Practical Eloquence Blog

Build it and deliver it from the top down

It’s Not a Presentation, It’s a Plan

By Jack Malcolm / 2.10.2016 / No Comment

In last week’s post about sales call planning, I wrote about how a sales call plan can help those who pride themselves on being able to wing it become even more flexible and creative when the customer changes things on them. In this post, I’ll show how the idea works just as well for sales presentations, which after all are nothing but more formally structured sales calls.

Have you ever prepared for a one-hour presentation only to find out that someone is running late and now you only have fifteen minutes? I’ve seen people respond to this situation either by talking real fast, or by going ahead with their prepared remarks until they run into a hard stop, neither which is very effective.

They are incapable of flexing off their original presentation, because they are more focused on the content than on the plan. They are like the subordinate who encounters something unexpected and can’t improvise without instructions from above. They just have to show that cool graph they worked on for hours, and they have to talk about each one of the seven bullet points on each slide, because presentations are about content. Content is something you create beforehand and deliver faithfully.

A plan is less about content than about intent. An intent is a goal and a strategy to achieve it. In a sales plan, your intent is simple: what do you want the customer to do and why should they do it? During your sales call, your intent does not change, but your content almost always does, because the audience has a vote.

When you see your presentation as a plan, it forces you to have a clear idea of your intent: the what and the why, and a transparent structure for your presentation, which is your general strategy for achieving the intent. This way, it will be like having a map of the terrain in your head, so that if you run into a roadblock you can quickly figure out an alternative route to the same destination. The map is not the terrain, but it does give you situational awareness, so that you can have the confidence to flex and scale your content up and down as necessary.

Here’s a test you should be able to pass before any sales presentation: If I took away your slide deck, could you summarize your main point and supporting arguments in sixty seconds? Could you write down your key points on a whiteboard if the customer asked you to? If you can, it’s because you have a clear conception of the structure of your logic, and that will serve you well when you have to improvise. By having these guidelines clearly in your mind, you’ll be able to ensure that all your critical points are covered, while having the confidence to skip some information or slides that are not integral or important to your argument.

This is one of the benefits of the inverted pyramid presentation structure; journalists have learned to write stories in such a way fully expecting that an editor short on space may cut some out, or a reader with a short attention span will stop reading before the end. They make sure that their entire story is encapsulated in the first paragraph, with additional detail expanding the base of the pyramid. Your sixty-second summary is like the first paragraph of an inverted pyramid story. The great thing about building a pyramid from the to-down is that no matter when you’re stopped, it still looks like a respectable pyramid, instead of a pile of bricks with a flat top.

Take the same idea and apply it to your slide presentations so that they are easily scalable. Have an agenda slide up front, and then a slide containing each of your main points after that. The detailed supporting information goes in your backup slides, and you can always pull them up or leave them out depending on how much time you have. In fact, if you really want to prepare for the possibility of being cut short, have two versions of your slide presentation: the expected and the short one.

Here’s one more small hint: always prepare your presentation for less time than is allotted. If they’re interested, they’ll easily fill the time with their questions, and if they’re not, well, no one ever complained that a presentation was too short.

When you’re hit unexpectedly with a request to shorten your presentation, your attitude is critical. If you view it as an obstacle or an inconvenience, it will color the way you come across to the audience. If instead you view it as an opportunity to demonstrate your command of your message, that will also come across. (Some of my best sales presentations have resulted when things went off the plan, and customers have made a point of complimenting my preparation.)

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying: I am not telling you to skip the careful preparation of content in detail; don’t use this as an excuse for cutting corners. But do keep the intent and the strategy uppermost in your mind at all times. That way you will be able to combine the wisdom of planning with the wisdom of knowing when and how to change your plan.

Not dead yet

Persuasive communication - Presentations

Public Speaking and the State of American Democracy

By Jack Malcolm / 2.3.2016 / No Comment

I’ve been very worried about the state of American democracy recently. I see the general quality of the candidates for President and wonder if this is the best we can do. I hear the tone and content of their public speaking, and marvel at how dumbed-down and personal it has become.

