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Shaping the Conditions for a Can’t-Miss Presentation

By Jack Malcolm / 3.21.2012 / No Comment

Good presenters analyze their audience, craft a presentation that meets their needs, and deliver with confidence and polish. Great presenters do that as well, but they also spend far more time thinking strategically and carefully shaping the conditions for success. As I wrote in my previous post, negotiations are largely won or lost during the time leading up to them, and the same idea applies to presentations, whether it’s an internal presentation to get approval on a proposal or a sales presentation to a customer.

I first learned how to do this early in my banking career. Back then we used to have to present loan proposals to a committee. We would put together a presentation that described the customer’s business, how they planned to use the money, and why we believed they were a good credit risk. My first few presentations met with so-so success, so I began to step back and try to figure out how to improve my success rate. I quickly figured out who was the most influential member—based on expertise not rank—and began going to him with a rough outline of what I planned to present the following week. I would ask his advice on the best way to structure the deal. If the deal was really big, I’d go to another member and say, “Chuck and I think this deal would work this way. What do you think?” This did three things for me:

Objectively, it taught me a lot about how to put together a good proposal. Subjectively, it gave me a high-ranking ally on the committee. It also was a sanity check: if Chuck did not like the deal, I would “lose early” and pull it from the agenda, and I developed a reputation for only bringing in good deals.

It may seem that I got an unfair advantage over others who did not work the system before their presentations. In a way, that’s true, and if you’re a salesperson you want every unfair advantage over your competitors (within legal and ethical bounds, of course) that you can get. But keep in mind that the benefits flowed both ways. The committee members, who were my “customers”, got the benefit of sound proposals that met their standards and did not waste their time.

My banking days ended over twenty years ago, but I’ve applied those early lessons in my sales career…

Pack the crowd with your friends

Of course it’s important to know who will be in the audience and know what their stake is in the outcome, their potential objections, their history with similar decisions, etc. But you don’t have to passively accept the customer’s attendance list. One of the first mistakes that salespeople make in any complex sales cycle is to be so happy about getting their foot in the door that they don’t set certain conditions as the price for showing up. If it’s too easy to get that first meeting, you should remember Groucho Marx’s quip that he would not join any club that would take him as a member!

The more you know about how your solution will affect your customer’s cash flow engine, you’ll be able to expand the range of stakeholders who will benefit from your proposal. Make sure that they are invited to attend. As much as possible, talk to them before the presentation to understand their needs; it’s a great way to improve your proposal and to establish rapport (which also helps with pre-speech jitters). I once had a presentation set up with the Region President of a company in Detroit, and got his permission to reach out to some of the other attendees to make sure I could address their needs. That led to a conversation with his Director of Sales, which led to having dinner with him the night before, which resulted in a champion during the presentation.

But make sure your opponents are there, too

It may be counterintuitive, but you also want to do the same thing with your potential opponents. Make sure they all attend and try to talk to them before the meeting if possible. They need to be there during your presentation, because if they’re not, you won’t be able to answer their objections or concerns. They can wait until after the presentation and then do their internal selling against you and you won’t be able to do a thing about it.

By talking to them before the presentation, you have a chance to prepare for their concerns, and potentially to gain some respect. Simply ask them questions to sincerely understand their point of view and answer any questions they might have, but don’t try to “sell” them or change their minds, or you run the risk of entrenching their opposition.

When you have a good understanding of their objections, you can build “presponses” into your presentation: steal their thunder by bringing up the concern and answering it before they do. It will do wonders for your credibility.

Balance planning and flexibility

Of course, because people are unpredictable and circumstances change, you have to strike the right balance between planning and flexibility. Football coaches game-plan very meticulously, but quarterbacks and defensive captains still need to be able make changes based on what they see the opponent doing. I personally have never seen a sales presentation go exactly as planned, but the process of planning has saved me on numerous occasions. As Eisenhower said, “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”

Avoid drama

It’s kind of exciting to see yourself as the hero of the hour, standing in front of a skeptical audience and winning them over through the brilliance of your argument and the force of your personality, but the most effective persuaders in the long run usually do it without the dramatics. They understand that, in the words of Sun Tzu, the best general is not the one who wins the most battles, but the one who wins without having to fight battles.

Sales

The Negotiation Begins Immediately

By Jack Malcolm / 3.19.2012 / No Comment

When do most of your sales negotiations begin? If you think the negotiation phase of the sale only happens after the customer has decided in principle to buy your offering, you may be leaving a lot of money on the table.

