So I’m not sure how qualified I am to offer sage advice about winning 9 figure deals but my experience of them is that they are pretty much the same as 6 figure ones… and on those I’m pretty experienced, 76% hit rate on over 150 deals over the last 15 years.

So here are my 7:

1. Don’t bid
2. Don’t present
3. Don’t DIY
4. Don’t trust
5. Don’t play fair
6. Don’t preach
7. And whatever you do: Don’t use bullets

Perhaps I should explain:

Don’t bid

The last $Billion I worked on cost the bidder £4million, which even at a low percentage profit of say 5% is an amazing ROI but for each winner there are at least 2 losers, in the last one 6! And they didn’t get a good return; they got nothing (although I think some of them may have got fired!).

When I’m asked to join a bid team I try very hard to persuade them to No Bid. I rarely succeed, but the last few times I have, they eventually won the deal. Purchasing need to run a process and in order to run a process they need you to bid so especially if you are the market leader saying no generally gets an indignant “Why Not?” which gets us in at the ‘C’ suite to talk about why the bid is flawed and how as it is it will fail and how if they change the plan it will succeed and of course then, we would be happy to bid.

In my experience No Bidding fleshes out the real deals from the smoke screens, gains you access to the right people and allows you focus on the deals that are real and winnable rather than just desirable.

Don’t present

All too often presenting is a one way flow of information. The more dialogue you can get the easier it is to win. If the prospect wants to talk, let them. In fact we plan it, nurture it, manipulate it. People are much more likely to buy a plan they helped develop the more they feel ownership of it the more they buy into delivering it. We have had great success at getting prospects to join in, drawing the solution with the presenter. When at the next meeting the diagram is presented back to them.. the team hit a home run.

Don’t DIY

All that effort, all that time, all that money and you show up with home made slides.. Nothing says lack of commitment like DIY. Get professional help for the presentation, for the RFP, use designers, use coaches, use experts. As I like to point out when a client tells me that my fee is expensive.. it’s a dam sight cheaper than losing!

Don’t trust

Straight out of Sun Tsu, battles are won and lost on the quality of the intelligence you have. You never know the truth, you can never ask too many people for intel. Develop coaches, hire consultants, lobbyists, ex-prospect employees, current employees family; anything that can give you better intelligence. The ones that lose are the ones who think they know the truth.

Don’t play fair

Don’t throw away your integrity but winning is ALL that matters. I used to say “there are no prizes for second” but I now prefer Tiger Woods quote, “Second means you’re the best of the Losers!”

Don’t Preach

So winning a $Billion deal is a big thing, but so is spending a $Billion. The key decision maker probably has an ego the same size as yours. They want to be listened to, they want to talk and they want you to respond. Be wary of being sycophantic and remember you don’t get to the position anywhere where you have to make a $Billion decisions without being Very Smart, Very Ruthless or VERY VERY lucky.

Don’t use Bullets

Clearly doesn’t need an explanation, bullet-points are best left to the competition.

I’ve been thinking about the benefits to teachers or trainers of making their presentations more effective. Clearly for sales people it’s about winning more business, more profitably with less effort, but what about if you are not selling? I know, it’s a strange concept for someone like me who finds it difficult to open his mouth without pitching something, a project, an idea, or a joke but its true some people have to teach.

So why would you want your presentations to be more effective if you are teaching? Better attention from your students, higher levels of engagement, better levels of comprehension, shorter lecture times. Or how about a more erudite approach:

“Less extraneous cognitive load increases the students available free cognitive load for information synthesis thus allowing better and faster building of schema necessarily increasing information retention and recall”

But the thought train led me to recall the best lecture I have ever had. Professor Smith at Nottingham University in September 1987 gave a lecture on standard distribution.. I know I didn’t want to go either but.. he started by having an orderly bring an armchair in the lecture theatre and said it was for later (Visual Cognitive Dissonance ™ at work dear reader, we all listened ) and then said he had two proofs to show us and proceeded to show us a premise and through a process of Induction (one type of mathematical proof the other principal one being Direct) and 6 chalkboards of equations that ended in the proof with a large QED written next to it.. “et voila” he said.. 45 mins into a 50 min lecture.

