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Persuasive communication - Presentations

The “Unfairness” of Body Language

By Jack Malcolm / 4.2.2015 / No Comment

Years ago, FedEx ran this commercial which poked fun at the fact that someone could steal another’s idea just by expressing it more forcefully. The lower ranking team member makes a sensible suggestion, which is ignored. Seconds later, the offending executive repeats the idea, but with a strong knife-hand gesture, and all but gets a standing ovation.

The video is funny and instructive, but for me, what is most revealing is reading the comments. They are almost all negative, and they lambaste the “blowhard” who steals the idea. It’s obvious that they think it’s totally unfair that something as superficial as one’s body language could determine the acceptance of an idea. They have no doubt had a lot of experience in the real world seeing people move ahead in the organization and develop greater influence just because of the confidence in their talk and their walk.

There are countless studies that verify this unfairness. Ideas expressed in a confident manner do carry greater weight—and good-looking people get their way more often. It’s a superficial world we live in, and shrinking attention spans are probably making the problem even worse, as nobody takes the time to dig beneath surface appearances.

But is it really unfair? I’ve written often enough about how important critical thinking and sound content are to ethical and effective persuasion efforts, so I should be adding my voice to the chorus of complainers.

But look at it this way: If you are blessed with a high IQ, you want to derive the most advantage you can from it. If you’re blessed with good looks and a confident demeanor, you also have a right to try to derive the most advantage you can from that. In fact, it’s much easier for a smart person to learn how to use confident body language than it is for a good-looking person to learn how to be smarter. So, where is the unfairness? We’re all born with strengths and weaknesses, and we all have the opportunity to work hard to correct weaknesses and develop strengths. Nothing unfair there.

That said, it’s important to keep in mind that the confident person got credit for a good idea. If he had received credit for a bad idea, that would have been unfair. But there is nothing unfair or wrong about using better body language to improve the perception of your ideas or proposals. It’s reality. We are hard-wired to consider the forcefulness and confidence of someone as one of the factors in assessing what they tell us. People don’t decide solely on the logical content of our ideas, so if you want to be persuasive, it’s incumbent on you to use all available means to get your point across.

If you’re one of those people who refuse to adjust your approach or presentation style to make sure your ideas are presented in the best possible light, kudos for sticking to your principles, but good luck with that. It’s your choice, you can whine about it, or you can learn how to use your body language to help you instead of holding you back. I suggest starting with the knife-hand.

Lean Communication - Presentations

How to Be Long Winded

By Jack Malcolm / 3.31.2015 / No Comment

If you finally get the chance to make that critical presentation to a room full of high level decision makers, you want to make sure you make the most of it. You have a captive audience, you are the center of attention, and you get a platform to sell your product or service to people who really matter. It’s a rare opportunity, so why not make it last as long as possible? After all, the executives who come to listen to you are bored with the drudgery of their tasks, and are eager to bask as long as possible in your brilliance.

Here are seven guaranteed ways to ensure that you captivate their full attention for as long as possible:

Give an infomercial: Make sure you tell them about every cool feature of your product.

Tell your “corporate story”: You are justly proud of your company and they should know why.

Fall in love with your slides: Someone, maybe corporate marketing or you, put a lot of work into them, and besides the animations are awesome!

Show them in painstaking detail how you reached your conclusions: If they don’t know how difficult it was, they won’t appreciate it.

Tell long stories: Stories are good in a presentation, so long stories are even better, right?

Think out loud: It’s important that they know without a doubt how smart you are.

Don’t practice or prepare: Why detract from the spontaneity that makes you such an interesting person to listen to?

As I said, strategic sales presentations are rare and valuable opportunities, and if you follow these tips, you can’t help but make them even more rare and valuable.

Sales

Make Your Value Proposition Unique

By Jack Malcolm / 3.23.2015 / No Comment

I remember an old spoof from the cartoons: the character is listening to the radio and an ad comes on.

Announcer: “I’m talking to YOU!”

Character: “Me?”

Announcer: “Yes, YOU, Elmer Snodgrass of 123 Elm Street; I’m talking to YOU!”

When I was a kid, I thought it was pretty cool that the radio could speak directly to each person in that way. I’ve become more sophisticated since then, but I still have the perhaps naïve impression that salespeople can strive for the same effect.

