to participate with your questions start to send those into the chat here. And as time allows, we're going to include as many of those as we are able. So Tim, if we could start off tell us a little bit more about why you got into doing the kind of work that you do every day.

Tim Wackel 1:41

So long story short, Jonathan, I'm actually an electrical engineer who was not very good at soldering. So early on in my career, I was given the opportunity to go into technical sales. And I spent the first 20 years of my career working in corporate America leading growing managing sales teams. And then 20 years ago, I really kind of had the opportunity to strike out on my own and really follow my passion for helping salespeople perform at a higher level. So for the past 20 years, I've been helping salespeople really just maximize their talents and their skills to to optimize results.

Jonathan Fischer 2:16

That's really cool and rewarding work. I would imagine.

Tim Wackel 2:19

It is. I mean, who doesn't love working with salespeople? I mean, they're just it's the best.

Jonathan Fischer 2:23

Yeah, yeah. So what have been some notable accomplishments in your consulting and training career, if you don't mind?

Tim Wackel 2:29

You know, I think every day I show up at the office is notable, to be honest with you. I was surprised it was successful. Jonathan, when I first started this gig, I rented an office space, I had a card table, I had a folding chair and a landline. And for about the first three days, I just came in and checked to make sure I had dial tone. So you know, the ability to build a business, I didn't know that I had the chops to do that. And, you know, there's a lot of rejection, a lot of figuring things out on your own. I mean, when you when you jump from the corporate mothership, where you've just got resources all over the place to try and run your own gig. It's been a very challenging but very rewarding experience.

Jonathan Fischer 3:08

Well, I can only imagine. Well, our topic today is anatomy of a lousy sales pitch. And we definitely want to get into as many specifics today as we can. But could you speak broadly? What do you think's going on with pitches out there today? What are some just general mistakes? And why do you think those are being made?

Tim Wackel 3:26

Well, you know, I, I think what I find Jonathan is I think a lot of salespeople have never been taught how to properly plan, prepare, or deliver a presentation. And more often than not, what happens is somebody else inside the organization, an executive, somebody in marketing, somebody in product development, maybe a product manager puts together this deck, and then and then throws it over the firewall to the salesperson and they open it up, and they've got absolutely no clue. But they take it and they run to customers with it. And it's just, it's not good. And it's nobody's fault. But nobody's ever really, I believe, stepped away from the province and wait a minute, there's got to be a better way. Because when you when you ask people, Hey, when's the last time you sat through a really clear, concise and compelling presentation? That's they got to think most of the presentation we sit through are just God awful.

Jonathan Fischer 4:18

Yeah,sad. But true. Well, you have 10 criteria that you use to actually measure any sales pitch. And and we could do this with our own pitches, right? And maybe we can see is it lousy, and the good news is, when you find out what the problem is, that's how you can correct it. So we'd love to do, I don't know that in our quick half hour, we're going to make through all 10. But for our audience, we're going to make available, you've had a lot of great content, and there is a downloadable, basically a white paper that goes through these 10. So when we when we missed today, never for your audience, you can definitely gain access to the rest of that content. And Tim does a lot of additional training offerings on this as well. But let's dive into one of the first ones here. The first one failure to understand Your audience. So first of all, if you could define that and kind of just give us give us some of the details on that.

Tim Wackel 5:05

So here's what happens. If I'm coaching you on a presentation, or one of the first questions I'm gonna ask you is, I'm gonna say, Jonathan, how much do you know about your audience? And typically, the response I get is I get names, titles, and email addresses. And and that's all you know, don't get out of the car, do not get on the elevator, it is way too early for you to be pitching ideas. So if we don't really understand our audience, what happens, Jonathan is we get up and we talk a little bit about everything, right, we throw it all against the wall, hoping something's going to stick, and we immediately start disconnecting from our target audience. And so I really challenge people to do a lot more research to probe before you pitch. You know, before I show up, I want to know who's going to be in the room? Why are they there? What are they hoping to learn? What would be appropriate next steps? What kinds of objections am I likely to face? And so it requires that we do a little more homework upfront. But then that allows me to customize my message that when I deliver it, the audience goes, Yeah, that's exactly what we wanted to hear today.

