What Message Are You Sending?

I have had the good fortune of joining a group of professionals in building up a startup.  While this experience has been

Pudding, I swear

rewarding and challenging, its also been a bit humbling.

My moment of “self-realization” showed up when our CEO came to me and asked if I could help build a presentation for a VC conference. We were nominated to be one of the presenters in a rapid-fire session where select organizations were allowed to give an 8-minute overview of their company.

“I was made for this moment”, along with a Gloria Gaynor song, ran through my mind as I started to work my magic.

You got a critical presentation with a strict time limit?  Naturally you should start with reviewing Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule.  I am such a devotee to this rule that I have it tattooed, prison-style, on my camouflaged-by-six-pack abs.

After I designed the layout using 10/20/30, I then started to trim down our content to it’s salient points using my own advice that I shared with the readers of Slideshare.com.

As I wrapped up my edits, I had these visions of our board of directors heaping accolades and stock options upon me while parading me about the board room on their shoulders.  A teared rolled quietly down my cheek.

“Well, I did a dry run on the presentation with the board” stated my CEO on our call.

“Yes” came my reply.  I sat back and waited for the accolades.

“How shall I put this?    Uh…..there’s a great deal of upside potential”.

“Pardon?”

“The presentation has multiple opportunities to be realigned with our strategy.”

“Come Again?”

“It sucked.”

“What?”

“Huuuuuge Suckage Factor.  Like a Shop Vac in a sawdust mill!”

“But I have a blog.”

“Yep, stunk like the car ride home after a chili cookoff.”

“I have been published”.

“Great Danes do not produce piles of crap this large”.

“Are there yankees on the board?”

The key point I missed in that first draft was that I failed to answer the question “What problem are we solving?”.

I had a slide called “Our solution” but if focused on explaining what are solution is, as opposed to stating what benefit it would deliver,  the classic “Feature and Function” blunder.

We re-worked the slide and focused on describing our solution from the perspective our customer.  Something along the lines of “Sasser’s solution helps me to __________”.

The conference went off without a hitch, with our presentation being well received.

Today in my office, written in big letters on my white board is the following:

“WHAT PROBLEM ARE WE SOLVING AND WHO SHOULD CARE?”

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

“Local Mediocre Blogger Gets Butt Kicked By Closest Friend”

One of my closest friends is in the midst of a job search.  His story is no different that the scores out there who are great people, doing good work, who were motivated to find work elsewhere.

So he sends me an email with the title “What do you think ?”  with his resume attached.

An hour later, I send back  a reply with an edited word document that had more track changes than Obama’s health care plan.

In the body of the email I shared that as I read his resume through the eyes of an potential employer I had to work  hard to find key points and there was too much text that either added no value or decreased the value of the person I was trying to “see” in the resume.

For example, the points that I flagged for removal included:

• Who he was married to and what church he attended  (Important if he were applying to seminary, no where else)
• Listing the mundane task that anyone with a pulse would do in a job, ex. “Answered Phone, Prepared Proposals, Talked with Clients”
• The extraordinary details of a job he did 10 years ago that had no significant impact or relevance on the position for which he was applying

To drive home the point, I called my friend and  shared the story on how my dog Annabell, after years of trying, actually caught a bird in our backyard last month. While a satisfying snack, once the consumed bird hit the dog’s digestive tract, extraordinary events started to occur on a scale so impressive that my cousins from Sodom and Gomorrah were like “Dude, that’s just scary”.

In response,  we crated the dog for a few days.

I shared how the paper at the bottom of Annabell’s crate, even after acting as the recipient of nature’s fury, contained more white space than my friend’s resume.

I then had to remind him that my parents where indeed married at the time of my conception, so the word he just called me was technically incorrect.

When it comes to our resume’s it is our natural tendency to data dump, take the long road, to use 3 words when we know that 1 will work just fine.

Having just completed a job search, I know how important it is to manage how you work the job boards and how much care you need to take in manage the information out there.

There is one site for sales professionals that I found quite compelling  www.salesprofile.com.

You basically have the opportunity to upload an elevator pitch about yourself.  What better way to demo your pitching ability and as a sales manager it is a great screening tool.   The 30 second time frame will force you to write a script with only your most succinct, relevant, and important attributes.  Its an exercise that every job seeker should do.

Here’s the press release on it’s launch.    Give it a try.

