Great, the big presentation nailed it, the sale is made, the goal achieved.
When the cheering is over, and the empties from the celebration cleared away, perhaps a reflection on what really made the sale would be useful.
The presentation did not make the sale, it was just the last piece in the jigsaw.
The lead-up work that made the sale possible was made by the researcher who realised that the potential customer had a challenge your product could solve, or the truck driver who told you the competitive lead times were 6 weeks, and you can deliver in 3 days, or the operations guy who suggested that by adding an ingredient in your factory, you could eliminate a whole process in theirs, the sales people who nutted out the strategies in a Key Account Plan, and so on, you get the picture.
Industrial sales are usually made by a myriad of small things that together add up to something you can leverage, the presentation is only the end game, and is useless without the graft at the front end.
The graft is an organised process of gathering collating and prioritising market and customer intelligence, and matching that to the competitive advantages you can deliver, so the presentation can be produced, and sales gathered.
The font end is the hard bit, the presentation is the glory bit.
