Having trouble thinking of that perfect gift for that special someone? I have an idea for you.
It’s the perfect gift, because:
- It’s rare and precious.
- It’s highly individual and personal.
- If it’s truly the thought that counts, this one takes no thought—and yet a lot of thought.
- It won’t break the bank, yet can be priceless.
- It doesn’t wear out.
- It’s portable and highly user friendly.
- Everyone, regardless of their age, gender, or occupation, loves it.
- It comes in all sizes, but bigger is better.
- You will get as much out of the gift as they will.
- You won’t mind if it’s regifted.
- You don’t have to wait until Christmas morning to open this gift. In fact, your holidays will be better if you give it early and often.
Give someone the gift of your full attention. Be with them 100%, body, mind and soul. Put down the device, set aside your other concerns, still your tongue, and focus entirely on the other person. Talk, listen deeply, and enjoy their company. Don’t be stingy, give them the biggest chunk(s) of time you can afford.
I would like to thank you for the gift of your attention in reading these thoughts. This is my last blog post of 2013. My kids arrive on Saturday, so during the rest of this year, I plan to devote my normal writing time to giving them, and my wife and my friends the gift of attention. And, since you won’t be spending time reading this, you may want to do the same. Regardless of how you celebrate this season, it is a time of gifts.
Presentations rarely go exactly as planned, and one of the most common reasons is the incredible—and inevitable—shrinking time slot. You prepare a half-hour presentation because you’ve been told that’s how much time you will have. But unlike you, the previous presenter showed up late or rambled on past their allotted time, and now you have to pay the price.
The meeting sponsor asks if you can give the presentation in 15 minutes instead of 30, and you agree because you really don’t have a choice.
Faced with this challenge, most speakers react in one of three unsatisfactory ways:
- They talk reallyreallyreally fast
- They go on at the same pace with same material, and just stop early
- If they have time, they go through their slides in a panic and figure out which points to leave out
There’s a better way—structure your presentation so that it is scalable.
In its simplest form, a business presentation has an introduction, middle and end. In most cases, you can keep the beginning and end relatively unchanged. You may need to strip out some of the context out of the beginning and forgo the summary at the end, but neither of those will affect the length too much.
To make the middle of the presentation scalable, picture it as a pyramid, with a key message supported by three main points (although the exact number is of course flexible).
In the topical structure, you may have three supporting reasons to accept your theme, each supported by evidence and supporting reasons of its own. For example, the first reason might be that it will increase revenues. Supporting that might be the three ways that it will increase revenues, each illustrated or supported by stories, statistics, and such. In effect, you end up with a pyramid structure.
It does not have to be a topical structure to work. For example, your three main points may be problem description, causes and recommended solutions. Or yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Depending on how you create your presentation, each of the three main points could be a certain slide design, and the supporting evidence could be shown on slides with a different heading style, for example. That will allow you to go quickly through your slides in slide sorter view and hide the bottom level of the pyramid. Leave out the detail but keep the basic structure intact. If people ask for the detail, you can remind them that you don’t have time to provide it but will be glad to leave the complete set of slides or answer questions off line.
The point is that if you leave off the base of a pyramid, you still have a pyramid.
There’s an added advantage to designing your presentations this way. Your own structure and reasoning become much clearer, both for you and for the audience, and that clarity always pays credibility dividends.
By the way, especially when presenting to busy decision makers, it’s a good idea to tell them up front what decision you’re going to ask them to make. They’re pretty quick studies, and they’ll either tell you when they’ve heard enough, or they will tell you what they need to hear to say yes.
Got any new ideas for sale?
I’ve had the privilege of working with many outstanding sales professionals in my years of training, but the ones who stand out are the sales intrapreneurs, those who go above and beyond consultative selling to create and deliver superior value to their customers and their own companies.
We admire the consultative salesperson. Regardless of whether you call it consultative selling or challenger selling or something similar, it’s seen as the pinnacle of sales professionalism and skill: the valuable elite who create value for their customers by going beyond what they want or think they need; who solve problems the customers don’t yet know they have; who bring new ideas and insights to improve their business.
But, as important as consultative selling is, it still carries an important limitation. It implies a one-way flow of information: the seller has superior insight and knowledge and imparts that to the buyer.
But the extensive sales literature seems to overlook the fact that customers may just possibly be as smart as we are, or might have a bit more insight into the problems than we give them credit for. They may actually know about needs that we’re not aware of.
Or sometimes during the creative exchange of ideas between buyer and seller a need emerges that the seller is not prepared to fill. Maybe they don’t offer the right solution, or maybe because it’s a newly discovered need the solution does not even exist.
What happens in that case? Does the salesperson wish the customer good luck with their problem and just walk away? That would be the prudent thing to do; why spend time chasing something that doesn’t exist?
But while it may be prudent in the short term, there are two problems with walking away. First, once a need is known somebody will eventually figure out how to fill it and steal your customer. Second, there is a lot of value that is being left on the table.
Enter the intrepreneurial salesperson, the rare individual who refuses to accept the risk and cost of walking away from the customer’s needs. The intrapreneurial salesperson turns his or her consultative skills internally, brings fresh and challenging insights to management, acquaints them with undiscovered problems or opportunities, develops internal champions, and agitates for change. The intrapreneurial salesperson thinks and creates.
They work just like an entrepreneur, the person who sees a need and finds a way to fill it by creating the right solution. Intrapreneurs do the same thing, but do it within their own company. Entrepreneurs work for themselves, but intrapreneurs work for their employers. They work internally to develop new products, services, processes, offerings, and capabilities, which remain the property of the company they work for.
Keep in mind that a sales intrapreneur is not just resourceful. There are salespeople who know how to get things done internally for their customers, such as pushing up delivery dates or securing sale engineering resources. That’s a great talent to have, but it does not make one an intrapreneur. Intrepreneurs create something new.
When they succeed, they may simply win a difficult deal, which is a good thing. Or, as in several cases I’ve seen, they may even create a whole new product category or market, which is a great thing.
Every intrepreneur, regardless of their function within a company, is a salesperson—they have to be, to get their idea accepted—but remarkably few salespeople are intrapreneurs. We’ll look at why that is in the next article in this series.
My wife, my son and my daughter.
Living in a time when persuasion not force is the preferred way to get what you want.
Working with so many people who sincerely strive every day to serve their clients, make themselves better, and learn something useful every day.
My country, even though I’m actually in Italy today on Thanksgiving. The turkey can wait until I get back.
My clients.
My friends.
Having a career which pays me for learning, teaching, and helping others grow.
My “co-opetitors” who share ideas and help promote mine.
Being self-employed so I can take a couple of hours out of the office on the rare days we have surf in Fort Lauderdale.
People who read my blog. Thank you, especially today.
