Imaginary Relationships

A marketer was telling me how people used her product. I actually do use her product (not that she asked), and I sure don’t use it the way she said “they” do.

She told a helluva story. It was much more colorful and important than the way I use it.

I kinda wished I had a need as important as the one she portrayed.

Of course after that I wasn’t going to tell her how I used it. Lord, we are no longer worthy.

As I was driving home, I was puzzling why they were failing with such a better offer? I mean, I liked the product going in and I still like the product.

Then I thought, “What if all her users were like me...not using her product to her full potential?”

The things you convince yourself by listening to imaginary users can have a long-lasting effect, influence decisions way down the line, especially when that imaginary user becomes strewth!

I remember the first time I heard about focus groups. I thought, “Why would I pay people who won’t use my product to tell me how to change the product so they still won’t use it?” Never figured it out.

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like reality.

Check out Rainmakers, things you wish you’d said yourself!

Rainmaker 17 – Breaking The Invisible Wall

Last month’s GMU Annual Startup Challenge Competition was the first I remember where I got to sit in the audience and watch…

I wasn’t presenting.

What I saw (and remembered) is an idea that because we are presenting, we have to respect that invisible wall that separates actors from the audience, the cast of Cheers from your living room, separates the presenters from THE BUYERS!

How would you present differently if you were trying to sell those very people sitting in the chairs in front of you? Pretend this is not a drill.

1. Leave something of value with the judges, audience, and even the other competitors (like our handouts) before the presentation.

2. Have business cards and special event coupons (implements of selling) at hand and give them to ‘interesting’ and ‘interested’ people.

3. Provide the judges with required material for the competition (of course), and before the event, give them a summary copy of the points you will make (or plan to), and any complex tables, figures, and charts.

4. Provide the audience with a single-sheet highlight of the principal benefits of the product/service from the user’s perspective along with instructions how to buy.

5. Make it easy for people to a) know who you are; b) know how to reach you, on some disappearing slide if you must, but how about on something they can take away?

The Goal: when you leave the stage you have given your pitch AND you have made it easy for people to know who you are and how to reach you to buy something.

What's your story?

Please join us at the Capital Technology Management Hub on December 11 at 6:30 for 300 seconds of Rainmaker 17 – Breaking The Invisible Wall, What we learned at last month’s GMU Annual Startup Challenge Competition at TeqCorner, followed by Joshua Green explaining Cleantech Open—The World’s Largest Cleantech Accelerator -Funding Green Technology...

Previous Rainmakers:

#16 - LinkedIn: Your Personal Publicist (10/9/12)

#15 - Dropping The Other Shoe (9/11/12)

#14 - The Myth of Full Capacity (5-26-12)

#13 - Making the Most of Your Opportunity? (3-27-12)

#12 - The Future is NOW - Makers (3-11-12)

#11 - What Have I Done For You Lately? (2-8-12)

#10 - Tune Your Work for the Internet (1-2-12)

# 9 - Your Internet Personality (12-24-11)

# 8 - Google + Your Personal Website (9-15-11)

# 7 - Mark Your Territory (8-22-11)

# 6 - Networking IS Business (5-25-11)

# 5 - Start With an Offer (4-27-11)

# 4 - Time, Talent, and Treasure (4-10-11)

# 3 - How to Sell Your Skills (3-1-11)

# 2 - The Name Tag (1-5-11)

# 1 - Gifts (11-5-10)

And, Introducing Rainmakers (11-3-10)

10 Keys To Brilliant Presentations

Let's face it – many business presentations are as stimulating as a freshman accounting class lecture without the incentive of seeing the material on a test. Or it sounds like a late-night infomercial.

I've spent lots of time in the audience, in front of the room, and behind the scenes prepping presenters for events; I find these 10 key elements are common to outstanding bright-star presentations. They are:

1. 4Ps – Plan what you want to accomplish; Prep based on that goal; Practice content, flow, and timing; Present Brilliantly – be there and fully engaged
2. Integrity – Descriptions and teasers about the program and what you present must match; promoting one thing and presenting something different lacks integrity
3. Me – Your bio, profile, Google+ Page, and the MC's introduction tells all about you – only talk about you IF the point makes you more memorable
4. Visuals – If you have to say “you probably can't read this...” you are in the weeds! Less is better; cartoons & caricatures create more impact than facts – numbers – charts. Anything complex or useful as a resource is best given as a reference or URL in an handout – with only a concise abstract of pertinent items shown on the screen
5. Talk – Presenting is a form of conversation – talk with the audience; try not to read to them or from the screen; after all, if you read them your book from the stage, they won't buy it
6. Interactive – If possible, make the session interactive to get thoughts and experiences from the audience – have them be an active part of the program instead of just observers
7. Lily Pads – Robin Williams used an analogy about frogs jumping between lily pads to describe comic delivery – same applies presentations: don't spoon feed the audience; give the audience the concepts that require a mental leap to follow, but don't have the gap so wide they miss the next lily pad
8. Stories – Reference your experts sparingly – people came to hear your thoughts; share them through your stories of experiences and results
9. End Promptly - End on time – not when your material runs out – an hour session is about 40 minutes of presenter time; the balance is for questions and the unexpected
10. Continue the Conversation – Give your audience a place to offer comments about the presentation - “the best thing they learned.” Sharing extends the reach of the program and your visibility (also adds to legend of the event – Meet-up, an event managing social media tool, uses a comment board system to let attendees rate the event and give highlights & comments – which helps validate the better programs).