Jonathan Fischer 6:09

That makes a lot of sense. And I think that in the day and age of LinkedIn, and other opportunities to do research, there's almost no excuse not to get to know folks a little bit, would you recommend actually trying really hard to make some kind of personal connection? If you can, as well, prior to any sort of presentation, whether it's a zoom call, or whether it's an in person meeting,

Tim Wackel 6:27

I share with Jonathan, I think it just makes sailing so much easier. And here's kind of the here's how it manifests itself if people are looking like, how do I know if this is one of my challenges? When you look at your deck? Does your deck talk all about you? Your products, your people, your services, your organization? I mean, do you have that little map of the US with all the red dots indicate where all your sales offices are? That's, that's not helping, right? There should be information inside your deck that reflects that, hey, this is what we know about you. This is what we know about where you guys are at this is what we know about where you're trying to get to. And this is how we think we can help

Jonathan Fischer 7:01

you that makes all the sense in the world to make it about them. Well, and it dovetails nicely with the second criterion that you use to measure a pitch. And that is, is there a lack of a clearly defined objective? Tell us about that.

Tim Wackel 7:12

So question number one, as I said, if I'm coaching you would be how much do you know about your audience? And if you come back, do you know about your audience? Great. Question number two would be what is your presentation objective? And more often than not, I get a shoulder shrug people like I know what you're talking about. Here's the presentation objective. Jonathan, it's two questions in two questions, only the first question you need to answer is, what are you going to ask this customer to do? In other words, why should they be why should they be interested in listening to the pet that to this presentation, right? It's the old, everybody's listening to radio station wi I fm? What's in it for them? So you've not done your homework? If you don't understand what's in it for them, you don't have a presentation objective. So the first question is, what specifically is in it for your audience? And then the second question is, what specifically are you going to ask them to do so it's really kind of this one two punch of, hey, the reason I'm here today is I believe I can increase your sales by 30%. But in order to do that, you're going to have to engage my services as a sales trainer. And so you've got this quid pro quo of my hypothesis is I can help grow your business by 30%. But you're going to have to engage my services. And it gives people a reason, the number one, it gives your audience a reason to listen, which is good. But number two, you're telling them upfront, this is how I'm going to close this presentation. You know, I want you to buy my widget today, because I think it'll increase your sales by 20 million. What am I going to ask you to do? I'm going to ask you to buy my widget, why should you do it? Because I'm an increased sales by 20 minute 20 million. So you know, early on that at the end of this presentation, instead of saying, Are there any questions? I'm gonna say instead, hey, I hope I've demonstrated to you how this widget is going to help grow your sales by 20 million. And as I said, at the beginning of the presentation, what, if anything, is going to prevent you guys from taking that next step? So it, it just helps you get crystal clear on? What are you going to ask for? And why should they do it?

Jonathan Fischer 9:02

Do you think that takes a little bit of courage on the part of the presenter to go there? Right. Do you think that's part of it, you know, leave it ready to kind of open ended and see if they want to come to us as is that part of the issue?

Tim Wackel 9:11

Sure. Yeah. Because you know what you're taking, you're taking a shot in the dark sometimes sometimes, even though I say understand your audience, sometimes you don't get all the information. And sometimes Jonathan, you as a presenter won't know exactly where the Bullseye is. I'm going to tell you, that's okay. Because if your presentation simply lands on the target someplace, your audience is going to say, Well, wait a minute, that's, that's interesting. That's close. But what we really want to do is this instead, when you show up and you spray and pray, they're like, Well, you're not even in the right zip code. So you may not know the tip of the spear. But if you can just get close, you're going to have an engaged listener.

Jonathan Fischer 9:50

That makes a lot of sense. Well, then the next question I know that you're going to ask is are using too much data? And it seems like we probably should be concise on this point. Right?

Tim Wackel 10:00

I think every presentation should be built around three things and three ideas only. And, and what we find, Jonathan is that we've got agendas that have 10 1215 bullets on them. And people just can't comprehend that. If I showed up and I said, Jonathan, I want you to buy my widget, why I think we can increase your sales by 20 million. And you know what, Jonathan, today, I got 15 things I want to share with you. You were interested until I said, I got 15 things to share with you. But if I'd stay in, if I'd say instead, Hey, I've only got three things, I've only got three ideas you need to walk away with, you're like, really? Only three. It's provocative. It gets you engaged, you're like, really, there's only three ideas. And that's, it's it's not a Jedi mind trick. It's really about taking your information and parsing it into three big packages that customers your audience can get their head around.