But last night, I had a reminder that American democracy doesn’t just take place every four years in a circus side-show; it takes place every day at the state and local level as well, help and I’m happy to say that my experience with it last night makes me feel a bit better about the state of American politics, and the general intelligence and public speaking skill of the average citizen when they talk about things that directly affect their daily lives.

I attended a Fort Lauderdale City Commission meeting specifically to speak against a development proposal that was up for a vote. The meeting room was packed with roughly 200 people, with an overflow crowd accommodated on another floor. Anyone who wanted to speak could register their name and be put into a queue.

And what a queue it was. No exact figures were released, but certainly well above 100 people signed up to speak. Those of us speaking were granted 3 minutes each. My wife got called past midnight, and I finally got my turn past 1am. (In true lean fashion, I only used 2 of my allotted 3 minutes.)

We finally left after almost 8 hours in the meeting, and it still was not over and the room was still substantially filled with people either waiting their turn or listening to the speakers. I can’t believe I spent almost a full work-day equivalent, but it was not a chore at all. I was fascinated by the entire process and came away with a few observations about the state of public speaking and democracy in America:

Speaking

Although passions ran high—especially among the anti-project side—for the most part every speaker avoided ad hominem attacks or a strident tone. They were able to argue for their own side with both cogency and conviction without explicitly tearing down the other side. The incivility and incoherence at the national level has thankfully not yet trickled down to the local level.

I got the impression that “expert” speakers get paid by the word.

I was pleasantly surprised by the general quality of the ordinary citizen’s public speaking skills. The area of the city under discussion is generally affluent and well-educated, so this may have been a factor, but in general I rated them higher than some of the business audiences I face regularly.

I know a lot of the speakers had stage fright, but it was astounding to see how many confronted their own fear and went ahead anyway.

Although I’m not generally a fan of reading speeches, it’s a good idea if you’re not experienced. Those who read their own prepared remarks had clear messages while still being able to convey their authentic feelings.

Democracy

One concern I had was how few young people attended. I don’t know if it’s because the topic is not one they care too much about, or a more general lack of interest in the political process.

The most impressive thing to me about last night’s meeting was the fact that so many people signed up to speak. It shows that people in America still believe their voice counts. At least at the retail level of politics, they can speak directly to their elected representatives and sway their opinions. In fact, in the end we did sway their opinions: they did not approve the developer’s plans. It’s an exhilarating feeling to participate and to make a difference, which is why I love public speaking so passionately.

If we can get that spirit to trickle up to the national level, the state of American democracy will be just fine.

Just a few minutes up front can make a huge difference

Sales

Too Good to Plan?

By Jack Malcolm / 2.1.2016 / 3 Comments

Good salespeople are very confident of their skills and treasure their independence, so it’s natural that many of them resist the idea of planning. When I teach sales call planning, I often get these types of familiar objections from one or two participants in the workshop:

I don’t need to plan because I’ve been doing this for years and I know what I’m doing.
I don’t want to plan because it doesn’t let me be myself.
I do plan, but I just don’t write it down.
Plans are no good anyway, because the customer is always going to change things up on you.

What these objections boil down to is that salespeople think planning limits their creativity and flexibility. After all, a plan by definition imposes limits on what you can do, and sometimes you need the freedom to be creative and adapt to unplanned circumstances. These are legitimate concerns. Rather than addressing those objections myself, I’m going to bring in two experts—a comedian and a general, no less—who know a thing or two about structure and planning.

