Great Questions

Think back to the last presentation you took in. At some point the presenter said, "that's a great question" and, maybe, they flashed a quick smile that showed all of their upper teeth.

How much did you believe the presenter at that moment?

I hazard not very much.

"That's a great question" is auto-pilot language for presenters. That phrase is a placeholder, which was originally taught to presenters to help them engage with their audience. Now, it's the aural equivalent of eating sugar packets.

Next time a question comes your way in a presentation try, "thank you for asking that" or "I plan to address that in a few slides, may I answer your question then?"

You'll be more believable to your audience because you're engaging them as intelligent individuals.

Let's leave "great" questions to those that generate an "I don't know" response. What do you think?

Next!

Your pitches will fail. Most of them, in fact.

Years ago, I participated in a sales training program during which I was told, I would need to hear 7 "no"s before I heard 1 "yes".

That's 1/8 successful pitches! 12.5%! Decent return on an investment portfolio, not so much as a batting average.

So you'll fail. When you do, figure out how your pitch could've been better, think "NEXT" and move on to your next pitch.

What's in it for me?

That's what your audience wants to know - quickly.

Depending on which source you read, you have between 10 and 60 seconds to convince your audience that they should spend more time listening to you.

10 seconds seems too little time, right? To experience how long 10 seconds is, set a timer for 10 seconds or have someone count off 10 seconds on a stopwatch while you sit quietly. 10 seconds is an eternity of spoken words.

Break your pitch into short segments, each ending with a reason why your idea will save your audience time or money (aka a "benefit statement").

If your pitch lacks benefit statements, shorten your presentation. Your audience will appreciate a concise, relevant pitch.

Value of Role Playing

When you're getting ready to make your pitch, someone might suggest role playing. Don't. Role playing will hurt your pitch.

I appreciate that this runs counter to almost all accepted sales training methods; however, I have yet to be shown how role playing actually results in more successful pitches.

There is a lot of value; however, in practising your pitch before delivery. What's the difference between role playing and practising?

In role playing, not only are you practising your pitch you are also pretending that the person listening to your pitch is your final audience. Reality is, that person is also pretending, they are pretending to be your final audience. Simply practising your pitch removes the layer of make believe from role playing and allows you to focus on the most important aspect of your pitch - your content!

Give you an example. You are pitching the VP of Human Resources at your organization. A colleague agrees to "role play" as the VP. Why is your colleague qualified to pretend to be the VP? Are they and the VP personal friends? Have they worked together closely? Is your colleague a trained actor? Probably "none of the above." You will spend most of your role play responding to your colleague, who is inventing feedback they think the VP would say instead of focusing on your content.

Some of you are thinking, "role playing is valuable. You wouldn't give the same pitch to a peer as you would a Director, a VP or a CEO." I agree absolutely; however, how you pitch to each type of individual goes back to Communications 101 - know your audience.

Once you know your final audience - for example, your CEO responds best to visuals or your VP wants to see an implementation plan - you build your pitch to suit that audience. Then, when you ask a colleague to help you practise, that individual can focus on how well your content fits your final audience instead of trying to invent things your final audience might say.

What do you think? Does role playing have a place outside a stage or screen?

I'm Not Here to Talk Business

What is your approach to a networking event?

Most individuals I see at networking events, I attend 2-3 per month, fall into 1 of 3 categories:

1) Attending to hang out with current acquaintances or clients only

2) Attending to start a relationship with 1-2 new people and reconnect with current contacts

3) Attending to hand out as many business cards as possible in a 1-2 hour span

The last group makes me crazy and, I feel, is the reason for this common interaction at networking events.

Common Acquaintance - Hamish, meet Fred. Fred is the VP Marketing for A Consumer Brand Corp.

Me - Pleased to meet you Fred, Hamish Knox with A Marketing & Advertising Agency

Fred - We do all of our ad work in house

Hmmm. No pleasantry, no "how do you know our Common Acquaintance," just "I have no interest in talking to you because I assume you're going to talk business with me."

I appreciate this is a defensive move honed over years of pushing away salespeople who see networking events the same way a shark looks at a school of tuna; however, to completely cut off the opportunity to get to know a new person just because Fred thinks I might talk business is ludicrous to me.

If business is truly about relationships then shutting down the opportunity to develop new relationships makes me wonder why Fred would attend networking events at all when he could maintain current relationships elsewhere.

What do you think? What would your response be to Fred's reaction?

Commodity Sellers

Ideas are like opinions. There's a cliche about opinions that's not coming to mind right now, help me out in comments.

Essentially, ideas are a commodity and there's supposed to be no value in commodities, right?