Jonathan Fischer 10:49

Yeah, if I'm hearing you this is this is mostly about positioning, you may have to cover multiple data points, way beyond three number if you literally listed them. But if we position it that way, then we're not going to get the desired impact. So let's break it down. How can we categorize it by rubric? That makes it simpler for people that kind of am I hearing that correctly?

Tim Wackel 11:08

Yeah. What are the three chapter titles now inside each chapter that I may get some more details, but when when you walk away from my presentation, and you bump into a colleague in the hall? And the colleague goes, what, what was Walco pitch? And you can say, well, he wants us to buy his widget. And your colleague would say why? And you'd say, well walk on said he can save us 20 million. And your colleague would say, Well, what walk we'll talk about, and you'd say, well, they talked about their tools. He talked about their technology, and he talked about their track record, you become a walking billboard for me, because I made the presentation easy for you to understand and easy for you to remember.

Jonathan Fischer 11:40

Love it. Love it. So what's the next one? If we're if we're not going to bore them with too much data? What's the next issue we need to be aware of?

Tim Wackel 11:48

Well, I always like to, I sometimes find that there's a failure to excite or a failure to engage in what I'm talking about there as the first couple minutes of your presentation. You know, too many people start out. Hi, everybody, thank you so much for being here today. I know how busy you guys are, can you believe how hot it's been? Anybody watching the Stanley Cup Finals, right? And there's this. There's this chit chat that goes on. And I really like to see sales professionals start the presentation and started big and start at Bold and whether you're being provocative, whether you're being insightful, or whether you're being fun. The experience I want your audience to have is in those first few minutes, I want them to go whoa, hey, this is going to be different. And way too often people just kind of stumble into the rhythm of the presentation, I want you to I want you to stick that landing, and really get off on a short foot.

Jonathan Fischer 12:45

So on the excitement issue, can this be overdone? Are there risks of coming in with something? And you know, could it seem a little bit, you know, fake? Or could we get in our own way? If we overdo that?

Tim Wackel 12:56

Yeah. Oh, you bet you there is there is a good chance of that happening. What I will tell you, Jonathan, though, is I don't know how many hundreds of salespeople have gone through my Two Day boot camp. And I've not seen one, because we all have this self regulating. Gov, that we think, Oh, I'm gonna be big and bold and audacious. And you're not because that's self regulating. Gov. Right? Oh, taptap shut down. So I just I want people to, I want to see that personality of yours come through, I want you to be engaging, I want you to be insightful.

Jonathan Fischer 13:28

Yeah, that makes sense. I think as a person who does a lot of speaking, you never come off quite as excited as you as you actually think that you are, right, you need to kind of overdo it a little bit. It's like stage acting. It's not like acting in front of a camera that can see every little nuance, you kind of have to overdo it slightly. For to come across correctly. Is that would you is my point with that?

Tim Wackel 13:47

Yeah. And I've always told people that on on an enthusiasm scale of one to 10. If you come in and enthusiasm level of aid, the best your client is going to get his maybe five or six, there's some attenuation, there's not a 100% transfer of my enthusiasm. So if you come in at four, your client walks out of that presentation at a two. So I My point is we got we got some room to work. So if you come in and you're nine, that's good, you know, they're gonna walk away to six or seven, and that's what you want to accomplish.

Jonathan Fischer 14:18

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So we don't want to bore them, we definitely have a good level of excitement. And what about the actual presentation itself? We actually had a question from the audience, and we're gonna bring it in right now. And his name is Dennis he says that he was taught that if you've got more than 10 slides, no one's gonna retain it. Would you resonate with that? Is there a rule of thumb is even about that. Or you said there's death by PowerPoint is the term that you have used. Talk to us about that?

