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Ten Points to help in Selling with Powerpoint June 15, 2008

I’ve talked about PowerPoint before. I don’t like it so much, but many companies insist on using it for everything.

One such company I was recently working with used it for all sales presentations. That’s right; a ‘Death by PowerPoint Sales Pitch’.

I watched one of the presentations, and the sales guy came a distant second to the slides. This destroyed his sales abilities. He was a good salesman when able to interact directly with his clients, but stuck behind PowerPoint, he really struggled. Is it any wonder the companies sales were low?

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t be forced to use PowerPoint in our sales presentations. If we are, there are things we can do to improve the results we get.

So we sat down and devised a new set. This set used his sales skills directly in the presentation, with the slides to back him up. This slide set also used little known persuasion techniques from a variety of sources to improve his sales results.

So what did we do? Here is a list of what and why…

1. Each slide is given a unique headline that describes a benefit to the client in one single sentence. This benefit is then expanded within the slide itself. The only time you’d mention a feature is if in direct reference to the benefit the client gets. Some example titles might be:

2. These headlines are written in an active voice. Drop the cold wet fish of business language and use active, first person language. Doing this actively involves the readers brain, and keeps their attention longer.

3. Make the slides about the client, not about you or your company. How can your product and service help the client directly? They don’t care about you or your product and service. They only care about how you can help them.

4. Each slide is to have no more than 5 bullet points (Each point written in active, first person language). The reason for 5 points only, is because there are volumes of research on how the human mind can only deal with 7 +/- 2 chunks of information. Some people in the room might be able to deal with 9, but the actual decision maker might only be able to deal with 5. Why risk it?

5. Each and every slide and each and every point of every slide must defer to the sales person to explain and expand on. If the points are well written, everyone in the room with is waiting with anticipation for the sales person to discuss it.

6. If you must read the slides out loud, then use a laser pointer so people can follow along. Otherwise they’ll be reading at different speeds, and starting to get annoyed as you fight directly with their own reading style.

7. This goes for every sales situation, but get excited! Your excitement in the slides will be directly transferred to your listeners. If you are sitting at a desk, watching your laptop, it’s hard to get excited. You might have to stand up and move around.

8. Make sure your regular set of objections are covered somewhere in the slides! The more regular, the sooner you cover it.

9. Have different endings to your presentation. There is a well known adage in sales; “When the customer is sold, stop selling”. It’s difficult to do this with another 15 PowerPoint slides remaining. Within PowerPoint you can create a web site like structure, so instead of going from one slide to the next, you can jump around. Giving more details on a direct benefit the client is interested in, and skipping the ones they’re not.

10. On each slide as the last point, ask a question that is answered by ‘yes’. This can help test for closing and uncover objections on each slide.

Bonus Extra
11. Use pictures. If you can’t find a good picture that describes what you want, then use a picture of a face. Humans are hard wired to recognize and respond to faces. Doing so will keep attention focused and make the slides more memorable.

There are a few more subtle methods we used that were directly related to his client’s problems, but these should get you started on redesign.

Any other ideas or pointers you have used to get good results?

Why is it… March 22, 2008

… That all photos of meetings have smiling people?

As one of the final steps for putting together my Stress Reduction Book, I went searching through istockphoto.com for some pictures.

One of the pictures I’m after is a meeting in progress. Every single picture is of happy smiling people having fun. No one is bored, no one is looking at their watch or staring out the window. The only exception are are a few notable, obviously joke photos. Now I’ll admit I’ve been in a few enjoyable meetings, but they are very rare.

So why are all the photos trying to depict something that goes against almost everyone’s ideas of a meeting?

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The reason to control stress February 12, 2008

Stress may be triggered by external events such as having a short timeframe, being yelled at by a customer, or giving an important presentation. It is your interpretation of the event or situation that will ultimately cause you to feel the mental and physical stress or anxiety.

Now, not all stress is bad stress. Stress is a part of everyday life. In the right amount, stress helps you focus better and achieve what you want. Stress can help you be more alert, motivated, and gain a competitive edge. However, non-stop stress is debilitating and will interfere with performance. In the worst situations, it can even kill you!

Stress occurs as a response to an event that you view as threatening. Imagine driving your car at 200 KPH on a windy road. Under the right amount of stress, you switch on your full potential. Under too much stress you crack under the pressure.

The sooner you can recognize the signs stress, the faster you can react and keep in under control.