“Everybody got that?” He said and then rubbed out all but the first and last lines and said “and now for proof number two, For this you will need an armchair”, he pointed, “and a large brandy” which he revealed from under the counter, he sat in the chair took a sip of brandy and said.. “After an hour or so of contemplation like thus.. you will in actual fact discover that the conclusion is entirely obvious.. class dismissed..”

OMG..  Best lecturer I have ever seen and the best lecture I have ever seen and makes me think that actually the question ‘So why would you want your presentations to be more effective if you are teaching?’

Is the wrong one, it should be:

So why wouldn’t you want your presentations to be more effective if you are teaching?

And the answer is:

“After an hour or so of contemplation like thus.. you will in actual fact discover that the conclusion is entirely obvious.. class dismissed..”

Ineffective teaching is an oxymoron.. or perhaps the practice of morons!

• Credibility.  Sell yourself, your company and then your product in that order.
• Empathy.    Show an understanding of the audience’s needs, desires or issues.
• Rational.     Here’s why you should act, here’s evidence that acting will work.

The mistake we find more often than not is an over reliance on credibility. A presentation that last 45 minutes and spends 44 of them telling the audience how great the presenter’s organisation is. Sure it may in fact be interesting that you have 300 delivery trucks but do I really care? So What?

Most of our clients’ presentations (well the 15000 that are B2B sales presentations) follow this structure:

• Who are we?
• What do we do?
• Why do you need it?
• Why do you need it from us?
• Can I have your business?

The credibility comes in the first section and usually fits on one slide. “What we do” is not normally a service description but more a results description (Improve your sales conversion rates by 30% rather than produce PowerPoint presentations) and then the presentations become about the audience not the presenter. Ethos followed quickly by Pathos concluded with logos.

We find presenting the emotional argument prior to the rational argument more effective since to quote Nixon “When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow”

So humanity hasn’t changed much in 2300 years, same old same old. My problem is I can’t now read the name Aristotle with out hearing John Cleese and Michael Palin singing “Aristotle Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, Socrates himself will be particularly missed, a nice little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed”

http://youtu.be/PtgKkifJ0Pw   Philosophers Song.. Live!

Today I got the feedback from the audience:

Most valuable key learning point or take away action:

• Less is better
• A reinforcement of how I use PowerPoint
• Gave a good push towards the bin to lengthy PP presentations
• No bullet points – diagrams are king
• Relevance and engagement
• Memorable aspect of presentations
• Word Interpretations
• All of it – but probably dissonance
• A totally new approach to how I do my presenting
• No bullet points

And so the lesson is one I know, but had forgotten, you can’t judge your own performance! Only the audiences’ opinion counts. It’s actually a fundamental tenant of our Killer Presentations course:  you don’t learn by performing but by watching and listening to other people performing the same material. As ultimately the people who count in a presentation are the audience then only the audience’s perspective on the performance is important.

We, the presenters, are always either too critical or too positive rarely do we give ourselves a balanced appraisal.

The feedback is like a school report and this one has room from improvement – 11/12 isn’t 100% and there were, I’m sure, more than 12 people in the room!

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In anticipation of a new blog.. here is one I wrote in 2009.. watch this space.. comments please!

• Don’t use speaker notes.
• Don’t write scripts.
• Don’t wear white socks.
• Why? Because you will come across as an amature!

Occasionally when presenters use a script they end up concentrating on it more than on the audience, which is a recipe for disaster. Presentations need to be dynamic and audience-centered. A script, almost by definition, prevents dynamism by compelling you to follow it. Therein lies the real problem..

When you use a script you ignore your slides, when you ignore your slides you drive a wedge between phonetic information (you) and visual information (the screen). That prevents Dual Encoding (understanding by the audience of what they hear and what they see at the same time).

Unless you are very, very, very good at presenting using a script won’t work well. (A professional actor can sometimes pull it off, and some TV presenters can read an auto-cue and make it look natural, but one only needs to see the show Have I Got News for You in the UK to see the difference between a professional and an amateur.)

So why do people do it? Well, like a number of things that people do to help when they are stressed, it’s easy. You have been reading since you were 3 or 4, and you can do it in your sleep (well, OK not really but it is easy). Reading is easy, and so using a script to help overcome stress is a popular approach – especially when your brain chemistry is being altered by that wonderful survival drug adrenalin.

Those that can do; those that can’t… read a script.

Just because good presenters are confident, does not imply that confidence makes good presenters. And yet most people, most presentation skills courses and, regrettably, most presentation coaches believe this to be true.

