The Prospecting Professor

Your Empire State Building 'Elevator Speech'

75 years ago today, May 1, 1931...President Herbert Hoover flipped on the lights to the Empire State Building.

At 102 stories, the building reigned as the world's tallest skyscraper until 1974. The building's construction was completed in an unbelievably short period of time...one year and 45 days. Upon completion, in the midst of the Depression, it was viewed as a real-estate failure due to the low occupancy rates. Today, it has become an icon of all things New York.

Your Elevator Speech. It takes about 60 seconds to go from the Art Deco ground floor lobby, to the 86th Observatory Floor of the Empire State Building. If it takes this long to deliver your Elevator Speech, your listening victim will have exited on the 43rd floor, or will be very tempted to climb over the restraining wire on the Observation Deck...and jump.

The central goal of your Elevator Speech is positively, absolutely NOT to tell a stranger everything about you and your business in 60 seconds or less. The ultimate goal is to say something startling, intriguing, or memorable that prompts the prospect to lean in and say, "Wait...tell me more about what you just said."

The ultimate goal is to say something memorable, and different. The ultimate goal is to spark a dialogue.

I've listened to hundreds, if not thousands, of Elevator Speeches from financial advisors in my day. Sadly, few stand out. Mediocrity and sameness rules. Everything sounds more or less the same.

The biggest mistake that I hear is that advisors tend to emphasize the features of their practice that make them 'better.' However, in the choice between different or better, different is better than 'better.' People remember different.

The other mistakes that advisors make is to pack their Elevator Speech with boring detail. Few prospects care much about the mundane specifics of what your practice is about. Ditch the detail. Say something snappy and memorable.

Speaking of memorable, check out this remarkable photo, shot by Lewis Hine during construction of the Empire State Building, of a steel-worker hundreds of feet above the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street.

I get the willies just seeing this picture. How could they even do this?

1200 Pairs of Shoes...and 1 Really Bad PowerPoint Presentation

Twenty years ago, Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos were driven into exile and disgrace. Ferdinand died in exile in Hawaii in 1989, yet Imelda (now 76 years old) has returned to her homeland. She now lives in an opulent apartment in Manila... surrounded by Masters paintings, ranks of framed photographs, and buckets of artificial flowers. Estimates of the hidden Marcos fortune vary, with some experts estimating that they were able to abscond with as much as $10 billion...most of which came out of the Philippine economy by less-than-legal means. Amazingly, the Philippine government has found and recovered only bits of the ill-gotten wealth...and Imelda has masterfully avoided prosecution and jail-time.

One of Imelda's present-day interests is to explain her philosophy of life into a PowerPoint presentation. Although I haven't seen the presentation in person, Seth Mydans of the International Herald Tribune has. He calls it "incomprehensible."

In Imelda's eyes, the Seven Pillars to Moral Regeneration (the title of her presentation) are: ecological order, human order, economic order, social order, moral order, cosmic order, and peace and order. Other Imelda-isms: "Beauty is God made real." "The only things we keep are those we give away." "Common sense is common to all."

On the left, you will see one of  the presentation's depictions. Imelda uses this slide to summarize her obtuse worldview. "You put it all together...an upright heart, an upside-down heart, and what you get is peace."

Speaking of presentations, in the March issue of The American Salesman, John Graham has 12 presentation pointers that he entitles, "Making a Better Presentation Than Anyone Else." His first tip is a good one...and I'll use it verbatim.

"Don't charge ahead...take charge. It's over in the first 60 seconds. How you are perceived and evaluated is determined in the opening seconds of your presentation. The first impression lasts. And that's how you want it.

In the first minute, the listeners...whether one or 1,000...must have a clear, powerful and indelible impression that what you are about to say is important because it benefits them. If the opening is weak, confused or dragging, you will have made an impression that is difficult to change. In other words, a presenter must lead from the start."

I very much agree with what Mr. Graham says. I would go on to say that first impressions are often based upon non-verbal images and clues. In fact, I believe that it is important not to say TOO much in the first few minutes of a presentation...this is when the audience, of 1 or 1,000...is making a judgment on whether the presenter is credible, and worthy of their attention and trust. If the speaker plunges ahead too aggressively in the first few minutes, and says too much before the audience has settled in...the words often fall upon deaf ears.

Let's conclude by some (unrelated) quotes of Imelda:

• "If you know how much you've got, you haven't got much."
• "Nouveau riche is better than no 'riche'".

Guy Kawasaki on Presentations

Do you know who Guy Kawasaki is?

He is a man of many facets. Born in Honolulu, HI...he matriculated at Stanford and got a degree in Psychology because (he says) it was the easiest major. After earning an MBA at UCLA, he was one of the original Apple Computer employees responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. He is also the author of eight books, including, "The Art of the Start." He is currently the CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital firm based in the heart of Silicon Valley, in Palo Alto, CA.