So, how do you know when you need to hit the kill switch on stress?

There are three main areas where changes can occur under stress: (1) Physical, (2) Mental or Emotional, and (3) Behavioral.

Physical changes when under stress may include dry mouth, tense muscles, pounding heart rate, cold or clammy hands, headache, sweating, and a feeling of butterflies in the stomach. You probably feel these to some extent if you have an important presentation. These are the signs that your body is ready for the challenge.

Mentally you feel stress when you begin to worry excessively about results, make poor decisions, have a limited attention span, make mental errors, and are forgetful.

Other behavior signs of stress include talking faster than normal, biting one’s nails, restlessness, hyperactivity, insomnia, distractibility, and trembling.

By themselves, these signs may not even slow you down. These signs can stay around, and compound. This starts a chronic stress situation, you will seem tired, restless, and feel out of control. If this continues, more problematic physical issues might start.

The important lesson is that you can learn when helpful stress turns into harmful stress and be able to cope effectively. Bring that harmful stress back under control and be able to perform at your best. The key for you is to be aware of these signs and make the adjustments needed when you feel anxiety, tension, or stress. You can learn the skills needed to keep the balance, relax when you want, and stop the overwhelming stress.

If you’d like to know more, you can join in the survey, and then read more about stress reduction methods.

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Stress migraine and how to survive it. January 21, 2008

This is the conversation I had with a client recently after he took two days off work.

Me: “So what caused you to take time off work?”
Him: “A massive migraine. I couldn’t think or move.”
Me: “Do you get migraines often?”
Him: “Not often. But it’s been a repeating cycle for the past 20 years or so.”
Me: “Repeating cycle?”
Him: “Yeah. I get over stressed and I get hit with a migraine.”
Me: “Good to know.”
He looks at me with an expression of “What the hell are you thinking?”
Me: “Think about it. You are very stressed and stress can kill. Your body knows this. Your body also knows a great way to alleviate this level of stress. You call it a migraine. You might not like it, but your body knows it works.”
Him: “I don’t understand what you mean.”
Me: “Think of this migraine as a message. A message that is impossible to ignore.”
Him: “Heh. It’d be better if I got a less painful message.”
Me: “Yeah it would be good if that happened. When was the very first hint that a migraine was coming?”
Him: “That morning, when someone handed me their resignation. I felt a twinge in my neck here.”
Me: “Good to know. What did you do when you noticed that twinge?”
Him: “I ignored it.”
Me: “Uh huh. Has there ever been a time when you felt the first hint of a migraine, but it didn’t happen?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “What did you do to stop it coming on?”
Him: “I immediately took that afternoon off and went to the beach.”
Me: “Great! Now there is nothing we can do with that last migraine, but we can ensure you don’t have another in future.”
Him: “How so?”
Me: “Quite simple. Next time you feel that first twinge, take time off.”
Him: “I might not be able to do that, there might be too much work on.”
Me: “Well then, you have to weigh up the options. An afternoon off and no migraine, or two days off with a migraine.”
Him: “Ah.”
Me: “See, you do get a less painful message before you get a migraine. In fact I’m sure you get other messages even before that twinge. It’s just that you ignore those ones too.”
Him: “So how do I know what those messages are?”
Me: “Think about all your other migraine events. What are the common feelings or sensations that occur before all of them? They might be an hour, a day, a week or even months in advance. These will be those whispered messages to listen for before your body starts yelling.”

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Ways to boost your confidence August 13, 2007

The words you use might be wimp, spineless, shy or fearful. Other people always seem to be able to tell that you are lacking in confidence and walk all over you, take advantage or just ignore you. And it feels like, after each individual event they build together to make a huge barrier to your success.

This vicious cycle goes on. You try something, forcing yourself past the wall of past failures, but fail and get humiliated, so it makes it harder to try again. Because you don’t try next time, the wall becomes higher and thicker and more difficult to overcome.

Some helpful people might just tell you to “Stop being a wimp and get over it”. As if it’s easy to entirely change who you are. That’s what it feels like; that you’d have to change everything about yourself in order to feel like tackling the world’s challenges.

Confidence, like everything else in life, is a skill that needs to be practiced. When you lose confidence it can genuinely feel awful, and for many people might feel like there is nothing you can do to change it. It’s a common statement, “I just don’t have the confidence to do that.” As though we can walk into a shop and buy a kilo of confidence.

