The #1 Trick To Improve A PowerPoint Deck

Google "PowerPoint Presentation Tips" and you will get over 47 million hits.

There is some great content out there, ranging from slide design techniques to the classic Non-Verbal Communication tips (stand up straight, look at your audience, breathe, speak slowly etc.) Yet there is one basic, fundamental rule that I see broken all the time - and hardly anyone writes about it. It's simple.

Here is the Prime (PowerPoint) Directive:

"Review your PowerPoint from 40 feet (13m) distance using a standard overhead projector or on a wide screen (60" plus) HDTV".

One of the biggest attention killers is that people simply have to work too hard to read / understand your slides. That because while they may look great on your laptop - when viewed in a conference room setting (where >80% of PPT pitches take place) you have:

1. Poor choice of colors. Red, Yellow, Green and even Light Blue may disappear with an old or underpowered projector. If they are your corporate colors then good luck.
2. Font size is too small. Dinky "product marketing" 10 point font is illegible from that distance.
3. Images are unclear. Usually because they are too small or poorly labeled.
4. Animations and highlighting get lost.

You get the idea! And why 40 feet? The most important person in the room will often sit at the back of the room in the power position. They may also be one of the older folks in the room. If your VIP cannot read your slides - you are lost.

So - call to action. From now on review all your sides using the Prime PPT Directive. If they are slides produced by another division or department - send them back if they fail the test.

Let me know how this works for you.

June , WTF, And Other SE Things

The monthly website refresh has happened and the June newsletter has been distributed. The main topic this month is the "WTF" Presentation - or Wonderful Technical Features pitch that almost every SE has to give multiple times every quarter.

I decided to write this (and have a little fun with my inter-dimensional reverse dynamic network backup and data regeneration feature) because I have just seen a ton of these truly terrible product-oriented decks over the past 2-3 months. There seems to be a disconnect between Product Management/Marketing and the Sales/Pre-Sales team over what is needed. As an SE, sometimes you have to talk techie and satisfy the IT gurus in the room - that's part of the job - but doing it with a boring, unstructured and almost illegible deck isn't the way to go.

 

And many of the "three-hour-tour" demos I have seen are not much better! The article lays out three quick and very simple ways to change the WTF so that it is a little more fun and memorable for everyone. If your PM group generates WTF's pass them the article - and if they don't - be thankful!!

 

We also look at harnessing The Power Of Three's (note the "three" in the WTF article) as a way to help your customer actually remember what you are showing them. If they don't remember it, they won't understand it and if they don't understand it they most certainly won't buy it.

 

We also make a quick pitch for the MTS Video Series - it's just under 2 hours of video that covers six major SE concepts and is really "The Best Of John".

 

Enjoy!

It's Not A Problem Until The Customer Says It Is A Problem, Unless ...

I had a very interesting experience this morning, listening in to a sales call initiated by one of my customers with one of their customers. My role was to quietly observe, and provide feedback on the entire process. I always enjoy these type of engagements as I get to learn about a new piece of technology, see buyer and seller behavior in action - plus it is great research and consulting material.

This call had a twist. After a little prompting the customer (a Senior IT Director) readily volunteered a couple of business issues that she had, the economic and political pain they were facing, and why they had to do something. In essence, she gave the sales team everything they needed to hear for some great Business Value Discovery.
 
"Not a problem", said the eager salesperson, "we can fix that for you".
 
(Now that surprised both me and the Sales Engineer on the call as neither of the problems were really in the sweet spot of the vendor. AND the IT Director knew that was the case.)
 
 Before the SE could jump in and qualify that response the customer replied:
 
"Wow. That is fantastic. Just to be sure, can you describe my problems to me in your own words?"
 
She was actually trying to help him, which was more than I would have done as a former CIO.  The rep didn't get the hint and plowed ahead with DESCRIBING HIS SOLUTION. Some amazing cloud-driven big-data social thingamabob technology.

She answered, "Yes, but what exactly is my problem?"

Common sense prevailed, I heard the SE typing a message in the background to the rep which said something along the lines of "Be Quiet!".

The SE took over, and gave a really nice paraphrase of the customers problems. You could hear the customer smiling on the other end of the phone. Things went much better.

The moral of the story? There are two.

1. "No problem" is a dangerous phrase and probably not one the customer wants to hear from you. At least not immediately.

2. It is a great exercise to paraphrase the key business issues back to the customer so that they know that you know.

 

Sales, Sales Engineers and Discovery

One of the biggest disconnects I see between sales and pre-sales teams lies in the area of Discovery. In many sales organization there is a chasm between the sales implementation of Discovery and what pre-sales think they actually need. One of my clients said “my rep thinks that Discovery is telling me who is on the phone before a webex demo starts”. Thankfully it’s not always that bad.

Here is the basic problem, and I am generalizing a little here:- Sales views Discovery as something that gets in the way of the deal and slows it down. “Why do you need to ask all those questions – all they want is a demo.” Sales is also concerned that they may discover something that will prevent the deal from happening or may totally unqualify the deal out of the pipeline. (I have never figured out why they regard that as a bad thing – doesn’t it make sense to stop wasting time on something you are never going to win?)