It is in fact a lie. Clearly a complete lack of confidence is a bad thing, but so too is complete confidence.

Darwin on presentations

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”

The confidence you derive from a well thought out, well prepared, well rehearsed presentation is seductive to audiences, but the confidence felt out of inflated self-belief is often perceived as arrogance.

I watched another presentation coach “help” a presenter. This consisted of a series of platitudes and sycophantic ramblings that had as much to do with massaging the coach’s ego as that of the presenter. While the exchange was enjoyed by both, I’m pretty confident it did nothing for the audience that had to sit through that presentation. Which, as far as I could tell, was just as bad as it was before the coaching–but now it would be presented with an air of arrogant self confidence instead of the (quite rightly) caution that it wasn’t really good enough.

Advice is cheap

But good advice is invaluable (as it is rare.)

For what its worth, my advice is that there is a time and place for boosting confidence and that time and place is after the hard work of producing a good presentation has been done.

• Know your audience
• Know your material
• Know how to engage your audience
• Know how to interact with your audience
• Practice the delivery

The confidence you get from this will see you through the event. Its ok to feel anxious, use it to fuel your performance. Anyone who says they don’t feel scared before presentations is either lying or dead.

Confidence is a double-edged sword, too little or too much can kill a performance. To quote Bertrand Russell,

“Those who feel certainty, are stupid.”

To misquote Bertrand Russell,

“Those who feel absolute confidence, are stupid”

What do you think? Ever seen a supremely confident presenter deliver a supremely bad presentation?

The art of competence

What are you good at? Chess, cooking, squash, sailing, wine appreciation, business, presenting or perhaps selling? One thing is for sure – you are probably not the best at all of them.

How good do you need to be to deliver an effective presentation about any of these subjects? Certainly not world class. Competent is the word that springs to my mind. You don’t need to be the best – just better than the average of the group. I have given presentations on all of the subjects above, but I am clearly not the best at any of them. The secret is to know that you don’t need to be.

• Don’t pretend you know something you don’t – the expert may be in the audience
• Don’t start by saying you don’t know something (they don’t know you are not an expert)
• Explain why you have credibility in the subject

Most of the time when we are asked to coach presenters, particularly presenters for large pitch presentations, they are far from experienced expert presenters. In fact, more often than not, they are not even the content experts. They do however know more about their company and its products and services than the prospect.

About every other course somebody asks me about how Visual Cognitive Dissonance (VCD) sits with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). My tongue-in-cheek response is that VCD is based on science and, as far as I am aware, is consistent with all the major religions, and so almost certainly consistent with the minor ones such as NLP.

Why do I compare NLP to a religion? Looking at the research, it’s at best inconclusive and at worst labeled as pseudoscience. Linguistics isn’t my main calling, but I’m pretty convinced that the fundamental tenants of NLP may be suspect. In fact I love the following quote from the founders of NLP:

We have no idea about the “real” nature of things, and we’re not particularly interested in what’s “true”. The function of modelling is to arrive at descriptions which are useful

Bandler, R. and Grinder, J. (1979), Frogs into Princes: Neuro-linguistic Programming, Moab, Utah: Real People Press
I also love the publisher! Moab, Utah…makes me think of the brilliant musical for the non-pious, “The Book of Mormon” – also beautifully relevant for this observation.

An act of faith

NLP requires an act of faith, and most believers aren’t particularly interested in a debate about whether their belief system is true or not. And, some may be offended by people like me saying rude things about their belief system. Since I have some friends who are NLP practitioners, I am careful not to offend these people by blaspheming. I do, however, wonder what NLP hell looks, sounds or feels like…

Like all belief systems that have bright, intelligent followers, NLP has to be consistent with empirical evidence. It may fail the scientific method but much of the surrounding advice is basically sound. “See the world from the others point of view” is a pretty much a fundamental NLP concept, but I’m sure its one of Coveys 7 habits (Think Win Win) and it’s pretty much in line with Phase 1 of Killer Presentations, which makes it just plain common sense.

If you want to believe that modifying your language can help you communicate effectively, then I’m in agreement with you—if you need to call that NLP, well each to his own. I’m pretty sure that most religions include some degree of practical self-help. None of this should be thrown out just because the basic tenant seems unlikely.

