Challenge: Connect with the audience in sales pitches to win a competitive market.

Optimum Lightpath faced a challenge. As a division of the publicly traded company Cablevision (one of America’s largest cable TV providers), it offers high-speed internet, digital cable, and other telecom services. A household name in the New York tri-state area, the company faced a serious risk of losing market share to energetic telecom and entertainment brands Verizon and Time Warner in a fiercely competitive market.

Optimum’s sales team needed to target decision-makers in hospitals and at companies that own large buildings. The problem was the sales team had to find the right approach. Some of them came off as robotic. Others as slick and off-putting, with a hard-sell and sales-y feel. Their “sales mode” wasn’t working because they sounded rote, disconnected, spewing dull facts and figures.

They were sales people delivering, effectively, a sales presentation. They had to stand in front of the client and make their case in just five minutes. In that time they need to catch the potential client’s attention, build a relationship, and speak with credibility. Optimum didn’t want a meeting with their representatives to feel like another sales call. So how could they present something clear and exciting about Optimum’s fiber optic business network and internet solutions? How could they make their presentations relevant to these audiences by describing the benefits of their service?

Solution: Help the sales team discover convincing stories to tell decision makers.

Optimum brought me to train their sales team. I trained 12 groups, with 10 people per group. Each group met for a day and a half.

I quickly realized that the sales reps needed to tell the story of why customers use Optimum. Why do they find value in it? They needed to specify the advantages for each particular client so that the buyers felt that the sales team really understood and cared about their needs. How does connectivity play a role in their organization? Connecting with a hospital, for example, is different than with the management company for a large office tower.

A sales rep can only connect with a potential client if their presentation is organized, clear, and to-the-point. I asked the team to work on their five-minute presentations. To do that, I elicited from each team member the kind of stories that make a difference.

In one success story, it was crucial for a group of satellite radiology centers to be able to connect seamlessly to share data and patient records. Any break in connectivity between offices would disrupt the organization.

Once each sales rep had identified their story, we worked on tone. They learned that warmth sells better that cold facts and statistics. They came out of the workshops presenting as real, concerned, warm people.

We discussed how to “make the connection” by sharing a success story, warming up, and humanizing the presentation. And all the while, the team could emphasize what differentiates Optimum Lightpath so that at the end they could answer the question: “Why Optimum Lightpath?” succinctly and convincingly.

It was all about pulling out of the sales people the stories that sell!