SalesProfile is a new job search site that will allow users to upload a 30-second “elevator speech”. This groundbreaking feature will give the user an opportunity to display his or her skills to potential employers through video. Employers will be able to view candidates from anywhere in the country or even the world with a simple click of a button. SalesProfile’s multimedia feature promises users efficiency and ease to every candidate and employer.

Candidates will also have the chance to complete a behavioral assessment with an option to display the assessment on his or her profile. The assessment will help candidates stand out among the competition, as employers will see it on a candidate’s profile.

The site also has a job-matching wizard where job seekers answer a series of questions regarding the type of sales job they are looking for. The wizard will also display your compatibility with available job opportunities.

By visiting SalesProfile.com and uploading a 30-second “elevator speech” to your profile you will be entered to win a $1,000 cash prize or $100 gift card. Prizes will be given out monthly to random winners who upload their videos between July 15 and October 15.

For more information visit www.salesprofile.com

Sasser

Rain Man was a Re’ tard and He did Alright

One of my friends has a MBA from a really good school with a really bad football team.  A school so highly regarded that when they received my application some years ago, they not only rejected me on basis of my academic performance, but they added that with my interpretation of what constitutes  “good” personal hygiene and a fashion sense that would make Huggy Bear exclaim “Dude, that just doesn’t match”, that I would be lucky to become a half-rate writer or a derivatives trader for Lehman Brothers.

The laughs on them.  Based on feedback from one’s of our fans, my writing has been consistently described as “half rate”.  So there.

Anywho, back to my friend.  He has the MBA, from the good school, and his current job?  Cutting grass.

Yep.

A lawn  mower jockey if you will.  Although he’s not of the seniority to actually ride the lawn mower, he can just help get it off the truck.  MBA’s will only get you so far.

While we all need to stay positive and be thankful for today and not worry about what we had yesterday, its tough out there.  I was quite fortunate in my recent job search to land into a real opportunity in work I enjoy.  Others are not so fortunate.

Everyone knows someone that is out of work and is forced to look at short-term jobs that are far below their typical pay grade.  Another friend whose last job title was “President” is looking at delivering pizzas.  It happens.

I was struggling with why my MBA friend could only find day laborer work.  Then it dawned on me.  The MBA.

No boss wants to hire someone they know is not going to fit in with the rest of the team.

If you are looking for mall or retail work, how many other MBAs are on the floor hocking chinos and cookware?

Worse, if the interviewer feels that you are more qualified than they are, there’s a good chance you will not get the call back.

If you are looking for a sales gig, the fact that you closed multi-million contracts with the Government is not going to carry much weight with the HR person at the local home improvement store.  And lets be honest, if you are seasoned white-collar executive, you are most likely going to stink in a blue-collar job that involves sweating.

Im not advocating that you play dumb or hide your accomplishments, but if you are looking for work outside of your normal career, you need to tailor your resume and your interview pitch to fit the job.   If you are interviewing for a job where most of the employees are high school/2-year college you may want to omit the “M” from your “MBA”.

Also you will want to have different flavors of your resume to fit the opportunity.

In my personal resume collection I have the following versions:

• A version that emphasizes my experience working in startup environments
• A version that emphasizes working with Fortune 2000/Federal Governments
• A version that emphasizes management achievements and sales performance but doesnt go into too much detail on the vertical experience but is more general.

If you have other suggestions, we would love to hear them.

Why Your Demos Need to Tell a Story

When presenting a complex solution, the most effective means of engaging the audience is to create and tell a story that is relevant and is modeled around the prospect’s business.

Most will have a story built around their demo data, for ex. “This is ABC Company and they produce widgets”.  ZZZZZZZ…oh sorry…I was just thinking about ABC Company and thier god-forsaken widgets.

The mantra that our teams use for prepping for presentations is “Accurate, Compelling, and Timely“.

Accurate

This sounds obvious but even demo data has to be accurate.  If you produced watches and the demo model was wrong are you going to get the sale?  Treat all information presented in your presentation with the same care that the prospect would treat their live data.

Compelling

If you have a solution that can not be customized on a per presentation basis, at least have examples ready to go that are very relevant to the prospect.  Example, “<PROSPECT>, so lets discuss how your team would use our workflow to publish out a press release to your website. ”

The one thing that is actually more compelling than talking about the prospect, is talking about the prospects main competitors.  When our team presented our web content management system to a large private equity firm, we went out to their three top competitor’s sites – captured some screens and pointed out flaws in their sites.  Then knowing the systems they used, we explained the specific advantages that our system would deliver and the advantages that would provide them over their competition.