Planning can make you more creative

A sales call can often be a form of improv, because the unexpected always seems to pop up and you have to be creative in how you respond to it. That would seem to be a good reason not to have self-imposed limits in the form of a plan. But if you think you can be more creative without limits, let’s see what a truly creative person, comedian John Stewart, said about this:

People say, The Daily Show, you guys probably just sit around and make jokes. We’ve instituted—to be able to sort of weed through all this material and synthesize it, and try and come up with things to do—we have a very, kind of strict day that we have to adhere to. And by doing that, that allows us to process everything, and gives us the freedom to sort of improvise.

I’m a real believer that creativity comes from limits, not freedom. Freedom, I think you don’t know what to do with yourself. But when you have a structure, then you can improvise off it.[1]

I’m not a creativity expert, but I do believe you can’t be at your most creative unless you’re fully in the moment, and that’s what having a plan can do for you. Planning for your sales call frees up your mental resources to truly focus and listen to the customer. For example, I’ve found that writing out my questions beforehand lets me concentrate on what the customer is saying in answer to the one I just asked, and be more creative in my response, because I’m not half-thinking about what my follow-up is going to be.

Planning can make you more flexible

If you are one of those who pride themselves on being able to “wing it”, you should know that planning actually increases your flexibility to deviate when necessary—if you do it properly.

I’ve seen salespeople who take planning too far, using it as a straitjacket. They put so much effort into creating a perfect plan that they’re invested in it, and they stick to their plan or their prepared presentation no matter what the customer says or how they react. When they get a question or objection they haven’t planned for, they don’t know what to do. Or, they are so focused on the question they just asked, that they miss clear hints from the customer that there are other opportunities.

On the other hand, too much flexibility can also cost you. I once accompanied a senior executive from one of my clients on a sales call. Before the call, I asked to see his sales call plan, but the look he gave me made me immediately drop the subject. We met with the customer, the executive launched his “mental plan”, and after a couple of minutes the customer took control, focusing almost exclusively on price. My exec pal had maximum flexibility to respond, and that’s actually what happened. He won the business, but he also flexed himself into a rock-bottom, money-losing deal.

The anti-planners in my classes like to quote the old military dictum that, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” What they don’t realize is that the first person to utter that sentiment, if not the exact words[2] was my next expert: Helmuth von Moltke. Who is von Moltke? Glad you asked. He was the head of the Prussian General Staff who in the 19^th century developed a system of planning that contributed mightily to the success of the German army for the next 80 years and forms an important basis of American military thinking today.

Von Moltke was trying to tackle the problem that Clausewitz called friction, which is a precursor and more sophisticated description of Murphy’s Law. Plans which are made in the quiet and distant contemplation of headquarters look great on paper, but they immediately run into difficulties, uncertainties, and unforeseen reactions from the adversary—who of course has a will and a plan of his own.

Recognizing the limits of the general’s knowledge, von Moltke didn’t throw out planning, but he did make it more flexible. He formulated the idea of what’s now called mission planning, or what management expert Stephen Bungay calls directed opportunism. He told his generals not to plan “beyond the circumstances that you can foresee”. What this meant in practice was being very clear about their intent, and leaving the details about what to do to the subordinates on the ground. The plan, as communicated to the person who has to carry it out, spells out what needs to be accomplished and why it’s important, and possibly some clear red lines which should not be crossed. The how is left up to the person on the spot who has a close-up, real-time view of the situation.

Since you plan and execute your own sales calls, what does this have to do with you? It might be useful to think of yourself as two different people[3]. Before the call, you are the commander forming the plan of battle. During the call, you are the subordinate on the spot who is tasked with completing the mission, i.e. achieving the commander’s intent. The general at HQ has some advantages. First, he has time to reflect, pull together additional information, figure out what resources he needs, anticipate how a line of questioning might go, etc. He also has emotional distance because he’s not under immediate pressure from the customer demanding an instant answer to a difficult question. The subordinate has the advantage of up-close and real-time access to information, and so being able to choose a reaction based on what feels right at the moment. Planning allows you to combine the best advantages of both people. It lets you figure out the main lines in advance, set some guidelines so you don’t get thrown off track, and then have the freedom to choose the appropriate response.