Tim Wackel 14:47

Well, so PowerPoint, I believe should be the most powerful application on your computer. And it's not because most people use PowerPoint as power paragraph, and it's not power paragraph. It's PowerPoint. And so we have to Too many sentences, too many complete paragraphs to smaller font. We don't we don't sell with images we don't sell with stories. And so to get back to the specific question, is there a limit to how many slides in the deck, not really, I like having a lot of slides because then the image is changing. And people aren't, especially in a virtual world, I want things moving and changing. My only rule of thumb is, when I look at a slide itself, I've got a six by six rule of thumb, Jonathan, which means if you've got more than six words across, and more than six lines down on any slide, that's probably too much meat. And what happens when you get too much meat is guess where your attention is going to be? Yeah, on the slide, because you know, everybody else in the audience is reading Warren Piece. And so you're going to try to read it as well. So free yourself up, use fewer words, use more images, and in my thinking, more more slides, because then you keep things moving. And it just, PowerPoint should really be the stimulus of you, as the presenter, see this line? It's like, oh, this is what I want to talk about next, or this is the next idea. You know, my rule of thumb has always been that, you know, somebody will call and say, Gee, Tim, Just could you send us a copy of your deck? And I'm like, I'm more than happy to send you a copy of my deck, but you're never gonna be able to figure it out. Yeah, because you need me to tell you the story. Right, right. And most decks because they are complete sentences, because they are complete paragraphs. Here, Jonathan, you really don't need to come to my office, just PDF the deck, email it to me, we'll read it make a decision. That is not what we want to see happen.

Jonathan Fischer 16:30

Right? Right. That makes a lot of sense to me. And if I'm hearing you correctly, it almost sounds like you wouldn't want to limit yourself by a number of slides, you might actually be you're hindering yourself. If you're following that six by six rule, you may need 20 slides to get there. But you're gonna be moving along, it's going to be in bite sized chunks, you're going to communicate more effectively. Is that Is that correct? And also, the other point you made too, I liked that a lot. If you're, if you as the presenter are not essential to getting the message across and just giving it away. That's probably doing it wrong. Right. You know, summary judgments can be made. And it's almost never in your favor in that case, correct.

Tim Wackel 17:06

That's right. PowerPoint is a visual aid, you are the presenter, you are the presentation. PowerPoint is just simply a prop. And when you rely too much on PowerPoint, you're giving the power to an application, you need to retain that power.

Jonathan Fischer 17:21

Yeah, I love that. Well, and part of it too, is that your personality is such a big key component of how you convey the message. There's not much personality and even the best designed, written presentation, right? I mean, world class copywriters can get a little, a little bit of personality into the copy, right? Typically, that doesn't come across at all. So I love what you're saying there. And we got a lot of resonating comments, by the way from our audience that one says, I've been trying to convince coworkers of this for years, you know, the deck isn't the entire presentation. So I love it. So death by PowerPoint, death by Google slide or whatever application you're using one avoid that. What's the next issue? And and this, this is an interesting one, you said? It's about eye contact. Talk to us about that?

Tim Wackel 18:06

Well, you know, I, I find I find that most of the sales teams I work with most of the sales professionals, I work with Jonathan make pretty good eye contact, but but most of us, myself included, we have a tendency to be grazers. So it's two to three seconds here to 30 seconds here to three seconds there. And when we're doing live presentations, obviously virtual is a different beast. But when we're doing live presentations, I really like to see presenters, lock in for five to seven seconds, and then and then move on to somebody else. And at first people like oh, that's just really creepy. What happens is, when you're in the audience, and the presenter is looking at you for five to seven seconds, all of a sudden, you're like, oh, my gosh, they're talking to me, I'm the most important person in the room. So I think it emotionally kind of connects that audience connects that customer gets them to listen to you. And then you as a presenter, are really just doing a series of these little mini conversations. And you're not this hummingbird of two or three seconds here, two or three seconds here, but you're really, you're really connecting with people on a deeper level. And it's you know, and again, are you going to be able to do all these things all the time perfectly, no, but when I look at presentations that really rock, the presenters making this kind of meaningful eye contact.

Jonathan Fischer 19:20

Yeah, you know, I really hadn't thought about that. But I can think of times where it's been both ways, the you know, the typical grazer thing, it's fine. But yeah, the one speakers that really are good at that they have stood out to me and I can even name a few some of the famous ones that in person, they're really good about that. And yeah, you start to feel like it's actually for you. It's so funny. It's just a human it's unconscious you can't even help it you know, it's not like we think about it rationally. They're just giving a speech. They don't know you. Unless they do right but they typically don't know you so but it still feels like that. So that is a very, very good tip. I like that a lot.

Tim Wackel 19:52

Well if I like if I have as a presenter embracing the barrier for you to check your phone underneath The table was slim to none, because I'm just grazing, you're like, he's gonna make seconds eye contact, he's onto somebody else. But if all of a sudden I'm doing seven to 10 seconds, you're like, I better not, I better not get the phone out, because at any point in time, he could come back to me again, and I don't want to be found out. So it's right. It's just a cute little trick, cute little tactic to help keep them in.

