Delivering a super presentation!!!

It has been quite some time that i have visited my blog. There has been a lot happening in the last few months. A couple of overseas trips for pleasure and business, a lot of travel in the US (braving all the weather in the US), a sales conference, a few home projects and in the middle of all this, trying to keep my sanity in place.
In these few weeks, on key aspect that I have been involved in is delivering client facing senior management presentations. Typically these sessions have been at the C-level, and they have involved globally distributed teams with different cultures, environments and of course needs.

In a way all of us are involved in presentations Its either as a contributor, presenter or as a SME..I wanted to share with you some good practices that have made my presentations really successful. Some of these might sound a little quirky, odd, but they are definitely worth a try! Here goes the list:

Logistics:

• "Have a bright room": Presenting to a dark room will avoid eye contact and not chemistry will develop in the room. Have a room that is well lit on the audience where you can have eye contact.
  
• "Try out the color schemes": Recently I was in a session where we were using a color scheme that was not tested before. We were using a really nice shade of Olive green. When this was projected in front of the client,it was really irritating fluorescent green! Beware of using unconventional colors. Usability plays a key role.
  
• "Good food and tea": In a presentation have some sweets and cookies. Sugar and chocolate are good mood lifters and its always a good idea to have some goodies!

Slide Decks:

• "Size does matter": No deck should be more than 15 slides for a 2 hour presentation. You can have slide separators etc. but the heart of the presentation should be 15 slides at most....
• "Dont be a victim of chair paralysis": Keep the dynamism alive in the room. Have a white board, let the client speak to a diagram, throw open ideas and challenge the discussion. Always remember, Intellectual thought leadership with humilty in the room is always respected by the client.
  
• "Adapt to change":There have been multiple instances when I showed up to a meeting and the client just wanted to have a chat across the table. Be well prepared mentally on the pitch. The environment should not be a hindrance in delivering a great story!
  

Tell a story:
All the great wisdom in the world has been transferred in mankind through stories and fables. There are Aesops fables, Tales of Narnia, Panchatantra etc. All of these stories carry in them a very profound message conveyed through a simple story. The bottom line is that all of us like to relate to a story and it creates for us a visual interpretation of the topic discussed.
When to present your idea to the audience, use some of these techniques:

• "Have a story analogy": Always have a story that the audience can relate to. For eg: if you are presenting on Web based applications, have a story about how you helped "Mike a really nice client and Director in IT in Minneapolis develop a solution that helped his global team collaborate and have more efficiency and fun at work". If you noticed, you would have already pictured Mike and his team. This is what I mean by Visual Interpretation....
• "Listen, hear and if needed speak": The key to a successful presentation is to have your client speak and share. The slides you present must have the right slide in's for the client to chime in a contribute. Remember, every one like to contribute to a winning solution! Let the client contribute and collaborate!
  

I have tried these techniques in various scenarios. Let me know if you have some other ideas to contribute. I welcome inputs and would love to do some experimentation!

Till next time a word of wisdom :"Take care of your customer.....or someone else will!"

Medici Effect for Sales Innovation....

I received a lot of feedback to my blog on “Know Thy Customer”. Specially noteworthy was the Dunkin Donuts example. One of my friends and blogger Rishi (http://rooshi.blogspot.com/) brought out an interesting point though. Do I always need the same cup of coffee and sandwich? What if I was thinking of a latte and a donut? Or may be I didn’t need a coffee at all?

In larger context, from a sales relationship standpoint it raises the following very pertinent questions:

1. Are you able to innovate and bring services that delight the client?

2. How do you drive innovation in a borderless world?

Bottom line “Are you feeding the clients the same menu or able to take them on a thrill ride of innovation?”

I will try to answer this question through a very interesting phenomenon called the “Medici Effect”. Frans Johansson coined this term. In my own words, Medici effect can be defined as “ When a very diverse group of human beings are put together for a common task, the environment produced can be an intersection for ground breaking innovation”.

I recently attended a webinar given by Frans and I must tell you it was an hour very well spent. He brings to the table some really interesting examples of intersections. For eg:

1. How a nest of termites and largest building in Harare have a common intersection for innovation!

2. How a 24 year old chef went onto become the youngest 3 star chef in New York city (in case you don’t know the restaurant scene in NYC, this is the equivalent of becoming the CEO of Fortune 500 company by 24)!!

3. How the latest Router from a leading telecom company and a trail of ants are principally the same!!!

If you are intrigued, I suggest you pick a copy of this all time best seller. The Medici family was one of the most influential families that controlled Florence in 1700’s. This family like all power centres does not have a really clean track record. However what they did was to provide an environment where in artists and thinkers of a very diverse background got together under one roof to work together. Way back then they would assemble teams from China, Siberia and all kinds of remote places to bring out some amazing works of art. Some of the prodigies that came out of this set up include the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci…

Frans took inspiration from this and went onto discover how diversity led to innovation. Some other amazing examples he covers are:

1. How do spiders and goatmilk come together for human diseases?
2. Why is HP’s quantum lab the most innovative place on the planet for HP?
3. What do MLK jr. and rock music have in common?
4. How the ipod mini’s and old transistor radio’s of 60’s essentially the same?

So taking inspiration from Frans, I have decided to embark on a journey of exploring how diversity can yield the most innovative sales solutions for my clients.

For starters a few ideas:

1. In my current solution pitch I am bringing in a really diverse team of software developers, architects and project managers from India and US.