Most courses I have seen based on NLP would be just as valuable without validating the content with the NLP philosophy. Given the lack of evidence, I would drop it and stick to actual science. There is a remarkable amount of research that can inform most of what I have seen passed off as NLP.

So if you’re interested in this debate, take a look at some NLP literature and ask yourself how similar it sounds and feels like an advertisement for a religion.  I would love to hear your thoughts on this one. If you have observations, I’d love to read and respond to them. If you have statements of belief, I really don’t want to offend anyone and probably won’t respond.

I am 43 years old today and for the first time in about 10 years I am away from home and working on my birthday. The kids all phoned me this morning with birthday wishes, but the best present came in the form of a conversation with a delegate on the course I am facilitating in London.

Let me give you some context. 18 months ago, I was asked to speak at a conference about a consistent Value Proposition. I was give a one-hour time slot and was told that the delegates would have been working on a case study and have their draft VP’s ready. My talk was supposed to set up a presentation exercise afterwards. I had agreed with the organiser that when I arrived they would give me the list of VP’s and I would use this as the basis of my presentation. When I arrived, they hadn’t got that far in the exercise and so with 5 minutes to go I had to change the presentation.

I came off stage thinking I had done ok, the crowd seemed pleased and engaged and the applause genuine. The next day, however, I received an abusive e-mail from the organizers, accusing me of a whole host of sins—that I had offended and upset most of the audience and would never be invited back. I was upset for about a month but eventually came to the conclusion that you can’t please everybody and that maybe this lady was just having a bad day.

So this morning—18 months later—that company is one of m62’s largest global clients, and a delegate from the course came over and thanked me for that very same, allegedly offensive presentation. He has used my “Happy and Safe” story and the Killer Presentations diagram over and over again to argue to his management team that they need a consistent message and stop using bullet points.

So, my birthday gift? The reminder that for every person in the audience who disapproves of your content, there is another who’s finding it useful. I think there is a good chance the Lady Organiser is chewing out another presenter for not being psychic, while today’s delegate is enjoying a useful two days with the m62 crowd. You can’t please all the people all the time, but pleasing most of the people most of the time is good enough for me.

Happy days!

I recently delivered the Killer Presentations course to a group of financial service industry sales professionals in New York City. An important learning in this training is to trim the information in your presentation to include only the most relavent data you want your audience to remember. A few days later, I got the following question from an attendee about all the other information that needs to be delivered eventually:

If the sales presentation delivers 4 or 5 key points you want the audience to know, what’s the best way to communicate the much weightier technical detail that lies behind those key points?

The first question is do you really need to get into technical detail in the presentation? When I am teaching kids to sail, I need them to know that to turn the boat, they must move the tiller in the opposite direction.  Do they need to understand the mathematics of how the rudder creates turning momentum on the stern of the boat?  No.

How much detail does the audience need to understand your value proposition?

People often include too much technical detail in their presentations. I’m guilty of it. When we deliver the course it’s often hard to judge how much of the science and research behind the Killer Presentations Philosophy is appropriate. Some sales people don’t care how or why it works, as long as they close more business using the techniques. Others need more proof than my recommendation to change the habits they’ve developed over 20 years of presenting.

Determining how much to deliver is difficult and dynamic based on the audience, their level of understanding of your industry/product/service; the number or presentations they’ve already seen; and the amount of time you’ve spent educating them in advance. Audience size matters as well, the bigger the group, the greater the chance of “pockets of interest” that drive information flow to minority groups in the audience. Meaning, time consuming questions that are only of interest to one or two people in a big team. You just lost the majority of your audience explaining how the sausage is made.

Over-prepare, share as needed, rinse, repeat.

My advice is to develop more material than you need, then take your cue from the audience as to how much to present. We preach to the students in our Killer Presentations course that they must refresh their recall on important information one day, one week and one month after hearing it to ensure it stays in their memory.

If you can get your prospects to review the material (repetition) and think about something new but associated (elaboration), we know recall and application increase. In which case having more detail in the follow up communication is extremely useful.

It also helps to provide that content in a variety of media, including PDFs, videos, podcasts—whatever forms your audience will absorb best. Also consider the impact of the information flow. People learn more if they can work at their own pace and journey through the material at will. Self directed learning requires more content than a simple linear information flow.

In summary:

• Give them what they need
• Give them control over the quantity and depth
• Give them multi modal information
• Sequence delivery over time to improve recall