“Well, good morning. We appreciate the opportunity to meet with you today. My name is Simon Shultz, business development manager for InTuitWorld, and I’d like to start by introducing the rest of my team to you.

“Starting from my left is Angela Hospitch, systems engineer for the TZ500. Next is Saynar Beneviden, project manager for several current client projects, and then Nancy Lauterbach, our COO. They’re here to help me answer any specific questions you have today.

“Now, with the introductions out of the way, what I’d like to do first is to tell you a little about who we are and what we do….”

Another day, another proposal, another supplier, another presenter. If the parade has been going on for a couple of days—or even a few hours—you can understand buyer weariness in listening to presenter after presenter, following the same plan: “Good morning. My name is John or Joanna. My team is Tom, Dick, Harriett, Lucinda, and Lupe, and we’re here to talk to you about X.”

Although you may have never had a client or prospect or your own management team member say “I’m bored” to you directly, you may have sensed the frustration. What can you do different to make your presentation stand out from the crowd of competitors clamoring for the same business? These tips will focus on suggestions dealing with the finer points of sales presentations.

For a complete guide on making sales presentations, see my book From Contact to Contract, which focuses on organizing and delivering your presentation in great detail—496 tips, in fact!

Many people consider persuasive presentations to a client or their own executive team the most difficult of all because there is so much at stake in the audience’s action or inaction—a commission check, a promotion, a career.

Yet practice in persuasion has been plentiful: Have you ever persuaded a professor to change a grade? A store clerk to give you a refund—against published policy? A traffic cop to let you off with only a warning ticket? A seller to negotiate a discount? A date to go out with you? Someone to marry you? A teenager to stay in school? A bureaucrat to make an exception?

Everybody is in sales. Your job may be to sell your ideas, conclusions, budget, plans, products, or services to an audience of two, 20, or 2000.