Pre-sales engineers believe that there is no such thing as too much Discovery. The more you learn about a customer the better you can target the demo/presentation/proof-of-concept. That’s true – up to a certain point. Repeating the questions that someone else may have asked, or simply asking them a different way, can really annoy the customer and make it look like there is no co-ordination. SEs also start to stray into deal qualification (do they have a budget?) which is the #1 way to annoy a rep as they hear that from their manager all the time.

The trouble is – there is no perfect line to be drawn between sales and presales responsibilities in this area. Given the usual sales:presales ratio it is virtually impossible for the SE to be included in every single first call or discovery call that sales conducts. There are not enough hours in the day. Plus the relationship between every account rep and every SE is different. Some reps are more technical than others and some SE’s are more business/sales oriented that others – you need to adjust.

My usual advice is this:

1.       Discovery is a mandatory and necessary phase of the sales cycle. It is not to be rushed through. It’s also a constant process as you should always be learning more about the customer in every interaction.

2.       Sales and Presales need to agree on what needs to be ‘Discovered’ before a demo / presentation / pitch takes place.

3.       It doesn’t matter who does it, or if it is a combination of rep/SE – as long as it is done well.

4.       If you don’t understand why the customer might want to buy from you, and what the business drivers are behind the technology decision – then you shouldn’t move into the next phase of the sales cycle. Known collectively as The Dash To Demo, The Push to Present or the Sprint to Solution.

5.       Put a simple process in place to capture the info agreed upon in (2)

The outcome will be much better sales calls (and probably fewer of them) , less unqualified deals, a better pipeline and fewer back-to-back-to-back-to-back demos by SEs. Everyone wins.

Why Businesses Buy Technology

I talk about “The Three Wise Men” a lot in my workshops. They are the guiding principle why businesses make technology decisions – being:

1.       Increase Revenue

2.       Reduce Costs

3.       Mitigate (Decrease) Risk

So it was heartening to read the “connect” article in the September issue of CIO Magazine, which showcased the advice of CIO’s to their peers. In particular, the advice of Rick Roy – the SVP and CIO of CUNA Mutual Group. I quote his advice in full.

“We use three macro-level business metrics to prioritize IT investment decisions and set strategy: revenue growth, cost reduction and risk management and compliance. For line of business spending, it’s rare for someone to introduce a major initiative without a strong connection to one of those. But at the enterprise level it’s more challenging. How does that Windows 7 upgrade really help the business? Whoever presents that case has to make the connection.

Risk mitigation and compliance are the hardest to quantify. We must distinguish between the need-to-have and the nice-to-have. We can’t just say we need to invest in something because the risk is high. What does that mean? Will we lose money? How much? Will we lose customers? How many? We take advantage of our in-house actuarial and risk-modeling expertise to quantify risk.

We look at IT spending in business terms, reporting our costs as an expense ratio. It changes the conversation from “IT costs too much” to a conversation about priorities. It requires more rigor, but it benefits IT to have a clear focus on our top priorities”

Beautiful – well said Rick!! A lesson in there for every single Sales Engineer and every single sales representative.

You Might Be Wondering ...

Yesterday I sat in, as a “dummy guest”, on a remote demonstration and presentation that my newest client had set up. As part of my Discovery process I often like to listen in on a typical sales call. This call was going wonderfully, to the point where I was wondering what I could contribute as feedback other than a few minor cosmetic changes. The team had performed an admirable job of discovery, had identified two painful key business issues of their prospect, and had tailored their pitch to solving those problems and showing the economics of their solution.

There was budget, there was pain, and there was an agreed-upon approval process. I was seeing a deal leap forward in the sales cycle towards a successful close. The pre-sales engineer executed a masterful finish and handed back to the rep.

Who then said “you might be wondering..”

Everything fell apart because the salesperson decided to answer a question that had not been asked about deployment and support. The question was NEVER going to be asked because the customer was in “lets-go-mode”. The entire atmosphere of the call changed into suspicion and uncertainty over this late revelation, and ended with the dreaded “Thanks - we’ll think it over.” Disaster. Deal gets de-committed from the quarterly forecast.

Two lessons learnt from this call.

1.       It’s not always the Pre-Sales Engineer who opens his mouth at the wrong time and supplies too much information.

2.       There is a place for a rhetorical “you might be wondering” when it logically leads onto the next topic of conversation, and it is early in the sales cycle. But never at what was essentially the solution proposal phase.

Beware.

What vs Why?

Why use What?

We are all taught that the best questions in the discovery process are open-ended questions which can kick-start a conversation. They are way better than closed-ended questions which elicit a "yes" or a "no". Closed questions have their place at the start and end of conversations, but open-ended questions are the way to go.

Almost every sales methodology teaches the utility of "Who, What, Where, When, Why and How?" So is one of them better than another? Today we'll look at Why vs What. Now maybe it is my classic British education, but I find What to be a far more open and smoother conversational pivot than Why? Using Why always seemed to be more confrontational and questioning than using a What? Take a second to think about it and examine these two variations.

1. Why do you think that?

2. What do you think about that?

I prefer option #1, as do most people in my unofficial poll. In fact, to borrow a line from Scott Eblin, the only bad what question is "What in the hell were you thinking?"

So the lesson here, especially if you are one of those people who mentally prepare their questions beforehand, is to prefer the What over the Why when you are trying to build a relationship in the initial phases of the sales cycle.