What I've found though, is if your idea a) saves your audience time (like consolidating suppliers) or b) adds tangible value to your audience (like creating a new market segment) ideas elevate from commodities to valuable assets.

Next time you're prepping to pitch an idea highlight the ways your idea would meet the criteria above to your audience. You'll have greater success in selling ideas if you do.

Time Management

A client once told me about a salesperson that used to call them "just to chat." My client said to me, "just to chat? I'm busy! Tell me something new, ask for a meeting or don't call!"

It should be obvious that the people to whom we pitch our ideas are busy; however, when we take focus off to who we are pitching and focus on the pitch itself respect for our audience's time drops down our list of importance.

What works best for me is to acknowledge my audience's limited time for me then ask for a specific amount of time at a specific date and time. In some meetings I've brought and oven timer and let my audience set the time for our meeting.

Any successful pitch revolves around trust and respect. If your audience feels you respect their time and trusts that you will execute your commitments (more on that later) your pitches should be regularly successful.

Greyhound Opportunity

Greyhound’s announcement of service cuts is a fantastic opportunity for Canadian entrepreneurs. Small, nimble companies with a focus on serving rural customers could fill the void left by Greyhound and make money doing it.

Here’re my ideas on how it would work.

1. Copy the Southwest Air model – instead of the hub (Winnipeg) and spoke (everywhere else in Manitoba) system used by Greyhound, run point to point service between rural communities. This would end up being less expensive because smaller coaches could be used (see below) more frequently

2. Use smaller coaches – growing up in rural Canada, I used to ride Greyhound. Their 50+ seat coaches were never even half full until we stopped at a mid-major centre like Kelowna, Red Deer or Brandon. Smaller coaches mean fewer seats which translates into few fares to break even

3. Automate as much as possible – Reduce overhead by equipping drivers with mobile credit card scanners for last minute purchases and routing all other purchases through a call centre. As Internet access is slow at best in rural Canada, an e-commerce option wouldn’t be highly used, but should be available

4. Increase frequency – as many rural towns, including my hometown, lack services such as a grocery store, doctor, dentist, video store and registry, increased frequency of service between “small town A” and “slightly larger town with services small town A doesn’t have” would provide steady, recurring revenue

Admittedly, the above ideas are just a shell of a plan. Let me in comments would it work? Wouldn’t it? How would you tackle this opportunity?

What, Specifically is Your Idea?

One of the more frustrating aspects of most pitches I see is vagueness. Mark Cuban did a fantastic job of breaking down a hilariously vague pitch in his blog recently.

I see vague pitches most often from volunteer groups (including not-for-profits and amateur sport organizations). These pitches can generally be summed up as “we will do stuff and it will be wonderful.” Occasionally a target group that might benefit from said wonderful program will be tossed in to make a pitch less vague.

This isn’t to say that these pitches aren’t created by intelligent individuals who may achieve some degree of success with a program; however, by leaving specifics out of their pitches they fail to maximize the potential for success (or as Seth Godin said, minimize potential for blame if that program fails).

Some of you reading may disagree with this post so far, if so I hope you’ll be public with your disagreement by commenting, as you had success getting a “yes” to vague pitches. Vague pitches may work; however, by adding specifics to your pitch you accomplish two things.

1. More individuals will pay attention so you increase the potential target pool for your pitch

2. Individuals who aren’t committed to your idea will lose interest

Seems counter-intuitive, no? Think of it this way. At this point in our careers, all of us have worked in a group. Group theory says that in a majority of groups a small part of a group will take on more than their fair share of work, most of a group will do their fair share of work and another small part will be “free riders” who do little to no work. Number “2” seriously reduces the potential for free riders.

Out of the theoretical and into the practical...

· Initial idea – “to increase moral, we will create an employee blog”; interesting, but

o how will an employee blog increase moral

o by how much do we want to increase moral

o who will create the employee blog

o who will monitor and publish the blog

o what content will be published on the blog

At first blush the initial idea is great; however, without answers to the above questions (and several more I’m sure you can come up with) the idea lacks substance and is destined to collapse.

Don’t walk away from this post thinking that your ideas must fill a 3 inch binder or 120 PowerPoint slides to be effective. At the 2008 TechCrunch50 conference, finalists from the 52 companies selected to present at the conference were asked to describe their revenue models in 5 words or less.

Who's pitching?

Is it you or your PowerPoint? If your PowerPoint is pitching your idea for you, you are wasting your time and your targer audience's time.

My stance on PowerPoint has softened a bit recently as some ideas, software and marketing specifically, do lend themselves to visuals.

