My friend Colin Parker is my favourite sales expert! In his recent newsletter he wrote about how he uses his iPad for sales presentations. While this tip is stretching the topics of my blog a little I thought his hands - on advice is helpful for you. Thanks for this guest post Colin!

When selling professional services, your prospect meetings are usually one-on-one. Pulling out your laptop and running a PowerPoint presentation would not be appropriate in this more intimate sales setting. It seems clunky and, in fact, it might downright alienate your prospect and change the flow of the meeting. I believe that using an iPad (or other tablet computer) is the future of sales, for service providers especially.

Six Reasons How The iPad Can Help You Sell

Here are my six reasons how I think the iPad can enhance your sales calls:

1. Easy to introduce into the sales process.  With features like “instant on” you can immediately share the desired sales aid to your prospect.  No more having to wait for your laptop to start up and go through its host of system checks while you awkwardly wait for everything to come up.
2. Give your presentation structure.  To this day I am amazed by the number of people who “wing it” when it comes to their sales presentations.  If you ever want to be effective at sales, you need to have structure and flow to your sales presentations.  The iPad allows you to set up a presentation with visual aids and even design it so your presentation has logical structure and linear flow.
3. Handle their objections.  With a bit of preparation, you can stock your iPad full of objection handling tools.  Show your prospect video from customers in a similar industry who had the same problem and how you helped them fix it.  It is much more powerful when someone else says you solved their problem than when you say it. iPad allows you to have these things handy and immediately available.
4. Show them your work.  Immediately use the iPad to show prospects your portfolio of work.  Use the power of “before and after pictures” to allow prospects to see what your company can do.
5. Customize it for them. With your iPad set up correctly you can have access to all your resources to customize your presentation for that specific customer.  Selling to a manufacturer? Then show them examples and testimonials from satisfied customers in their specific industry.  Remember, every business owner thinks that their industry is different than other industries, so show them a presentation they can relate to.
6. Explain the complex.  Prospects will only buy what they understand. If they are a little unsure of what they are buying, the sales process will stall or stretch on longer than it should. Use the iPad to provide visual aids to explain exactly how your process works and what they will have at the end. Visual aids on the iPad are a great way to explain or demonstrate things that could be complex to the layman.

Setting up your iPad to become the ultimate sales tool takes a little work but you will find that the effort is well worth it as you start closing prospects in fewer meetings with greater confidence.

Image credit - Colin Parker & licensed at Photodune