Everyone has times when we feel we can do anything, conquer any fear, take on any project, deal with any problem. The skill of confidence comes in when the situation start to become difficult. Thats when our confidence can start to be eroded.

Confidence may take a while to build, and it can be undermined or lost in a second. All it takes is for something to remind us of that wall and we feel wrong-footed, embarrassed or demoralized. It might be something that reminds us of a past failure or previous time we lost confidence. Think back in your own history, is there a certain situation that you always lack confidence in? It often only takes one episode where you feel humiliated or weren’t sure what to do next, and suddenly your confidence is shattered in that event and possibly future ones as well.

Evaluate what trips you up and what doesn’t

There will be some situations that undermine your confidence and some that boost your confidence. Take a piece of paper and divide the page in two. On the right side make a list of the times and places where you know you feel more confident. You might want to start with listing things you do well. If you know you’re a good listener, for example, you probably feel relatively confident when you take on the listening role.

On the other side of the paper make a list of the times and places where you don’t feel confident. Meeting new people, confrontations, giving a presentation, making decisions, etc.

Now we combine the two sides to create a whole. Pick one or two parts on the right hand side of the paper that you could use to improve your confidence in situations on the left hand side. Let’s say you don’t feel very confident meeting new people, but you do feel confident as a good listener. Get a new page and write these two things on the same line. The left side is again “I’m not confident meeting new people.” and the right is “I’m a confident listener.” In between these two statements combine them into one sentence using the word ‘but’. Now read that whole new sentence aloud. Writing it like this and then reading it changes your experience and understanding. Many people have said this alone is enough to fill them with confidence.

Given that above example, people love to talk about themselves, so you only need to get them started (and every good listener knows how to ask good questions) and they’ll be off. Then you can listen to your heart’s content because you know you’re good at it. This then in turn increases your confidence of situations that previously sapped your confidence.

There will be many other possible times and places where you can borrow one skill to help you overcome a deficit in another. Even combining two or three to become a whole lot more confident much more quickly than you think possible.

Repetition is the mother of skill

If you put yourself into those times and places where you naturally have confidence more often, you will increase your experience and bolster your confidence, not just in these situations but also into the rest of your life. If you’re good at riding a bike, go on more bike rides.

Confidence is just like a muscle. You have to use it to develop it. Unlike a muscle however, you don’t have to spend any extra time lifting weights or going to the gym. You can build it throughout your daily activities by consciously focusing on improving your existing confidence.

If you do have a bad day, and your confidence has been undermined, focus your attention on the parts of your day where you did have confidence. Dwelling on the bad does not help. If you get stuck, use the above evaluation sheet to help focus on the good.

And there’s nothing wrong with every once in a while deliberately avoiding situations that do stop you. There’s nothing so confidence-undermining as consistently forcing yourself in situations where you know you’re vulnerable.

The Confidence Cycle

Losing confidence can be a vicious cycle. You lose a little bit of confidence, and then because of that you do something wrong which chips away another bit of confidence. This in turn causes another error and we are suddenly plummeting towards jagged rocks.

Of course, I’m being a little extreme here, it’s not always like that. In fact you can reverse this cycle so that anything that happens can make you even more confident. Everyone has some areas of their life where they’re really confident, or at least confident enough. This is when those lists of qualities and skills come in when we look at the Confidence Cycle.

This is how it works: when you are confident, you try new things, and the more you try the better you get. Like public speaking, for instance. Any good presenter will tell you that the more they get out there in front of an audience, the more confident they feel about handling whatever happens. NOT that they feel less nervous (some people, no matter how practised they are, never learn how to be calm on stage), just that they know what to expect and also feel able to deal with the unexpected. If they get unbalanced they have enough experience to get themselves upright again.

But without confidence you won’t try new things. Where do you begin?

The one and only place you can begin is to practise. Practice for success. That means to practice just above your current level so that even if you make mistakes you are successful overall. This might mean you practice where no one will necessarily notice or where you are not in the spotlight.

For example, if you feel you have zero confidence speaking in front of a group, don’t start practising in front of a group. All you are doing in practicing zero confidence. Practice in front of the mirror first. Then practice in front of a trusted friend. Do this until you can do it with confidence. It might feel false and embarrassing, but practising with an audience of one friend is very different than going into the lion’s den of an audience of strangers.

Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Alongside practise goes preparation. Whatever the situation is you can prepare for all manner of eventualities. For example, one of the training drills I give to everyone that I train in public speaking is to give a 5 minute talk. During that 5 minute talk they are to make at least 3 obvious ‘errors’. These errors might be dropping a whiteboard marker, tripping, forgetting a major point of their talk, or anything else. This gives them the ability and experience of dealing with something going wrong. Before something like that would undermine their confidence and set them up for more errors. Now it builds their confidence because they have direct experience of dealing effectively with these errors.

Whatever you choose, remember to practice for success. Doing something correctly once is much better than doing something one hundred times wrong.

If you found this article useful you might also like to read how to build self-confidence.

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Business and leadership is about removing limits July 20, 2007

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction.”
~ Albert Einstein

These limits might be your own, limits of those around you, limits of the industry or even limits of humanity.

A good example of this is the Medicine industry. Working towards removing the limits of illness, sickness and accidents (genetic deformities etc). Think of Cochlear implants as a specific example - removing the limits placed on individuals thanks to genetics or accidents.

It is not the development of some new gizmo that makes one company profit, it’s removing limitations. A superb example for this is the blog you are reading right now. The boom in blogs over the last few years has been because it is so easy - anyone can, within 5 minutes, have a running blog. Five years ago, you needed knowledge and experience to achieve the same result.

Henry Ford made the car. But that’s not what made him wealthy and the car such a common item. It was the Ford company consistently focusing on removing the production limitations. Little by little making it easier and cheaper to produce.

You can hold this idea for yourself every day. Focus on removing limits in what you do and how you do it. Maybe something as simple as having to open a drawer each time you need a pen. Removing that physical limitation can help your day. Maybe it’s something bigger like using a filing cabinet for your documents, or using GTD (Getting Things Done) method of time management or getting into work early to miss the traffic. When you remove or avoid a limit, your productivity increases. Removing these limits for yourself means not only being more effective with work, but also reducing your stress.

Businesses grow and improve through removing limits. Some common examples are automatic printing of invoices, just in time production runs to remove warehousing limits, and mobile phones removing the need to be near a land line. Fedex’s whole premise is to remove the time limits for delivering packages.

And I think the number one job of a leader is to remove limits of the business and their team. That’s not to say the leaders will be able to achieve zero limits, there will be contextual limits, budget limits and more. The limits leadership remove are the limits that constrain the workers within the business and also external situations that limit the business itself. These limits might be cash flow problems, team cohesion, client retention etc. Removing those limits might be a strategy change, responding to customers, or sliming the operations.

What are the limits that are placed on you (or you place on yourself) that can easily be removed? What things limit the people around you that you can remove?

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Environment drives behaviour April 27, 2007

Similar to an earlier post, here is a video interview with Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo as he talks about his Stanford Prison Experiment. This experiment is a powerful example of just how your environment can effect your behaviour.

And here is a recent interview with Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo in the lead up to his new book.

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Meetings? Just say ‘no’ April 20, 2007

Seth Godin offers some very good points about meetings. They waste time, increase stress and are usually poorly run.

If you know me at all, you know I’m not a fan of meetings. Most meetings I consider a waste of time. There is, however, a lot that can be done in meetings to get value from them. Seth offers some suggestions, and I have a few more.

My first and foremost one is to ask yourself two questions before the meeting. What is the reason for the meeting? Do I need to make a decision about this? If you don’t need to make a decision, then you can read the meeting notes. If you don’t know what the reason for the meeting is before the meeting, it’s unlikely you’ll know after.

If the reason is just to bring the team together, is it better served with an informal chat over coffee and doughnuts? If the meeting is to update a distributed team, it can be done inside 5 minutes in most cases.

I work with stressed out people often, and I can always point to meetings as a time waster and partial cause. Often meetings will start late and run long. Often no decisions will be made in the meeting and another meeting will need to be scheduled (though this also relates to poor decision making - another of my pet hates!). When I work with these people, I make sure they understand that every meeting is an investment. Not just of their time, but also a percentage of their salary. This is also true for everyone else in the room.

I have a few additional tips to augment Seth’s tips. They are harsh, but most meetings can easily be shortened by at least 5 minutes, without any loss in value.

Do you have any more tips?

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Aiming for a stress-less year? January 8, 2007

Are you back to work after the yearly New Years break? Maybe you only took a few days off, or maybe a few weeks. I enjoyed a mostly quiet time with family and friends. I hope whatever time you had was enjoyable, relaxing and refreshing. And now that the New Year is already in full swing, it’s time to examine our goals for the coming year.

