If you are talking to a group of people who are then going to the CEO to make recommendations that you would be the vendor they would choose, they have to give some logical reasons of why they would suggest you.  However, if you really connect with them.  If they like you more.  If you're better prepared.  If you talk more about them than yourself and the other vendors did in the presentation; that gives you the edge.  And remember, we want an unfair advantage. A one bank, the National Sales Manager, of this big American company said, "Patricia, I liked your speech; however, I love how you delivered it.  Could you teach our salespeople to speak like that, because it takes us a year to get in front of a hospital board.  We have a one-hour presentation.  It's worth 9 billion dollars a year if we get the business and we're losing.  Not because of our product, not because of our offering or our price, but because the sales presentation skills or our competitors are better than our. What I find with a lot of sales people, especially when they're very, very experienced they have a tendency to get cocky.  When I work with sales teams sometimes it's the new salespeople that give the best presentations because they're working so hard to get it right, that when they come back and do it they're marvelous.  The people who are the company experts, who should be the best, very often come in and revert back to, "Oh I know it so well."  It's full of non-words, they're rambling around, and they're not as good as the should be.  In a sales presentation, let's look at the different ways that you might use stories.  Stories in fact, could be projecting your prospects into the future.  You could tell a story about what their life or their business would be like once they're doing business with you.