A live event is always unique and often a bit unpredictable. These elements help manage the unexpected and are a key to giving a shining-star, memorable performance.

Any others you want to add?

Fighting Entropy

Al Malinchak gave the latest episode in the further adventures of Sister Maria Tyrannica today at the Human Resources Leadership Forum, titled On Wednesdays We Wear Pink, from the influential leadership blog of the same name.

Al has two strong skills. One, he and Jimmy Buffet are the reigning chroniclers of post-Altar Boy development, and two, Al has a knack for bringing simple physical exercises that create profound understanding.

If you want to learn the exercise, buy tickets. 

The learning for me was again, how quickly an attitude change can trigger a significant performance improvement, and second, how people under pressure choose to abandon unfamiliar behaviors, almost never initiating better behaviors.

We wanted to build an excellent company in the worst possible way, and looking back, I guess that was exactly what we did. Common refrain

When I am leading a cadre, my proteges usually adopt (in chronological order)

• suit, then
• tie, then
• shoe shine, then
• name tag, then
• handout.

Pressure encourages entropy, so under duress working the handout is abandoned first, then the name tag is left somewhere, the shoe shine forgotten, the tie askew, then abandoned, the suit creatively augmented, then finally we stop showing up for work.

How do you stop the slide?

Al made me realize that when times get tough, the antidote is to add structure to do the job better. Instead, people want to abandon the new and unfamiliar. Finding and implementing a skill or practice that improves performance is an important behavior of an effective leader. It's especially important with the influence of Web 2.0. 

Or as General/Secretary/Citizen Colin Powell writes on page 264 of My American Journey, “Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than management says is possible.”

Your comment?

Are you taking full advantage of your blog? Come to BlogLab - Improve Your Blogs! Thursday December 8, 8:30 am - 1 pm. Learn more at http://bit.ly/WMRBlogLab

Purpose Of The Presentation

I was listening to a trainer demonstrating how to talk for an hour straight, how to get all the facts out, how to entertain the prospect, how to answer objections before they occur.

That was ugly enough to teach me something important.

Try this: The Purpose Of The Presentation is to have the prospect change the prospect’s understanding of what they want. It can be deeper, more nuanced, or different, but you want them to change their understanding.

Why?

First, a recent convert is most likely to take action. Think about a reformed smoker making an issue about other people smoking. Likely to commit assault to express their new beliefs. Over time, I may develop sense of scale, but at the moment of realization, the new idea is the meaning of everything.

Second, if you are present when the prospect changes what they want to buy, everyone who came before you is less qualified to provide what is wanted. And, it would take too much work to requalify those who have gone before.

Finally, my experience is that people like to have a better idea of what they are doing. If they think I was involved once, they are apt to call to see if we can do it again.

All of that practicing and rehearsing I was observing at the beginning of the post now has the purpose of creating the new perspective. I believe that is accomplished in 20 second bursts, not 20 minute sprays, and the heavy lifting is done by the prospect.

What conclusions can you add to this post?

The Molehill Business

The other day I sat through seven presentations. That’s about ten hours.

The sales guys uniformly wanted to drape their presentation around their process. The better presentations focused on providing cool nuggets of immediate value.

The boring presentations all featured The One Right Way. The better presentations let me pick and choose.

And after looking at all those clouds and circles, I realized that a process is just like a blog. Shorter is better.

When you get over 50 variables or gates, rethink your model. Your process has died. Tommy Smothers called his imaginary golf book, 352 Things To Remember At The Point Of Impact.

The other thing I realized was that after fifteen points in a model, the purpose is more failure analysis. “Not doing this thingie right here must have been the reason we failed.”
Dr. Deming said, “People who focus on failure become experts on failure.”

The best thing I learned was the novel concept that best practices should be so blatantly obvious that your people rush to adopt them. If you have to apply force, they are not best practices.

What do you think?

Please come to

How To Get More Value From Your Existing Resources Tuesday, October 19th, 7:15am to 8:30, Intelligent Office, Rockville, or Championship Leadership in Resource Constrained Markets  

Wednesday, October 20^th, Noon, Mount Vernon-Lee Chamber of Commerce, www.SalesLabDC.com/leadership