I’d like to illustrate my point by describing a scenario unrelated to negotiating. I teach a module on listening skills, and the first thing I do is put students through a listening exercise to show them that they’re not as good as they think they are. I tell them that I will give describe a situation and then test them at the end of it. They are free to take notes or do whatever they want to make sure they don’t miss anything. Then I begin by saying, “You are the driver of the Main Street bus. At the first stop, three blue-eyed people get on the bus…” I go through several iterations involving various numbers of people with different colored eyes, and it’s funny to watch people listening intently and writing down numbers, because at the end I ask them the one question: “What color are the eyes of the bus driver?”

It’s rare for more than 10-20% of the participants to get the answer right. Most people miss the first and most important word in the scenario, because they are so intent on paying attention to what they think is important.

The same thing applies to sales negotiations. Literally everything you and your customer do and say from the first contact may make a difference in how the negotiation goes:

First impressions count for a lot, and the small talk before you get down to business can have a disproportionate impact on the rest of the relationship. If you establish a personal rapport with the other person, it can set the tone for a collaborative rather than competitive spirit during the actual bargaining phase later on. Subtle signals such as your confidence on the first meeting may influence their relative confidence.

In the unguarded moments during the small talk before you get down to business, little tidbits of information may slip out and influence perceptions and positions. They—or you—may say something that tells the other party about their hidden motivations, likes and dislikes, or time constraints. When I was a banker, I used to pay close attention to anything the other person said about their background, (where they were from, work background, etc.) and then compare those details to written information the borrower would provide. Even minor discrepancies were worth following up on.

Also, because reciprocity is so important to persuasive communication, you want to look for opportunities to give our counterpart little gifts early during the process, even if those “gifts” are bits of information. If they give you something in return, that’s great; if they don’t, that’s useful to know.

Your early questions can often be your most productive; because your counterpart may also think the negotiation does not begin until later, they may be more unguarded in their comments and answers early. For example, I like to talk about how they are positioned relative to their competitors. If they brag about how they get a premium because they compete on quality (and most of them do), that’s a good tidbit to file away for later when they tell you that you have to sharpen your pencil if you want to get the deal.

Questions that get the other person to quantify the cost or impact of their current challenges can be used to establish value in the earlier stages. It’s usually easier to grow the pie before you get to the phase where everyone is concerned with the size of their slice. Those types of questions can also be used to involve as many problem owners as possible. The more possible impacts your solution can have on their business, the more people will potentially benefit. You’ll want to talk to as many as possible so that you can a) have more allies and internal champions and b) accumulate more value for your solution.

Pay close attention to the questions they ask you, for indications of what is most important to them. Their questions may also provide a clue about which of your competitors they are talking to.

During the early stages, you should also overcome your natural reluctance to hear objections, and actively seek them out. Some objections that can be easily overcome in the early stages may assume artificial importance and become major sticking points during the bargaining process.

All of these precautions may seem like so much paranoia, but just remember that experienced buyers know how to use early moments to shape the negotiation in their favor. I know of one who used to brag that simply making sure he had the competitor’s coffee mug on his desk when a salesperson walked in was worth at least a 10% discount!

As Dave Brock says, “Deals are won or lost in the discovery phase of the sales/buying process.” Events, interactions and information that surface early carry much more weight than those that come out at the end.

Success - Uncategorized

The History (and Future) of Human Potential in 1000 Words

By Jack Malcolm / 3.12.2012 / 2 Comments

Are you setting your own limits?

Now I’ve really gone around the bend. After a year and a half of blogging I am going to explain where we have been and where we are going—and what it means to you—in the space of one article.

Human potential has a three part history. Most of human history took place in phase 1, where your potential was fixed at birth and nothing you could do would change that. For the last five hundred years or so, we have been in phase 2, which has been an ongoing struggle for the liberation of human potential. We are now poised on the verge of Phase 3, where personal potential is potentially unlimited.

Phase 1: In which everyone knew their place

In the beginning and long after, the world “potential” would have been meaningless because people knew their place in the world. They all lived in a Great Chain of Being, with God at the top, down through the angels to kings to nobles, to commoners, to peasants, and down to slaves. You looked up to others or down on others according to your natural place in the world, and the circumstances of your birth determined the arc of your life. It was not an easy or comfortable world to live in by any means, but at least you had the comfort of knowing you were part of a plan and didn’t have much choice in the matter.

