Know Your Audience
Recently, I had the chance to meet with and present my product line to a group of sales reps. The sales manager through whom I made these arrangements had sent me an agenda to let me know when I should expect to be ready on the day of the meeting - very gracious. I noticed that not only was I the last cat on the agenda, I was slotted to speak to the group just before lunch - a double whammy!
Do I pull out all the stops and create a presentation that employs fireworks, circus elephants, and a movie star or two? Or, do I turn this thing on its ear, do something very unconventional, and take the chance I'll bomb? Well, calls to Tom Cruise and Charlize Theron went unreturned, and the elevator in the building in which the meeting was going to be held obviously wasn't rated for elephants. So, I went with option two.
"Hello, my name is Grant Greene, and I'm the guy standing between you and lunch. You've been here all morning, and you've sat through, at my last count, ten other presentations. I'm fairly confident if you haven't already tuned me out and had your eyes glaze over, you're about to do so if I launch into a twenty-minute presentation telling you about my wonderful company. All I'm going to do is ask you, as a group, to share with me five or six suggestions/recommendations that would cause you to want to lead into every sales call you make with my company and products. Just five or six, and then I'll get out of your hair and let you get to lunch. Deal?"
About halfway through my unorthodox pitch, a looked at a handful of reps and thought I could read the look on their faces: you are one lazy dude. However, by the time I finished, I had engaged at least 80% of them. I believe once it dawned on them that I wasn't going to bore the snot out of them with ANOTHER PowerPoint presentation, and then I directed questions at them rather than opening up for questions, they understood I was there to learn from them rather than try to "teach" them.
I took the chance for two reasons: (1) the obvious being that I was fairly positive that my presentation would have fallen on deaf ears - I MIGHT have been able to engage the attention of 20% of the people in the room if I was lucky; (2) a good friend of mine once taught me, "ask them what they see as obstacles, take away those obstacles, and their excuses to perform are gone" - by implementing their suggestions, I have an extra card to play with them and get them to work more closely with me.
Not only did I increase my chances for success with these reps, I've found ways to improve my company and products!
Do I pull out all the stops and create a presentation that employs fireworks, circus elephants, and a movie star or two? Or, do I turn this thing on its ear, do something very unconventional, and take the chance I'll bomb? Well, calls to Tom Cruise and Charlize Theron went unreturned, and the elevator in the building in which the meeting was going to be held obviously wasn't rated for elephants. So, I went with option two.
"Hello, my name is Grant Greene, and I'm the guy standing between you and lunch. You've been here all morning, and you've sat through, at my last count, ten other presentations. I'm fairly confident if you haven't already tuned me out and had your eyes glaze over, you're about to do so if I launch into a twenty-minute presentation telling you about my wonderful company. All I'm going to do is ask you, as a group, to share with me five or six suggestions/recommendations that would cause you to want to lead into every sales call you make with my company and products. Just five or six, and then I'll get out of your hair and let you get to lunch. Deal?"
About halfway through my unorthodox pitch, a looked at a handful of reps and thought I could read the look on their faces: you are one lazy dude. However, by the time I finished, I had engaged at least 80% of them. I believe once it dawned on them that I wasn't going to bore the snot out of them with ANOTHER PowerPoint presentation, and then I directed questions at them rather than opening up for questions, they understood I was there to learn from them rather than try to "teach" them.
I took the chance for two reasons: (1) the obvious being that I was fairly positive that my presentation would have fallen on deaf ears - I MIGHT have been able to engage the attention of 20% of the people in the room if I was lucky; (2) a good friend of mine once taught me, "ask them what they see as obstacles, take away those obstacles, and their excuses to perform are gone" - by implementing their suggestions, I have an extra card to play with them and get them to work more closely with me.
Not only did I increase my chances for success with these reps, I've found ways to improve my company and products!
posted by Grant @ 10:04 AM
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