The result is not unlimited flexibility for its own sake, but intelligent flexibility, which is freedom within well-thought out limits. It’s intelligent because it gives you a more concrete basis to recognize when something is not going according to plan, and then to choose a response that that still aligns with your original intent, and it lets you find your way back to the main path when you’re forced to take a detour. It’s also intelligent because thinking carefully about the what and why is the surest way to connect your sales call purpose to the customer’s needs.

I began this article by stating the obvious point that many salespeople resist planning because it limits their freedom. If you define freedom as having unlimited options, that’s true, but that’s also a recipe for chaos and indecision. On the other hand, if you define freedom as the capacity to control your own results, it’s obvious that planning can set you free. As someone once said: “Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline.”

[1] From Dan Markovitz blog, 8/10/2015 http://www.markovitzconsulting.com/blog/

[2] What he actually said was, “No plan of operations can extend with any degree of certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main body.”

[3] Anyone who has woken up early on a cold morning to start that workout program they planned the night before, knows how common it is to feel like two different people.

Guaranteed not to make a mistake

Expression - Persuasive communication - Presentations

Too Good for your Own Good?

By Jack Malcolm / 1.29.2016 / No Comment

Last week, my church brought in a guest pastor from out of state who delivered a technically perfect sermon. Her message was strong and well-organized, she had great stories, her delivery was enthusiastic with excellent vocal variety and gestures that perfectly choreographed with her key points.

And I didn’t care for it at all. There was something missing. The message made sense intellectually, but I wasn’t touched at all on a personal level. She did not connect with me; she did not tap into a feeling that I could relate to.

Similarly, I watched the presidential debates last night, and one candidate in particular piqued my professional admiration for his technique—but quite frankly he also gives me the creeps. That’s because I can’t tell whether he actually believes or feels what’s coming out of his mouth.

As I analyzed why I reacted this way to both of these examples, my first thought is that too much perfection is a bad thing. But as I reflected further, I don’t think it’s that. After all, Churchill, King and Reagan were also technically perfect, and they deeply touched millions.

I believe the pastor and the candidate missed the mark for two different reasons. The first can be cured with hard work, the second is probably terminal.

I think the pastor truly believed in her message, and genuinely cared about whether the audience benefited from it. Her intentions were pure, but she fell short in her technique. It wasn’t too perfect, it was just one step shy of perfection. Perfection is not only doing everything just right, but making it seem so effortless that it doesn’t call attention to itself. She gave off the impression that she was so proud of her skill that she wanted everyone else to notice it. The problem with that is that she succeeded: I was so busy watching the performance that I missed the message.

That can be cured by working on the technique even more, and getting it to the point where it’s truly unconscious and effortless competence. Here’s a practical example: most people don’t realize it, but natural gestures actually precede the words they support by a few milliseconds. When people are thinking about the gesture they want to use, it comes out at the same time as the words. The difference is so minuscule that we don’t consciously notice it, but something in our minds registers that it’s not right. So, how do trained actors get away with it? They “become” the person they’re portraying, and it becomes real. When you’re so good that it’s a part of who you are, the real you can come through, and that’s where connection begins.

The second reason is less about technique and more about character, which is why it might be terminal. Besides working on their craft over decades, the great speakers had something else that all the practice in the world won’t give you: they started from a place of genuine conviction and feeling and then honed their craft to improve their delivery. They did not work on delivery for its own sake. One got the sense that they cared how their message affected the listener, not how their delivery made them look. Reagan actually alluded to this when he said, “In all of that time I won a nickname, ‘The Great Communicator.’ But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things…”

I am not against working on your style and delivery—after all, I make a living by helping people improve on those things. But I am against working only on style and delivery; I am against thinking that outer perfection can make up for inner conviction. If you don’t truly believe in your message, if you don’t truly believe that the product you are selling will help your listener, there is no amount of technical perfection that will help you in the long run.

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