When you approach a selling situation, what is the first question your presentation answers? Many salespeople start by explaining how their product works and why the customer just has to have it. Some go in on price trying to create a wide gap between themselves and their competitors. In each case, they are missing the most important element and in doing so often lose their prospects' attention. The most important question that you should seek to answer as early as possible in your sales presentations is what is in it for the prospect?

Cost, effectiveness and process are all issues that matter to the customer, but they will rarely begin to consider them before they even know why they should care about your proposition. Answer this question at the beginning of your presentation and you will have your prospects' attention throughout. Add a personal element to every sales proposition in order to explain to people how they personally benefit from what you are selling.

Take the following example: Jim has a network marketing downline group that is not doing so well in sales and recruiting. Since the annual convention will be held locally in a few months, he decides to make a big push for his whole group to attend in the hopes that the excitement of the event will inspire them into action. When he approaches the team, Jim talks at length about how wonderful and inspiring the event was last year and how they really must attend. As the cutoff date for discounted registration approaches, Jim has only a few of his members signed up and is left wondering why the approach did not work.

So why was he unsuccessful in inspiring his team to attend? The answer is simple. Jim spoke about how empowering the event was, how exciting it was to see the organization's most successful reps and how much valuable information would be passed on at the event, but these were issues his team did not care about. They cared about their initial investment that they were having trouble recouping, they cared about their own downlines which themselves were not doing so well and they cared about this elusive extra income which they had not quite been able to materialize.

Action step: When considering your product or service, imagine a prospect in front of you, asking you “what's in it for me?” Keep asking the question until you come up with an answer they could actually care about.

First of all, there is no substitute for research. Jim should have spent time speaking with his team members to see what their major concerns were and why they had not managed to succeed thus far. He should also have addressed these issues in his presentations and made connections between them and the benefits to be gained from attending the annual convention. Speaking directly about how his sales and recruiting figures increased after the last event could make his presentation more relevant to his team.

Never assume that your buyer will make a connection between the benefits you lay out and how they personally relate to him or her. You must make this connection yourself in order to ensure that your buyer sees what is in the transaction for him or her. If you leave this important element to chance then you leave your close to chance as well.