2. In the next year, I will bring into my team a few people from engineering (guys who have been in industries like metals and cement) to work with a software engineering team.

Dream wish:

Get a team consisting of poets, microbiologists, software engineers and building architects to build the next generation complaint resolution system.

Hope this has been good food for thought.

Let me know how the reading on Medici Effect goes for you….

Cheers

Uday

5 skills for a “Sales guy To be or Not to be”

Over the past few years, I have met a lot of friends, acquaintances, peers who have asked me “What is it that you actually do?”, “What does it mean to chase a quota?”, “What is all this thing about managing relationships?”. Some of these discussions ended with an enigmatic awe, some were quite informative for me, and well some ended making me feel if I made a really dumb mistake by taking this up….

In this blog, I want to give a quick run down of quintessential check list that will give you a snap shot of what this job demands. This is by no means comprehensive or a classical list that a career counselor will give you. However, this will definitely give you a taste of the real thing, and in some ways might also turn you off.

However, before taking a crack at a sales job it might be a good idea to run through this list, talk to a couple of guys already doing the deed (buy them a drink, you will get better information) and then listen to your heart.

Quality #1: Do you believe in the fact that work and life need to be kept in two water tight containers?
Well if you answered “ Yes” to this one, then kudos to you! You should definitely try and become a Project Manager, or even better an accountant. I think the best would be become a primary school teacher. Don’t even think of sales.

I don’t want to be critical here, but let me share an incident with you. I was in the Marriot Marquios of New York city. Jack Welsh was doing a book reading of “Winning”.

He was asked a question “Jack, don’t you think we are getting too short term focused by focusing on qtr to qtr growth”

The answer was classical Jack “ Any stupid can work on managing the long term or the short term. The key is to eat and drink at the same time”.

Same thing applies to sales. You will be managing a territory with about 50-60 accounts and chasing a target of millions of dollars that will be tracked on a weekly basis. You will win some, lose some all the time while competitors are at your heels.

Are you telling me that you will have a great year, spend long vacations and drive a BMW by compartmentalizing your mind?

I don’t mean to say mix things up. I am pretty good at work life balance my self. I meditate everyday, spend quality time with my wife, give time for hobbies and still mix things up….

So be clear, it’s a 24X7 mindset in this job of sales.

• Quality #2: You plan to go for a movie, then your friend says lets golf first, and you wife comes along to say that you need to do groceries as well, and at the end of the day, you end up cleaning and watching a DVD as some unexpected friends came by. Did this turn you off?

Long question short: Does ambiguity threaten you?

In case it does, then one thing is clear “Steer way clear of sales”. Ambiguity is the sales guys shadow. That’s the whole reason why a sales job is like hunting. A “pre-meditated” sport. In a deal the number of unknowns directly affect the outcome.

Let me give you some intangible real-life unknowns that have affected my deals:

• “The client doesn’t want to try us because we haven’t been tried before” – well then how will we ever start!!
• “I like their office and would like to spend time there”
• “Their technical engineer smelt as if he came from a football game and didn’t shower for two days” (The client told me this over a drink)
• “Funding was diverted to another strategic project”
• “Our delivery team sent a document that had references of work we do for a competitor!!”
• “I thought the client was a tactical buyer, but he just came back from a strategy workshop”

If you like your day to be something where you plan on a checklist, execute serially and end of the day assess progress, become an analyst or even better a landscape manager. Don’t bother with a sales job where for better or worse, ambiguity reigns supreme.

• Quality #3: Are you brutal with yourself?

There is nothing like “trying hard and putting in a lot of effort” but missing the quota. Sales is a digital approach. Either you meet the quota or we will get some one else who will…Its that simple.

Leading companies in the US let go of sales guys who miss the quota for 3 qtrs in a row. The highs are high and the lows are low.

After all your performance is what will ensure that the thousands of developers and technologists in your company get a project to work on.

• Quality #4: No means yes. Always

After losing 3 deals in a row to a client will you bid the fourth with more zeal and value than ever before? Lets take something closer to life.

You had a really bad argument with your neighbor, but right now you need the toolset he has to fix some of your stuff in the garage.

Will you give him a call?

Broader question “ Can you put your ego aside and use it for better stuff?”

Remember a client who says “NO” is saying so because he said “YES” to someone else.

• Quality #4: You are at a crowded bookstore on human anatomy and psychiatry. Can you small talk with the people around you and engage them for just enough to leave a memory behind? Even better, can you pick up a phone and make a credit card sales call to someone you don’t know?

If people intimidate you and you need time, a lot of time to break free, please become a researcher or an analyst or something else. In Sales you need to be able to reach out to other human beings as a genial person with an affable demeanor. If that gives you the wriggles, may be you should wriggle out!

• Quality #5: You are leading a team on a hike. It’s a team of 8 people. The team needs to cook on the way, make camp in time, plan for next days resources and also have fun.

Can you get all this done with least air time?

If it takes you more than 1 sentence to describe the goal to your team, you should be in marketing or corporate communications. A sales guy’s time is real money. You might have great English, excellent speaking skills, but if your audience doesn’t get the clarity it needs to execute then you will run the risk of losing the sale.

“Communication is the art of speaking just enough and knowing when to keep your mouth shut!”

I hope you liked this list. I hope it gives you the fire to don the sales hat. In case you think this doesn’t make any sense, well you wouldn’t be the first….