As a venture capitalist, Guy sees many presentations...many hundreds of presentations, in fact. As such, he has been able to formulate some strong opinions on what works, and what doesn't...presentation-wise. He is trying to evangelize his views in, what he calls, "the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint" Since I completely agree with him, I will do my part to evangelize along with him.

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint is this:

1. A PowerPoint presentation should have 10 slides, maximum.
2. The presentation should last 20 minutes, maximum.
3. The font of the presentation should be 30 points, minimum.

Guy says that most presentations that he sees are "crap."  One of the main reasons for their fecal consistency is that they are much too loooooooong. From his perspective, if you can't tell your story in 10 slides, and 20 minutes...you don't have a story.

Guy says that "a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting." Actually, here's where I differ with Guy. He is being much too generous regarding what most people retain from a presentation. Within 24 hours of a presentation, I believe that most people remember only 1-2 points of what was said.

Think of the last presentation that you sat through. What do you remember about it? Is it more than 1-2 points? If it is, you are an exception.

While Guy is in the venture capital business, and his observations pertain to the pitches that he sees...his 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint really applies to any presentation to reach agreement: raising capital, making a group presentation, making a one-on-one sale, forming a partnership, etc.

In the words of Albert Einstein, "Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler." ( I know that I used this quote the other day when referring to a different topic...but it's equally relevant here.)

Sales Presentations

If you go the www.amazon.com and search for books under the category of "selling", you will find 7,868 titles available. The #1 seller will be "The Little Red Book of Selling" by Jeffrey Gitomer. For those of you who don't know Jeffrey Gitomer, he is one of the leading sales gurus and entrepreneurs in the marketplace today. He is a college dropout who grew up selling in New York, who landed in Charlotte, NC somehow. He began his career in multilevel marketing, and graduated with a Ph.D. in the sales school of hard knocks. Today he writes books, has a website, writes a nationally-published sales column, sends out a bi-weekly sales-zine, does teleseminars...the whole ball of wax. He is a one-person selling dynamo who has built a sales empire.

Unlike a lot of pretenders, Jeff Gitomer is the real deal. He knows how to sell.

In one of his recent missives, Gitomer talks about "Sales Presentations." His thoughts hit the mark with me...and I wanted to pass them on to you.

He believes that many sales professionals are "presentation-weak" due to a lack of preparation, a lack of study, and a poor sense of what they actually sound like.

In his view, a "sales presentation" is a misnomer. One is not actually "presenting", i.e. delivering a one-way monologue to a silent audience. A "sales presentation" is more about persuasion, uncovering needs, building value, differentiating oneself, and gaining the prospect's trust by being likeable and believable. He believes that a "sales presentation" is 20% each of:

• Presentation skills
• Product knowledge
• Knowledge of the customer
• Selling skills
• Attitude

Here is how he suggests that one move from a position of "presentation-weak" to a position of "presentation-strong."

1. Develop a belief system that is so strong, you assume every sale before you walk through the door.
2. Be completely prepared. Being ready breeds confidence.
3. Make friends with the person or people you are presenting to...before you begin your formalized talk. If they aren't smiling...if they aren't friendly--leave.
4. Create points of value and areas of differentiation as you are speaking. Consider a sales presentation to be a 15-round prize fight...and try to win every round.
5. Don't "need" the sale. Desperation is an obvious quality, and is likely to be telegraphed to the prospect.

His last bit of advice...Record yourself. Recording is the best and only way to examine your present skill level and to create a game plan for improvement.

For more of his thoughts, check out this link "link to Gitomer article".

That's all for today. Ciao!

The Presentation Trap

In a recent article in VARbusiness, author Jeff Thull describes how salespersons can get caught in the Presentation Trap, "Ditch the Pitch - How to avoid the presentation trap and win complex sales"

Salespersons who stumble into the Presentation Trap spend an extraordinary amount of time/resources on preparing a presentation with a lot of bells and whistles...and lose sight of the important issues at hand. The irony is that prospects retain very little after many sales presentations, and all of the presentation-building effort is for naught.

Thull's solution to the Presentation Trap is simple...don't present. Ask good questions to uncover problems and expand the prospect's awareness. Once the prospect understand the complete nature of the problem, the salesperson can make recommendations...and a presentation is superfluous.

Thull's other interesting observations:

• A presentation that is too early for complex decisions is a waste of time.
• A typical sales presentation rarely devotes more than 10-20% of its focus on the prospect and his/her current situation. Rather, the great majority is devoted to describing the seller, the solutions that the seller is proposing, and the "rosy future if the customers buy them."
• Your competitors are following the same strategy. Consequently, presentations are heavily skewed toward the seller and the solutions.

Thull's recommendations:

1. Spend less time talking about you, your company, and your solution.
2. Spend more time talking about your prospect's business, problems, and objectives.
3. Identify how well the prospect understands his/her own problems.
4. Make the connection between your solutions...and the prospect's business situation.
5. Guide prospects through this investigative process, and you will establish a level of credibility and find yourself jointly developing optimal solutions.

It's a good article, and worth a read. That's all for now. Ciao!