Jonathan Fischer 20:19

It is. Now one thing I have found them often presenting in instead, or I have, I'm gonna do much right now other than the one I'm doing right here, but I want to have been presenting it's often been in a virtual format. And it's often with multiple people. Now, I've used names in lieu of this, would you? Do you resonate with that? Are there other tips and tricks you would give to apply this insight to the virtual space?

Tim Wackel 20:40

I love that exactly. Yeah, you have to, you know, because and again, you got some of us kind of fallen asleep on you are thinking about checking their stock portfolio, and you're like, Hey, Robert, I'd love to get some feedback from you, Robert, what I just said, what part of that resonates with you? And what part of that would you like to push back on? And all of a sudden, Joe is like, Oh, my God, he just called out, Robert, you know, I probably better close my coloring book and pay attention. So it's,

Jonathan Fischer 21:03

it's good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that Candy Crush is gonna go well, and it gets back to the whole point of knowing, knowing ahead of time, who you're gonna be talking to, right? If you know a little bit about Bob, and what Bob's role is, then you can say something really relevant. And it's not just awkward, like a substitute teacher, but it's really connecting. And that can be super powerful as well. All right. So eye contact is really, really great. What so this next one, you mentioned, that lack of passion. Now what tell us what's the difference between this and the excitement piece that you mentioned earlier?

Tim Wackel 21:34

So that's a very good question. So excitement when I talk about excitement, it's his fate, it's this. At the very beginning, I want to be exciting or engaging, and maybe engaging might be a better word. But in those first two minutes, I really want to grab your attention. I want to say something provocative, say something funny, share something insightful. And as you go, Oh, my gosh, the passion part is really just purely delivery skills that has nothing to do with your deck has nothing to do with your message. It's all about the passion in your voice. When we're passionate. People believe us the more the more passionate you are about something, the higher your believability. You know, when we do this in the workshop, you know, we show different film clips. You know, remember the Tom Cruise and a few good men and him and Jack Nicholson, you know, do you want the truth? You can't handle the truth. It's like, okay. Is anybody in argue with Jack Nicholson in that moment in time? No. Why? Because Jack is very, very passionate about what he's sticking up for. So passion sells passion, always. Because if you're not excited about it, why should I get excited about it?

Jonathan Fischer 22:37

Yeah, that makes sense. It seems like you probably better be deeply in touch with your own motivations, and maybe even some of the outcomes you're seeking to create. For your audience. It's it strikes me right? Would you agree with that? And are there other ways you can maybe get in touch with your passion to present that? Oh,

Tim Wackel 22:52

no. Again, all this ties back. If I've done my homework, and I really believe I've done my homework and my my heart of hearts, Jonathan, I believe if you buy my widget, you're going to sell 20 million more this year, why wouldn't I be passionate about delivering that message to you? I am here because I can show you a way to produce another 20 million. Micah isn't this great news. And so when you do your homework, and you really understand the customer situation, and you really feel like you have a viable solution? How can you not be passionate? I mean, if salespeople were there to help, and got this teed up, they got a square hole, you got a square peg, who's not excited about that possibility?

Jonathan Fischer 23:31

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So the next one, then is looking nervous is a danger. Now? How do you even help that first of all, right? And are there some tips and tricks I mean, some people just feel butterflies, maybe they don't even know whether they do or don't feel nervous. So give some good recommendations on this, this is probably just as important, again, and keep in sort of that virtual versus in real space. The difference between those two talk to us about that.

Tim Wackel 23:58

So we all get nervous. Yeah, I don't have any practical advice on how to not get nervous. I was nervous before you and I started today. I think if you're not nervous, at some level, you probably need to go see a doctor. But what we want to be aware of is any kind of nervous tics we might have. So whether it's virtual or leading, you know, sometimes I see people in front of a room and you know, they kind of they kind of start doing the rocking back and forth. Or, you know, the guys, the men will put their hands in their pockets and start rattling the change. And I'm like, What's going on there, or people with a remote if you're doing PowerPoint, and they take that remote, and they thrust it at the screen like it's got some gyro in it. It's like you know, that's just a little Bluetooth, you don't need to violently throw that so it's, it's being aware of our little idiosyncrasies. And the number one tip there is record yourself. We all walk around with this device known as a digital phone and guess what, there's a recorder built into it. So whether you're practicing a virtual presentation, or whether you want to rehearse over presentation, just look for these ticks and these tendencies you seem to have and then just be aware of them.