Have you ever received a Valentine’s Day card that addressed, “To whom it may concern?” Maybe not in so many words, but I’m sure you’ve received cards that were so impersonal that they were totally meaningless—they may even defeat the purpose.

The same thought applies to value propositions that salespeople tell their prospects; they’re usually so generic that all the meaning and interest has been leached out of them. They come across as a required formality, filled with platitudes and one-size-fits-all generalities.

I recently received an email in which the first line was: “I visited your website and found that your business complements our services.” Makes you want to drop everything and call them right away, doesn’t it? That’s a line that could have been—and probably was—sent to about a thousand other recipients. We get so many of these that it seems like nothing will get through to someone when you do have something useful for them to hear.

The only way you can make your value proposition sound like you wrote specifically for the person hearing it—is to write it specifically for the person hearing it. Write it in such a way that the person has no doubt at all that you have spent time thinking about them and their needs and have a plausible idea that can improve their lives in some way.

People do care about things that apply directly to them. Think of the cocktail party effect: you’re at a party in a crowded room with many conversations going on at once, but if someone mentions your name across the room, you pick up on it instantly.

To make it apply directly to the recipient, you have to speak to their unique business and to them personally.

Frame it in terms of their unique business

What’s unique about a business? It’s not selling more or spending less—everyone wants to do that, so if that’s all you talk about, how can you be special? What is unique about a business is how they plan to get there—their business strategies and initiatives, the unique challenges they face, are specific to them.

To find something unique, visit their website and find out what they do, and read their annual report if they have one; find out what they care about; glean some of the language they like to use. Even better, if you can find something their CEO or other high-ranking executive said—in a speech or an article—that applies to what you sell—use that. Best of all is to use an analogy that compares what you do for them to what they do for their customers.

If you want to earn the right to a hearing, you have to show knowledge: To put a different twist on an old saying, “They don’t care how much you care until they know how much you know.”

Make it personal

While knowing a lot about their company is a great start, you can get even more specific by relating it to them personally, because even in B2B sales, all decisions are ultimately personal. Most complex sales are going to involve several different people, and each has a different view of the need or the stake in the outcome. So, if you can relate your value proposition to something you can do for them in their specific position, you’re more likely to pique someone’s interest.

Probably the most effective is to show you know something about them personally, and the best way to do this is by using a referral; show you’re part of the club by having a little inside knowledge. Next best is to use something from your research, maybe something that they said or wrote, or the way they describe themselves on their LinkedIn profile.

Is it difficult to make your value proposition sound unique? Not really, but it does take work on your part, and that’s good. Special would not be special if anyone could do it.

I’d like to close with a sales lesson from Leo Tolstoy, who said,

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

To show value, you have to find someone who is unhappy, or who can be made unhappy when they find out what’s possible. That’s why you need to make your value proposition sound different: every customer is unhappy in their own way. If you can show that you understand that, maybe even can name it in your value proposition, you will add unique value.

More importantly, Elmer Snodgrass of 123 Elm Street will hear you loud and clear!

Note: A version of this post ran in Kelly Riggs’ Business LockerRoom blog on March 5.

Sales

Have You Read Your Customer’s Latest Annual Report?

By Jack Malcolm / 3.19.2015 / No Comment

It’s that time of year again.

For your top three customers, can you answer the following questions:

How did they perform financially last year, compared to their competitors and their own expectations?

What were the major drivers of the results they achieved?

What do they plan to do differently this year?

What is their vision statement?

What are their principal strategies and initiatives?

What challenges and opportunities do they face in the year ahead?

If you had no trouble answering these questions in detail, pat yourself on the back, but don’t get too complacent. These questions—and others—are the bare minimum you should know to qualify as a true consultative salesperson.

If you had trouble, don’t despair, because the answers are readily available to you.

This is my annual lecture to B2B salespeople: by this time of year, every one of your customers has published its annual report, or its fraternal twin, the 10-K form. There is quite simply no excuse for not getting your hands on a copy and reading it.

Actually, let me take back that last statement. There are good reasons not to read your customer’s annual report:

You’re content selling to lower levels
You already make enough money
You’re an order-taker, so it would be a waste of time

If none of these excuses apply to you, immediately leave this page, go to the investor relations section of your customer’s web site, and download their annual report. Then read the damn thing.

And if your top customers are privately-held and don’t publish an annual report, read the one for their top publicly-held competitor.