Most people already know about SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.

Though while SMART goals are great, I have a few additional questions I add when helping people set out and achieve their goals. These questions help to direct your thinking in specific ways and gathers a little more detail. Some of these questions may save you months of wasted effort and frustration, others might help you redirect from failure.

So think of your goals going forward this year and answer these questions:

1. What is your desired outcome, stated in positive terms?
2. How do you know when you have reached your desired outcome?
2.a. How do you prove to someone else that you achieved your goal? (Hint: your feelings are not a valid answer.)
2.b. Is the outcome initiated and controlled by you? If not, how can you bring it under your control?
3. In what context do you want it? When, where, with whom?
4. How will the achieving this outcome affect your life?
4.a. Will you, or anyone you know object to the results this goal achieves?
4.b. What will be added?
4.c. What will be removed?
5. What stops you from having your desired outcome already?
6. What resources do you need?

So if you have not already written down some goals to increase your health, wealth and enjoyment then now is a good time. If you already have, pull them out and answer the questions to make achieving those goals much easier.

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How to silence your internal dialogue December 11, 2006

Your infernal internal dialogue can be brought under control. You might, at this time, think that it doesn’t slow you down that much. I can assure you, unless you have control over it, it does.

Some examples of how internal dialogue hamstrings you include:

There are many more examples of how your performance can improve once you stop talking to yourself. Internal dialogue has it’s place I want you to understand that. Unfortunately most of us over use our internal dialogue, at the wrong times and wrong places.

I had breakfast the other day with friends who have an 8 month old child. I was awed by the silence in her (One of the common experiences that occurs when your internal dialogue is off, is that you can sense other people’s). She was simply there, watching, learning and experiencing the world. Of course, being 8 months old, she does not yet have the capability for any dialogue, let alone internal. And after reading Kathy Sierra I decided to build this list.

So without further delay, here is a list of methods you can use to get control over this internal dialogue. When I remember or find more, I’ll add them to the list. If you have any of your own, please add them in the comments!

  1. Restate your internal dialogue immediately after hearing it. This brings your internal dialogue under your conscious control by breaking the pattern.
  2. Move the location of your internal dialogue into your voice box. Most people listen to their dialogue coming from a specific location. Often from the back of their head and off to one side. Move that location to where you physically speak from and it usually silences the chat.
  3. You can also extend on #2 by moving the voice to different locations for different effects. Some locations work great for motivating you, others for de-motivating. Experiment.
  4. Further on #2 and #3, you can externalise the voice. Set up a chair, and hear the voice coming from that chair. You can then have a proper conversation with it!
  5. Pick a personal mantra, then use it. “Shut the hell up” is one such mantra:-)
  6. Not really a method, but helps understanding. Who, when your internal dialogue is chattering away, are you speaking to?
  7. Using the 6-step reframing method from NLP. This method uses a signal system to set up with your unconscious mind that allows you to negotiate the times and places to turn on or off your internal alogue.
  8. Imagining a volume control knob. Turn up the volume of your internal dialogue, and turn it all the way down.
  9. If you have internal dialogue that you don’t like very much, changing the tone often helps. Turn the tone into the most seductive, most sensual voice you can imagine. How do you feel about it now?
  10. While rare, sometimes the voice we hear is actually another voice - a parent for example. In these cases, give the voice back to the original owner.
  11. Writing out the words your internal dialogue speaks often helps. Usually it runs out of things to say very quickly. With critical statements, you can also then write out counter examples stating how untrue or over generalised these statements are.
  12. Act. If there is something that you want to do, for example talking to a stranger, hesitation will ensure you talk yourself out of whatever action you considered. If you hear that voice, ignore it and act.
  13. Remember the silence. While you read this sentence, I want you to read it out loud. Half way through a word in a sentence, pause. You mind will, naturally, go on silent hold. Remember this ‘feeling’ and you can bring it back when you want by doing the same with your internal dialogue. With proper practice, you can keep that pause indefinitely.
  14. Wide peripheral vision. Imagine you are balancing an apple on the top of your head. Now move the apple about 2 inches back. Keep your attention on the apple. Now look at the world around you and notice your hands on the keyboard, the top of the monitor, the walls on your left and right and the other objects around you. Notice them all at the same time. Chances are your internal dialogue has quietened down.

Add your comments with your own methods for silencing the harshest of critics!

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