I went to a tasting menu in Cleveland. The wine and the courses were excellent, especially the seared foie gras on a small waffle with a cherry gastrique. It was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.

But there was one big clunker on the menu – the beet salad. I have never been a fan of beets and cringed every time my mom served them, so I was apprehensive when the beet course came. I took a couple of bites and didn’t like it. “Maybe it’s just me,” I thought. Then I looked over at the couple sitting to my left and saw that they, too, only took a couple of bites of the infamous beet salad as well. I guess a lot of beet salads went back to the kitchen unconsumed.

Like a well-constructed tasting menu, your sales presentations are made up of different parts, which need to be put together in the proper sequence.

I follow a VERY specific formula whenever I construct ANY too many sales presentations. One section flows naturally and gracefully into the next and builds momentum to the close. I analyze my presentation as I practice it.

My conscious and subconscious always look for (FEELING) where things aren’t right. When I find something that doesn’t work or feel right, I rework it; I don’t cut the part out but change it so it flows better.

In the case of the tasting menu, the chef shouldn’t cut out the salad course because then the meal would be incomplete; he should change the component piece that isn’t working, namely the beets.

Closers know that everything in a presentation matters and work to make each as effective as possible. Do you?

Kick butt, make mucho DEEnero!

Dave “No Beets For You” Dee