Follow these steps and you won’t have to dance
I’ve written a lot about planning and preparation, but there is also tremendous value in having the skill and poise to rise to the occasion when someone springs an unexpected question on you or asks you to say a few words on a particular topic. Having survived (so far) 21 years in front of trainees, I’ve developed a few habits that have served me well.
Plan for the unexpected. This sounds like an oxymoron; how can you prepare for an impromptu talk? If you’re going to a meeting, think about who will be there, and based on your knowledge of their history, their positions and their stake in the topic, what might they ask? To be really sure, don’t limit yourself to the scheduled topic. You might be there to discuss a particular project, but someone might have an interest in one of your other projects as well.
Practice situational awareness. Have you ever had the feeling of looking up and seeing all eyes turned on you? It’s easy to tune out or check your email momentarily when someone else is speaking on a topic that doesn’t immediately concern you—and that’s when Murphy’s Law guarantees that someone will direct a question to you. There’s nothing more credibility-crushing than having to ask someone to repeat the question.
The speaker should have read this article
As we saw in Part 1, stories can be a powerful way to sell products or ideas. In this post, we will look at five suggestions to choose, craft and tell your stories for maximum persuasive effectiveness.
Bring out the conflict
Screenwriter Robert McKee, interviewed in the Harvard Business Review, said, “Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes.” He goes on to say that all great story tellers “dealt with this fundamental conflict between subjective expectation and cruel reality.”[1]
Stories are such a natural fit with solution selling because they share the same aim. They both begin with a situation and then introduce some gap, or conflict that introduces tension or conflict. They then ratchet up the tension enough so that the listener is more than ready for some resolution. That sequence of situation-conflict-resolution is at the heart of a good story, and if you think of it, is also the essence of sales questioning or conversational techniques that get the customer to sell themselves.
When everything is good and there are no problems, there is no story—and no sale.
Show me another slide, Mommy
When I was a banker, we faced a problem in our branches. Hoping to boost fee income, our leadership was pressing us hard to sell credit life insurance on our consumer loans, but nothing we could do or say to our loan officers seemed to make a difference. The problem seemed to be that the loan officers, knowing how expensive it was compared to ordinary life insurance, were reluctant to even bring it up with the customer. As we investigated and pondered what to do, we noticed that Rosa in our Kendall branch sold credit life on almost all of her loans, so we asked her how she did it. She told us that she had had a close friend whose husband had passed away, and in addition to her tragedy she had to deal with collectors and eventual loss of her vehicle because she could not keep up the payments.
This story inspired Rosa to believe in the product, and she passed her belief on to her customers as she repeated it to them. After Rosa told her story at a loan officers meeting, credit life sales went through the roof.
That experience opened my eyes to the incredible power that stories have to sell, whether it’s a product or an idea. Since then, through further experience as well as my research into the psychology of stories, I’ve strengthened and refined that belief.
Every successful sale is a story in itself, in which the hero embarks on a quest, faces and overcomes obstacles, and ultimately has a happy ending. In fact, you could say it is the ultimate action story, because the plot for each sale requires your customer to do six things:
- Listen
- Like
- Understand
- Believe
- Remember
- Act
Every single one of those six actions can be enhanced through the effective use of stories in the sales process:
Listen:
First, you have to get your customer to listen, and stories definitely engage attention. Notice how quickly people pay attention to a situation when an intriguing story comes out: the one that emerged last week about the airline pilot who flipped out and had to be restrained by passengers has already prompted calls in the news media for more psychological screening of pilots. It may or may not be a good idea, but because the story is fresh in our minds is the only reason anyone is paying attention to it.
Stories also maintain attention. Ever since we were kids, we liked to hear stories, and when we hear the beginning of a story, we get pulled in and feel like we have to hear the end. But even more important is the quality of listening; we listen very actively to stories. Our minds do three very active things when we listen to stories: we simulate the action in our brains, we empathize with the actors in the story, and we engage our imagination.
Like:
It certainly helps if the customer likes you, and stories build rapport, because when you are telling them you can be more yourself, and the listener also tends to be a little more relaxed and less defensive. You can see it during presentations: the person spouting facts sounds like a teacher, but when they launch into a story, their faces open up, they become a little more animated, and their voices sound more relaxed. The funny thing is that the same thing is happening to the audience at the same time—everyone is having more fun.
Have you ever noticed how the atmosphere changes when you switch from a conversation to your sales pitch? There’s a totally different dynamic and atmosphere between the conversational, narrative phase of any conversation and the analytical, transactional portion.
