As a red blooded American with access to a Red Carpet Club (read: free cocktails) I felt it was my duty to spend part of my outrageous 8 hour delay at O’Hare at the bar.

In doing so I witnessed an interesting phenomenon in human behavior.

You see, the bartenders are required to ask for I.D. from EVERYONE.

No matter the apparent age, they are carding anyone that asks for an alcoholic beverage.

And as I witnessed the following reactions to this request, I wondered if the reactions really did speak volumes about the ‘carded’ ones:

Indignation – in·dig·na·tion (noun): Anger or annoyance provoked by what is perceived as unfair treatment

These were the folks who emitted the “how could you possibly be asking me for an id – don’t you know who I am?” vibe.

Resignation – res·ig·na·tion (noun): To accept something as inevitable

Their attitude was, “Hey, if that’s what standing between me and my Cabernet no problem.”

Elation – e·la·tion (noun): Great happiness and exhilaration

Clearly the preferred group of patrons.

They simply produced their driver’s license or passport, smiled, and said “Thanks! You’ve made my day.”

As I watched the thirsty masses and their reactions yesterday I was reminded that we all have a choice about the attitude that we display when faced with the seemingly absurd or uncommon request.

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Recently I attended an event that afforded me an opportunity to hear seven sales presentations, back to back.

The presenters ranged from seasoned and long tenured professionals to a couple of newer folks.

These presentations reminded me of some tips that the best speakers practice – and rest assured that the best speakers do practice often.

1. Plan your opening - The very first words that you speak to the audience should be something other than:

• “Is this on?” (referring to the microphone)
• “How’s everybody doing today?”
• “Well, I’ll make this brief because after the next speaker you get lunch”

Instead, try opening with one of the following:

• A story that grabs the audience’s attention
• A bold statement
• A compelling quote

2. Watch where you stand- Even the most seasoned presenters can get lost on stage. Take an extra minute before you are introduced to get a sense of where you should stand.

More than once I saw a wholesaler position themselves in between attendee tables such that their back was to 2 audience members for the majority of their talk.

3. Be mindful of data dumps – Our business is filled with data.

Tons and tons of it.

Yet your audience doesn’t have the capacity to digest more than small bites of spoken data points.

Avoid statements like “The Foonman Funds has been in business since December 3rd 1952, with offices in 200 cities, supporting over 13,000 employees. We pride ourselves on the fact that all of our 300 funds are in the top 10% of their Lipper peer group, which is a testament to the 600 investment professionals who provide this stellar performance to over 130,000 advisors.”

Think I’m exaggerating?

4. Match your allotted time with your slides – Only have 30 minutes, but the firm has outfitted you with 150 slides in the Building Bridges To A Brighter Retirement Tomorrow presentation?

Don’t flip through the first 30 while standing on stage to get to the place where you want to start the talk.

5. Beware of audience polling overload –  An occasional question to poll the audience can be a valuable tool.

10 such questions in 30 minutes will simply result in the audience refusing to play the polling game.

6. Don’t decide for the audience how they’ll feel about your talk/topic – There’s a big difference between self sabotage and self deprecation.

When you mention the fact that the material you are going to speak about is dry, boring, tedious, old, tired, worn, or otherwise rife to be ignored guess what?

You are going to be tuned out!

7. Know your material, please – It just isn’t acceptable for you to stand in the front of the room and read an ENTIRE slide.

And it’s even less acceptable for you to do so with your back to the audience.

8. We can’t know it’s the 300th time you’ve given this presentation – Heavens knows that part of the sales professionals job is to give the same presentation countless times.

And the great ones never let that fact appear to be so.

If your are bored with the content, if you are tired of repeating it your audience will know!

Finally, here is a special message for all the marketing departments that send sales professionals out into the field with PowerPoint presentations that contain slides that have more words or graphs or charts on them than the human eye can possibly see from 50 feet (500 feet?) away:

PLEASE STOP!!!

Yes, we are in an industry that requires disclosures, I get that.

We are not, however, in an industry that requires you to design a slide the same way that you would a page in a brochure.

And when you insist on doing this it makes your folks look bad – and that’s a damn shame.

Need help?

Read this

Or this

Or this 

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Apparently we live in a region of the country where termites are particularly fierce.

And the fact that I am just now realizing this after 30 years in So Cal is somewhat embarrassing.

Nonetheless, it is time to consider getting the house tented before I come home one day and find sawdust where there was once hardwood flooring.

The thing is we need to leave the house for 3 days, put the pets in dog care/cat care/bird care, and make sure the house is emptied of anything that would later be eaten or touched so as not to die from termite gas.

All of this sounds like one overwhelming pain in the butt.