Timely

Keep your presentations, demos, and sample data timely.  If your “current” information is over a year old, update it.   While it doesn’t matter in the execution of the presentation, if the prospect sees a bunch of old dates on the screen this will enforce the thought of “this is not real”.  Your goal is that you want them engaged to the point they can visualize your system working in their organization.

The Greatest Sin

Is having no story at all.

If yours is a technical solution, resist any urges to “let the technology speak for itself”.   Remember that “Cutting Edge” = “Still Has Bugs That Can Kill Your Deal”.

In an effort to keep your presentations from becoming too literal, we share this video.

Scattered, Smothered, and Covered….

After my arranged engagement/marriage fell apart over religious differences, she drove a Chevy, I a Ford;  I went to drown my sorrows at the only place appropriate to fill the emotional void that filled my heart….the Waffle House.

Now for our Yankee readers, our Waffle House is the equivalent to your Dunkin Donuts.  They are everywhere.  You can’t really swing a dead cat in the South without hitting one of those pillars of culinary delight.

I found my future wife sitting next to the only vacant seat at the counter.  While I did not notice her face, I heard her say to the waitress that she would like her hash browns prepared in the same manner that I ordered mine…scattered…smothered (in cheese)…and covered (in onions). 

As soon as the words left her lips, I knew that was the woman with whom I needed to spend my first marriage.

What lesson can the Waffle House teach us about sales?  Keep it simple.

You know how when you go into some restaurants they have fabricated crap on the walls?  There’s pictures of old stuff, old dead people, and old movies starring old dead people?  There are ferns, maybe some sports trophies, and the menu is nine pages long with long-winded narratives how the chicken will be prepared in a manner similar to those shown on Man vs. Wild.

The Waffle House is simple.  Look on the walls, there are pictures of food.  Want to see a plant?  Go outside.   In the Waffle House you are there to enjoy a good meal, at a  reasonable price, and then to get the hell out.  There’s no wasted space and people who want to sit and talk can do that in the car.

Right now, Sales teams around the globe are trying to figure out how to drive new revenue with very little new investment.  Most are pursuing a course of action that will be bourne from internal group think, with little real integration, and a questionable value proposition.  Gems like the Cadillac Cimarron were create in these environments.

Go Waffle House. 

1. Simplify your message so that it can be easily consumed by a broader audience, not just Subject Matter Experts in your field.
2. Provide a quality product
3. At a reasonable price

Number 1 is the most challenging of course.   But if you haven’t done so, craft your elevator pitch.  In 90 seconds or less, describe why someone would choose to do business with you.  If you need help,  ask yourself; do your customers do business with you because you are a mid-tier vendor with 200 customers in the perverted arts vertical OR because you can help them solve their widget problem?

If you are thinking of ways to possible build a new revenue stream, take your solution with its widget solving capabilities and boil it down.  Is there a fundamental tenet that if everything else was stripped away it would still contain value?  Does a niche market exist that this would serve?  Can you take this fundamental solution, combine it with a RELEVANT product/service and improve on the value proposition?  Does this new solution present logical upsell opportunities?

If you explained the new solution to your receptionist, how long would it take for them to get the concept? If its longer than 90 seconds, start over.

If you want to brain storm (or mind map) on this idea, here’s a few key questions:

• Look at your customers, what common characteristics do they share? 
• Why did they choose to purchase your solution? 
• Why do people/companies choose to do business with your competitors?
• How can we make it easier, within reason, to purchase a solution from you?
• If you had to cut 90% out of your sales pitch, what is the 10% you choose to keep?

If you havent tried mind mapping yet, I encourage you to do so.  Go to www.thebrain.com and download the free version of their solution. 

Good Luck

Kevin Sasser

Free Stuff!!! Score!!!!

From Doyle Slaton at SalesBlogcast.com…

I’m giving away my new eBook “15 Rules for Becoming a Top Producer!”

*IMPORTANT NOTE: This eBook is best suited for highly driven sales and leadership minded business professionals.

I’d appreciate your help in spreading the word. Please let everyone know they can get the FREE eBook at http://SalesBlogcast.com

Let’ see how many eBooks we can give away!

Sincerely,

Doyle Slayton
SalesBlogcast.com