Understand:
They also have to understand what you’re saying, and stories are a superb way to package meaning and context. Today’s complex system sales can be very difficult for customers to understand, especially if you overwhelm them with a bunch of technical specifications. When you think about it, turning those features into understandable and compelling benefits is about showing cause and effect, and stories are ideal vehicles for showing how one thing leads to another.
They also make teaching palatable. When I have to give my dogs a pill, I wrap it in a slice of cheese, and they gulp it down. In the same way, your facts can get transplanted to their brains if wrapped in an intriguing narrative. That’s why the Bible uses parables to “sell” abstract ideas such as faith and compassion.
You may not realize that a lot of what you learned about sales came through stories. You’ve no doubt spent time at sales meetings talking shop with your peers, and the “war stories” told during these sessions are a natural way to exchange knowledge and experiences.
Believe:
Most importantly, stories reduce resistance to your message. Although I am definitely in favor of facts, statistics and logic, overreliance on them puts your listeners into an analytical and critical frame of mind, with at least part of their attention devoted to arguing with your points. A story, on the other hand, invites a willing suspension of disbelief; when you watch a movie, do you spend your time thinking how artificial and untrue it is? No, you allow yourself to be transported along with it. Although you may engage your critical faculties after it’s over, while it’s being told, you focus on the narrative.
When we used reason to tell our loan officers why and how they should sell credit life, their minds were busily engaged in refuting each of our points. When Rosa told her story, they got into it, and were able to imagine themselves in the same situation. By simulating the action in their brains, it was as if they were experiencing it themselves.
Research with mock juries has demonstrated huge swings in the likelihood of a verdict by comparing the effects of one side versus the other presenting the same facts in and out of story order.
And, don’t forget the power of social proof—when you share how someone else faced the same situation and made the right choice, it reassures the listener that they are not the first.
Remember:
Unless you’re involved in transactional sales that are concluded in one meeting, memory actually plays an important part in the decision process. It won’t do you much good to convince someone during a sales call if that person can’t remember enough to make your case for you in a meeting with her peers a week later.
This is where stories can help. As we saw earlier, the brain that is listening to a story is simulating the action; the regions of the brain that are engaged when we hear about an experience are the same ones that engage when we experience the same thing ourselves. The engagement and simulation that goes on in your listener’s brain when they hear a story etches it deeply in their minds, so that they are easily remembered, which helps when the customer makes the decision some time after your presentation, or when your listeners go on to tell others in their organization what you said.
Act:
Of course, the ultimate goal of any selling process is to get the customer to act. Stories can inspire action through familiarity and emotion. The simulation effect discussed earlier means that the listener has already “tried out” your product, and when it comes time to decide, that familiarity can smooth the path of the decision.
More importantly, emotion is often needed to produce action, yet a direct appeal to your customer’s emotions is likely to backfire and provoke resistance. When that emotion is elicited through a story, however, it is much more subtle but no less powerful.
As you can see, stories are one of the most powerful persuasive tools we have, but it’s easy to tell the wrong stories or tell them the wrong way. In Part 2 we will look at how to choose, craft and tell stories for maximum persuasive effectiveness.
The parts fit together, but will it fly?
In Part 2 of this series we compared planning for a team presentation to the way that aircraft manufacturers put together an aircraft from its major subassemblies. But even when everything fits together just right, when Boeing put together the first 787, they didn’t assume their computerized plans were perfect. They had to test fly the aircraft before they could put passengers on it. You should treat an important team presentation with equal care.
Practice is even more critical to a team presentation’s success than an individual one, because all the parts have to work together, and there is no substitute for hearing and seeing it for real.
The rehearsal process is absolutely critical and must be managed with care. Here are some other practical tips that can go a long way toward creating an exceptional presentation:
Plan transitions and handoffs. There are two ways to handle this. The team leader can act as a Master of Ceremonies and handle all of the transitions. The advantage is that only one person needs to practice the transitions. Or, each individual speaker can introduce the following speaker, which means that you have fewer moving parts and it looks a little less choppy.
Plan what-ifs. An old military dictum is that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and the same applies to sales presentations. The customer will always have a vote in how the presentation flows. It’s important for the team to have flexibility built in, and for the team leader to follow the conversation closely and make adjustments as necessary.
- Plan to shorten or omit parts as necessary. Sometimes the portion that one person worked so hard over becomes irrelevant because the customer prefers to spend more time on something else.