Visuals, including financials, should only come into play after your target audience has bought into your idea at a high level. For example, a very common response to any idea pitch is "how much does it cost?" Reality is that unless your idea is free your pitch will be unsuccessful because your audience is looking for an easy way to say "no."

Getting your audience to buy in conceptually, saying for example, "so if the numbers are right, how do you see this idea working for you?" opens a door for you to produce your visuals to confirm in your audience's mind the reason why they said "yes."

Remember that you're pitching your idea to a person whose first response to most pitches is "no." Falling back in visuals or pounding through PowerPoint slides helps them say "no" more than it helps you get them to say "yes."

Having confidence in your ideas, getting high level buy in and then confirming buy in with visuals will give your pitches more chance of success.

Cold Calling

I love cold calling. This puts me in a minority, even among my peers in sales. In my experience, the individuals who suffer from "call reluctance" focus more on the recipient of their pitch than on themselves.

You're busy. Your prospect is busy. If your prospect doesn't like your pitch they will hang up and forget about you in 20 seconds! If they can move on so easily so can you.

Relying on your current clients to buy all of your ideas is a losing strategy. To grow yourself you must pitch your ideas to new individuals.

To successfully cold calling, you only need 2 things:

1) An Internet browser - one of my former colleagues pointed out that I used to make most of my cold calls with no more information than my prospect's website. Remember, the goal of a cold call is to get a chance to pitch in person

2) Confidence - as discussed in "over qualified," one the biggest reasons for failed pitches is lack of confidence. Lack of belief in your pitch comes through like a air raid siren on the phone and makes hanging up that much easier for your prospect

The rule of thumb I live by is it takes 7 "nos" to get 1 "yes." Sometimes this ratio is lower, sometimes higher, but it helps guide me when I pitch ideas.

Since I'm in the minority, I'm interested in your thoughts on cold calling. Why do you avoid it? What do you do to overcome your reluctance to cold call?

Time and Money

When building a pitch keep in mind that your target audience wants to hear 1 of 2 things.

1) Your idea will save time

2) Your idea will save or make money

Really, the list above is 1 thing, saving/making money. Time savings should save your organization money in the short term and allow it to make more money in the long term through increased productivity.

How your idea will save time or save/make money for your organization may not be readily apparent. On the surface many ideas may not have an obvious connection to the list above.

The chances of your pitch being successful will increase if you take time to look below the surface and connect your pitch to a number that is important to your audience (more on that later).

Over qualified

One of the biggest reasons ideas fail to sell is because they are over qualified. Think of the times you have used or heard the following phrases at work.

"These are my thoughts, you can take them or leave them"

"Here's what I think, do what you will"

"Do what you will with my input"

"Its only my idea"

With the first three, what I do with the idea is flush it, usually before the individual is finished speaking. If someone can't own their thoughts, I have no interest in whatever comes after their qualifier.

With the last one, I want to jump up, grab the individual pitching and scream, "THAT'S GREAT! ITS ONLY YOUR IDEA! YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHARE CREDIT WITH ANYONE!" Fortunately for my colleagues and clients, I have restrained myself so far.

Instead of enhancing your idea pitch, qualifiers communicate your lack of belief in your idea to your audience. 

If your idea is well thought out, your pitch doesn't need any qualifications, you are qualified to pitch already.

Closing Time

60% of all ideas fail to sell in North America because the seller fails to ask "so we're going to do business, right?" A prof at BCIT laid that stat on me almost 10 years ago and it stuck with me throughout my varying careers as journalist, marketer and salesperson.

Think of that stat like this. If 5 Honda Civics are available at a car dealership, and each is worth $20,000, 3 of those cars (and $60,000 in revenue) will not sell because the dealership's salespeople don't ask, "so when would you like to take delivery?"

Shocking, no?

Let's go away from a traditional sales situation. Imagine you are sitting across from a colleague. You are in your organization's conference room, both of you have notebooks, you have extra papers that explain the idea you want to sell to your colleague. You explain how you came up with your idea and why you feel it would be beneficial for your organization. Your colleague asks questions, you provide answers. You feel your colleague has "bought in" to your idea so you end the meeting and leave feeling satisfied. 

Now you're presenting your idea at a group meeting. Again you explain your idea and the benefits you perceive your idea will bring to your organization. Your colleagues put your idea under scrutiny so you look to your colleague mentioned above for support. To your dismay, that colleague picks your idea apart further! If you had only asked, "is this an idea you would support?" in your first meeting.

If your ideas are good enough to present, make sure you close the deal, batting .400 is only good in baseball.

Selling ideas internally

Seth Godin wrote a great post recently about selling ideas to big companies from an external perspective. What about selling ideas to companies of any size from an internal perspective?

