The only way that the sales process can get implemented is through communication with the customer. Salespeople usually think of this dialogue as sitting in front of the customer and telling the story face-to-face. Being able to see and feel the impact of the conversation, good or bad, provides the best way to adjust tactics midstream if needed. But a complex sale can’t be conducted face-to-face through its entirety.

OPM defines a couple of distinctly different types of interactions: one-way and two-way. Two-way interactions are where both customer and salesperson are involved in conversation in real time. This happens in face-to-face or phone conversation. One-way interactions are just that–sending an email, letter, or fax is one-way. Sometimes, it is acknowledged with a reply, in which case it becomes two-way.

One-way interactions can also be important in the sales process. A customer’s time will always limit the number of face-to-face or phone conversations that are possible, so it is much easier to get material in front of the customer if the interaction is one-way.

Both one-way and two-way interactions can be of high-value to a salesperson, because they make up a key component of any strategic planning process. Top level strategy is always played out in conversation between customer and salesperson, and that conversation happens through interactions.

–Excerpt from OPM: Opportunity Portfolio Management, the upcoming book.

The objective of the Opportunity Portfolio Management sales methodology is to unlock the potential in the overall portfolio of sales opportunities. To do this, each opportunity must be valued; once a value is established, salespeople can correctly apply their resources, most importantly their time. The most valued opportunities will be those most likely to be won, given appropriate attention. This caveat is important!

At first glance, valuing a sales opportunity may seem straightforward, but it isn’t. Putting effort into a one million-dollar deal at the expense of a twenty thousand dollar deal may not be the best way to go. There are many important factors other than dollar value that can, and do, come into play.

The attention given to one sale might be at the expense of something else, because there is only so much time to go around. The ability to administer sufficient attention to each opportunity is the only way for the salesperson to get the best out of their portfolio. Some opportunities may need a lot of attention, and others, hardly any.

If you are not valuing your opportunities properly, and therefore investing your efforts optimally, you could be losing out overall.

Every salesperson has to make presentations to their customers, and the most common tool they use is Microsoft PowerPoint. In an earlier post, I even talked about PowerPoint as a form of “persuasion technology” in sales. But PowerPoint is not without critics; some feel that it encourages a lazy way to deliver information: first, you get the bullets into PowerPoint, then, you read the bullets to the audience. Presentation done.

Lots of stuff has been written about how to do it better, but if you are already prone to using PowerPoint, are there any alternatives?

Flypaper is interesting, because it is free. No caveats or hitches here.

Download this software and you can immediately design impressive presentations for delivery locally on your computer, or over the web. You can include video, audio, animation, and choose from predesigned models and templates. Flypaper works using a “story model” of building your presentation, and it breaks away from the “bullet method” of doing things. With Flypaper, the emphasis is on Flash-based animation that is easy to put together. Highly recommended and well worth a try.

What I findparticularly interesting is that the man behind Flypaper is Pat Sullivan. As you may already know, Pat was the founder of ACT! and later, SalesLogix; two commercially successful customer relationship management solutions. Given Pat’s background in sales, it comes as no surprise to me that he would be involved with persuasion technology.