- Plan on something going wrong. What will you do if someone is detained?
Present in conditions as close to realistic as possible. It will make presenters more comfortable by making the actual scene much more familiar. It will also help to identify peculiarities of the venue that might interfere with some of the choreography of the presentation, such as where people sit when not presenting.
Videotape and review. There’s no substitute for everyone seeing themselves performing individually and for the team to get a sense of how the entire presentation flows. It builds in safeguards against Murphy’s Law. When everyone knows who will be saying what, they are in a better position to step in and assist in case someone is detained and can’t make the meeting on time, or someone has a momentary brain freeze and forgets a part or can’t answer a question.
Deliver
There is a tendency among many sales teams to bring more people to team presentations than necessary. It’s understandable, because it seems it would demonstrate your depth of resources, and because you might need a specialist to answer a question about some esoteric aspect of the offering. Yet my interviews with top executives indicate that it can actually backfire.
One of the most common “don’ts” that came out of the interviews was not to bring more people than necessary. Also, make sure that the people you do bring have a clear reason for being there. Of course, that’s not always possible, because there is definite value in bringing people just in case a specialized topic comes up, but in that case it’s a good idea to explain that up front.
Make it a true team presentation; don’t have one person do 90% of the talking.
If you bring in one of your own senior level people, you have the delicate task of convincing that person to hold his or her ego in check. What does that mean? Make sure they know their role in the presentation and don’t free-lance. Don’t let them go on too long. Coach them to ensure that they deflect most questions to you; otherwise they will undercut your own authority and accountability and the client will be confused about whom to turn to when they have an issue.
It’s also possible to err on the other side, and expect the senior person to carry too much of the load. One senior executive complained to me that his account managers seem to think that he can work some sort of magic just because of his rank. If it’s your account, it’s up to you to manage the process, set expectations, and use your senior management properly, as you would any other asset.
Most importantly, make sure you and they are on the same page. An IT VP at a large technology firm told me about a presentation involving a professional services outsourcing firm. During the sales process, he had asked the account manager if his company would agree to letting his company hire any of its employees that they were impressed with, something that most of these firms avoid. The account manager said that, absolutely they could do that; in fact, that was a strategic direction they were considering. When the company’s C-Level executive flew in for a meeting, that was the second question the VP asked. The response he got from the executive was, “Hell, no. Why would we do that?”
Get agreement on the agenda and who will handle each part, ensuring a proper balance of talk time.
Transitions are important to maintain a smooth flow and keep people engaged in the forward progress of the meeting.
The person handing off should tee up the next presenter by giving a brief explanation of how their topic follows. For example, you could say,
“You have very ambitious goals for your business in the next couple of years. Effective execution of your key business processes is going to be critical, and our next topic will address how we are enabling some industry-leading applications…”
After a speaker has finished, it’s a nice practice to do a brief summary of what they said and tie it into the principal theme of the meeting.
During their turn, each speaker should include links and references to what other speakers have said or are about to say.
Stay on top of the time. It helps to have one person designated to keep a close eye on time and have subtle signals arranged if things are going off track, such as an unobtrusive tap on the watch or the wrist.
It’s a good idea to ensure that presentations are not designed to fill every minute they have available on the agenda. Since it’s your goal to have a dialogue, there has to be enough time built in to allow for questions and necessary digressions. Sometimes digressions from prepared material are welcome, especially when ideas come up that point to potential customer needs.
Adjusting: No plan ever goes off exactly as laid out on paper. You need to be prepared to adjust the agenda based on what the customer says and how they react to various topics. Presenters must be prepared to cut back on their presentation time, for example, or to step up and speak extemporaneously on an unexpected topic.
What to do when you’re not presenting: One of the easiest traps to fall into in a team presentation is for people who are not speaking to pay as close attention to the current speaker as if they are hearing it for the first time. Even though you’ve heard it many times before, if you tune out, others will. Other audience members will take cues from you, so act interested. In his book, Perfect Pitch, Jon Steel tells how his firm won a large contract because, as the client told him, “Each of you seemed to enjoy what your colleagues were saying as much as I did.” The competitor’s presenters, on the other hand, were studying their notes for their next part and even rolling their eyes at some parts.
Of course, another practical reason to pay attention is that a question might come up during the presentation that the speaker will send your way to answer. If your mind is wandering, it can feel like you’re on an awfully lonely island when you have to ask your customer to repeat the question.
