People make up their minds about a lot of things within 60 seconds. Research across a variety of disciplines shows that professionals make quick judgments about interest and acceptability, even for important decisions such as hiring and big-ticket investments.

And yet…we have seen countless examples in our practice of sales presentations that fail to engage prospects properly during that all-important start.

How many sales decks out there begin with slides featuring the selling company’s headquarters building, its history, its executive team and/or mission statement? If your company hopes to win through solution selling, then it is a far better practice to engage your prospect in a solution-oriented conversation from the very beginning.

We often help clients break out of “stumbling out of the blocks” selling habits by:

(1) Moving the discussion about the seller. If you need to establish credentials and credibility, it’s better to send a brief and focused background description a few days in advance of the meeting.

(2) Creating with the client a customized, solution-oriented “provocation” that jump-starts an executive conversation far more effectively.

Are your team’s sales conversations getting off track during the first minute of action?

I might have chosen slightly different words, but…anyone involved in sales leadership has to appreciate this result and this passion!

Just last month, my DSG colleagues and I received an email from a client’s sales leader with the subject line “FW: Whiteboard Kicks A**” (he actually spelled out the final word, but I wanted to make this a PG-13 post).

Our enthusiastic client was passing along feedback from a conference presentation which centered on a new whiteboard we had developed with the sales team. The client executive who used the whiteboard wrote, “Presented a bit skinnied version of the whiteboard to between 60-70 folks…people were floored by the presentation and the way it spoke to their business. The most interesting thing is there were grad students all the way up to CEOs of companies and they all got the message…absolute proof this applies in all circumstances.”

We typically use whiteboard development as a key part of sales-messaging engagements for two big reasons. The first is because the tool itself, once developed and tested, enables the right type of interactive business-level conversation (from one-on-one with an executive to a room full of professionals). The second reason is that the process of developing an excellent whiteboard forces the sales team to condense its value proposition and get away from product demos.

And that really kicks.