Selling ideas internally is more difficult because you are selling into your corporate culture. All of the politics, legends, norms and other factors that created the corporate culture at your company weigh on you when selling internally. 

Key to successfully selling your ideas internally is how you show that your idea will either make money or save time (which makes money through increased productivity). Showing how your ideas make money or save time is easier if your idea is a strategy that relates to a specific company objective instead of only a tactical action (issue a news release, sponsor a sports team in an operating community, submit reports in PDF only, etc.). 

For example, if your company sets an objective of increasing positive media coverage by 20% in the next 12 months compared to the previous 12 months, you will have greater success selling an idea that directly relates to that objective (like increasing support for local not-for-profits) than an idea that indirectly relates to that objective (like increasing internal recycling).

A caveat before you get the idea that directly linking your ideas to company objectives will mean easy sales. Remember that you won't be the only individual in your company coming up with ideas to meet your company's objectives. Your idea may be the best idea to meet a specific objective; however, unless you successfully sold the specific individual who has the power to choose your idea, you will fail to close your sale. 

Successfully selling your ideas internally comes down to understanding your company's objectives, choosing a specific objective, creating a strategic idea that directly relates to the success of your chosen objective, understanding which individual will chose ideas related to your chosen objective, listening to that individual's needs and demonstrating how your idea meets those needs and contributes to the success of your chosen objective.

Are you listening?

Think about hearing. Unless you're deaf you can't not hear. You can ignore, but you can't avoid hearing.

Now think about listening. You hear constantly, but how often do you actually absorb what is said and respond to the meaning of what was said instead reacting to what was heard.

Reacting to what you hear takes you down a path of failure as what is said may not be what is meant. In my previous post, I talked about selling your ideas to specific individuals instead of generic people. Individuals won't always reveal their true intentions in their words. instead tone, inflection and context are key to understanding exactly what your audience is feeding back to you.

If you are listening, a successful meeting should follow this pattern - question, listen, question, listen, provide specific information, listen for feedback, question, listen, question, listen, provide specific information, agree on a next step (hold a press conference, sign a contract, hire a new employee, etc.).

"Peope" aren't buying

"People" is a mostly useless throw away word, like "they." 

We're not selling to homogeneous "people," we're selling to distinct "individuals" who each have different reasons for buying your ideas.

You will enjoy greater success in getting your ideas accepted (aka "closing a sale") if you speak to each individual's reasons for buying instead of blundering through a canned presentation.

A great example of speaking to an individual's reasons for buying is the "devil's advocate." You have worked with this individual in the past, the one who seeks to poke a hole in every idea no matter how solid the idea may be.

A friend told me recently about how he dealt with a devil's advocate on a team he led; he let the devil's advocate play their role. Every time his team came up with an idea, he asked the devil's advocate to poke a hole in it. Eventually, the devil's advocate couldn't poke any more holes in their team's idea so they bought in. 

Next time you're pitching, make it your goal to understand why each person would buy your idea, you'll be surprised at your success in getting your ideas accepted.

Running Wind Sprints

When I played basketball in high school, my least favourite part of practise was running wind sprints. Essentially, I ran the length of the basketball court as hard as I could as many times as I could before collapsing like a Jenga tower in a pool of sweat.

Wind sprints were great for getting into game shape; however, they had little to do with actually playing basketball.

Preparing for your next meeting is running wind sprints. Rembember, though running wind sprints during your meeting won't help you win and may actually hurt your cause.

In polite terms this is called "info dumping." Blowing through your prepared statement while your meeting participants sit stunned, waiting for you to take a breath and say something that they actually care about.

To win show up in the best shape, but don't spend your time running wind sprints, play your whole game. 

We are all in sales

Repeat after me, "we are all in sales." 

No matter if you are public relations practitioner, geophysicist, or dentist, sales is part of your day, every day. Unless you have everyone you know do whatever you ask without question (and if you do, I'm jealous), you have to sell our thoughts to other people. 

Sales is pretty simple (not easy, simple). Just ask a lot of questions, listen and ask more questions. No one is truly satisfied with the status quo so you will eventually ask the question that will uncover a hole that you can fill.

"The" thing is

How many times a day do you use "the" in your communications? How often do you have to explain what "the" means afterward?

Unless there is shared knowledge between you and the person to whom you are speaking, "the" can casue confusion and conflict (e.g. "I got you 'the' book." "Yes, but not 'the' book" I wanted). 

Communicating your thoughts clearly will increase understanding, retention, and action on the part of your targets (e.g. increasing chances your traget will buy your product or idea).