Phase 2: The great struggle

In the second phase, beginning about 500 years ago, the Great Chain of Being began to unravel. We figured out that the universe does not revolve around the earth, books became more widely available, religious dissension opened the door to questioning sacred beliefs, and a few smart people began using scientific methods of thinking to form their own opinions and explanations. But despite astounding leaps in human knowledge the standard of living remained stagnant, and Malthus proved mathematically that things would never get better, because as even as output grew, population would always expand faster than production.

And yet, the seeds were planted for the idea that maybe there was a way out. 1776 was a miraculous year, as Jefferson told us all men are created equal, Adam Smith explained how free markets create abundance, and James Watt finally got his improved steam engine working in commercial enterprises. Freed from dependence on animal power, the standard of living began to take off. Not everyone was better off, because people had to leave the glorious countryside to work in dark satanic mills, and slaves had to grow and pick the cotton that fed those mills. Yet, people began to eat better and live better, got better educated, and realized that their own efforts and abilities could take them to heights their ancestors could not even dream about. This second phase seemed to promise that no one had to accept any limits placed on them by the circumstances of their birth.

Unfortunately, science can be used to shackle as well as to liberate. No sooner did Darwin publish his theories than his cousin Francis Galton used science (or at least something resembling it) to claim that intelligence is hereditary and to propose social engineering based on eugenics to improve its well-being. Intelligence tests were introduced in the early 20^th century and some leading early proponents advocated using them to allocate peoples’ places in society. Eminent scientists such as Charles Spearman told us we could no more improve our given intelligence than we could train to be taller. A version of the GCB still existed, this time with a scientific veneer.

But not all scientists believed this. Alfred Binet, who invented IQ testing, said, “A few modern philosophers…assert that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest against this brutal pessimism.”

Many unscientific voices also chimed in. The proponents of a positive mental attitude told us there are no limits on what we can achieve. They infused a can-do attitude and inspired millions to great efforts and unexpected accomplishments. Simple belief can work wonders: Carol Dweck, among others, showed that just believing that you can accomplish far more than you are currently able to accomplish, as long as you work hard, keep learning, and persist in the face of failure, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s called a growth mindset.

The only problem is that not everyone has that belief; according to Dweck, approximately half of us still have a fixed mindset—we believe fundamental abilities like intelligence are inherited and unchangeable. We limit ourselves and others.

Phase 3: From belief to certainty

We are now entering the third phase of our history where we don’t have to take it on faith anymore. A tremendous amount of scientific evidence has been gathered to show that many of the qualities we consider to be innate and genetically determined are substantially within our control. Studies of identical twins raised apart show that environment can cause a swing in IQ between 12 to 18 points, which could be the difference between a career as a professional or a more modest position. MRIs have demonstrated that acquiring large amounts of knowledge and skill can physically affect the size of various structures in our brains. Anders Ericsson has showed us how “natural genius” can be produced with lots and lots of deliberate practice. (I could go on and on, but I would exceed my limit.)

Speaking of limits, the evidence shows that most are self-inflicted. There is no need to accept natural limits, and certainly no excuse at all for anyone in a position to influence impressionable young minds, to allow this pernicious belief to take root in their minds.

If we can give everyone a growth mindset, we will liberate and energize the energies of half of mankind, and imagine what that will mean to our future. Imagine what it could mean to your future.

Sales - Success

Use the Army’s Secret Weapon to Improve Your Sales Force

By Jack Malcolm / 3.1.2012 / 1 Comment

Even with one of these, if you’re not learning, you’re losing.

Which would you rather have working for you, a salesperson with 10 years of experience, or one with one year of experience ten times? The unfortunate fact is that the majority of sales professionals fall into the second category.

The world’s foremost expert on experts is K. Anders Ericsson (who discovered the 10,000 hour rule that Malcolm Gladwell made famous). He tells us that:

“Some professionals continue to improve steadily during many years and even decades, and are eventually recognized by their peers as having attained the highest levels as experts or masters. In contrast, most professionals in a domain reach a stable, average, undistinguished level of achievement within a relatively short time frame and maintain this mediocre level for the rest of their careers.”[1]

Like any complex problem, there are many causes for this unfortunate situation. The one I address in this article is the lack of feedback that most sales professionals receive, especially after sales calls.