Jonathan Fischer 25:06

That's good, that's good. Well, it's almost like fear in general nervousness is maybe a subset of fear. And somebody said, The Courage isn't the absence of fear, it's managing that fear and still doing what's a call upon you to do. So looking nervous is an issue that you can solve by practicing and being well prepared. Which brings us very nicely to your next point, right? Talk to us about rehearsal.

People don't rehearse. It's just that rare. Rare is the person that shows up in one of my workshops and is over rehearsed. And it's rehearsal. And this one I want all your listeners to understand it's actually physically rehearsing. Early on in my career, I get on the airplane. And I'd be sitting there in row 21, B of an American Airlines, Mt. 80, which is exit row aisle, and I'd have my computer open. And in my head, I'm going through the presentation. And at this, oh, I am just so charming here. And on this slide, I'm witty. And now I'm telling the story. And it's funny, because that little voice inside my head is a fantastic presenter. But then I'd get off the airplane and actually have to verbalize that. And all of a sudden, a little voice inside my head got shy. And he started stuttering and as like what happens. So when I say rehearse, it's the good old fashion, go through the deck stand up, to say the words out loud, because that's where you start picking up nervous tics. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes, you know what I mean? Jonathan, we have these little, you know what I mean? These little idiosyncrasies.

Tim Wackel 26:32

You don't I mean, I didn't just really spend some time rehearsing because people are like, I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous. It's like, trust me, if you rehearse this 25 times, I guarantee you're going to be less nervous, because you now understand the emotion of what you're trying to pull off.

Jonathan Fischer 26:47

Yeah, yeah. Love that. And maybe, you know, practice with colleagues instead of practicing on prospects, right, like, get some feedback, and Well, only if you want your children to eat, so you know. Right, right. I love it. Well, I think we've made it right, we're on the final one. Are we not ending with an inspirational deficit? We're not going to make that mistake today. So let's nail this one.

Tim Wackel 27:08

Well, you know, anyone that's inspirational deaf said, how do most What's the last slide in almost 90% of presentations that has two words on it? And it says, Thank you. We have done presenting. And it's like, Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's like we're a docent working in a museum. When when you finish your presentation, there needs to be a call to action. And if you'll remember I said you need to have a presentation objective. So up front, you say, hey, the reason I'm here today, I want you to buy my widget, why I think it's gonna help you produce 20 more million in sales. So at the end of the presentation, you recap. You go through your three talking points, the three big ideas and then you, you finish by memorizing a simple question. And it's like, Hey, guys, the beginning of this presentation, I said, I wanted you to buy my widget. Why? I believe I demonstrated to you I can help you sell 20. More million this year, I talked about three things and three things, only our tools, our technology and our track record. So in closing today, my final question to you is this What, if anything, is preventing you from taking that next step with me right now? And here's what's going to happen, Jonathan, nobody's going to take the next step with you. But silence is not an option. While I'm in front of that room, I want to hear your concerns. I want to hear your objections. I want to hear where you stand. Because when you when you end with Thank you. You pack up your stuff, you go back to the office, and you wait days, weeks, months, and you never hear anything back and you're like, Well, I never got any feedback. It's like, well, you didn't ask for feedback. So I want people to really book in their presentation and close by asking that that powerful closing question.

Jonathan Fischer 28:37

I love it. Well, my call to action to our audience today is grab yourself a copy of Tim's white paper on this topic. By following the link this is a recording, you're gonna go to the show notes. And if you're here with us right now, I just messaged our audience in the chat section, you can go to Tim wakil.com/training/anatomy-lousy-pitch. And get yourself that paper and learn other ways you can go deeper with this. Well, Tim, what a valuable conversation that we've had today. A quick reminder, by the way before we part ways that our podcast is sponsored by overpass. Overpass is the world's leading low cost platform for getting top notch talent quickly. Open your free account and discover just how easy it is by going to overpass.com Tim Wackel, thanks so much for being with us today on evolve sales.

Tim Wackel 29:31

Thank you, Jonathan.

Jonathan Fischer 29:32

Thanks to all of our audiences. Well, that's gonna do it for today. I'm Jonathan Fisher's signing off. Have a great rest of your weekend everybody