Being a buy locally, think globally kind of guy, I decided to give a local company a call rather than call the national exterminator services.

So I called and scheduled my Termite Terry complimentary “57 Point Inspection.”

Upon arrival the representative from Termite Terry, whose name I don’t recall, gave me a full education in termites, their destructive ways, and his master plan to eradicate them from my home.

After completion of his 57th Point, the rep did something that struck me.

He pulled out his sales war book and showed me photographs he had taken of all the bad tenting jobs his competitors had done. This included jobs where tents ended up blowing in the wind, or where tents had been placed so loosely on the home that all the termite-killing gas leaked out.

Clearly he has a future as a member of the Hollywood paparazzi.

He also spent as much time selling me on the benefits of using his company for the wood repair after the tenting as he did selling the tenting job itself.

Being a good consumer, and knowing absolutely nothing about termite control, I knew getting another estimate was the right thing to do – and this time I called Terminex.

Larko (yes, Larko, who’s from Peru and likes to drink Pisco) showed up for his inspection. Both the Mrs. and I were immediately struck by his knowledge, professionalism and matter of fact confidence.

During his pitch Larko:

•  stayed myopically focused on his expertise – eliminating termites;
•  answered each question with a certainty borne out of his experience and his conviction;
•  made the process seems far less onerous than I had imagined and feared;
•  never took a jab at a competitor; and
•  deftly navigated the price discussion to a comfortable win-win.

And the clincher?

After building all that rapport and trust, he assured us that he’d be at the house to supervise the entire process.

You know I inked the deal with Larko, who happened to work for Terminex.

Is your next sales meeting rapidly approaching? Are you looking for memorable content that will benefit your sales team? Call us for information about customized programs at 888-508-5010.Similar Posts:

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Last night my wife drug took me to a seminar at a local doctor’s office for a new 21st Century procedure that promised to make me more youthful, age more slowly, and live longer.

As you might imagine, the room was filled to the gills with folks that wanted to explore the same promises.

The doctor gave his presentation, and then it was time for the question and answer session.

Heaven help me.

The Q&A session quickly moved from the topic he was discussing to an open forum for any remotely related topic that the audience could pose to an MD who was answering questions for free!

And yet the doctor did his job.

He found out where his audience hurt and he was there with the proposed solutions.

Your clients are no different – they hurt too.

We hope it’s not a medical hurt, but they have problems that you need to solve.

Think about questions that get to the heart of the hurt such as:

• As you think back on the past 12 months, in what areas did you need your business to improve?
• In what ways aren’t your portfolios behaving as you had expected?
• Compared to last year, are you net positive or net negative clients?
• How are you (your business, your portfolio) positioned for a period of potentially extended slow economic growth?
• What events do you have planned to reach your existing book of business?
• If you could hire a consultant to help you with one dimension of your business, in what area would that consultant specialize?
• What are your plans for acquiring new clients?
• What are your thoughts about integrating social media into your business?

Once you have the answers to even a couple of these questions, you can begin to formulate the right prescriptions that your clients or prospects can closely relate to.

As much as we know that leading the discussion with product is simply a bad idea on a dead end road, too many folks still do it.

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Last week I attended a dinner for financial advisors. As the first drinks were being served and the conversation was starting to rev up, I asked the advisors on either side of me the standard questions about where they worked and how long they had been in the business.

As common courtesy dictated, they asked the same questions of me and I explained my last role, before becoming a corporate expatriate, as the leader of a product distributor.

As soon as they heard the name of my former firm they both said, almost in unison, “Then you know Troy!”

Without additional prodding the rep on my left beamed and offered, “Troy is the best to ever call on me. He and I met when I was brand new, and he was the only one that took the time to explain not only what the product was, but also how to sell it.”

The rep on my right added, “He helped me with the positioning of the product, where it best fit, and even how to drop a ticket on our order entry system.”

Then in two-part harmony they said, “Troy’s great!”

Like Troy, many of my best clients started as virgins.

They had no experience with my product and I had the great good fortune to be ‘the guy.’

And you can be the guy (or gal) too.

The guy that showed them the whole process, soup to nuts.  Sometimes that meant starting all the way at the beginning with the most basic education – such as, “What’s a mutual fund?”

The guy that helped them craft the pitch. Showing them how to use the brochure, or yellow pad, and giving them the right words to say.

The guy that worked with them on the close.

Your reward?

Like the reps fondly referring to Troy many years later, you’ll have clients that fondly recall their times with you and that speak in only the most glowing of terms about you.

Too frequently sales professionals don’t take the time necessary to teach new producers how to sell.  They often assume that the feature and benefit discussion will allow the producer to put all the presentation pieces together.

Sometimes it’s worse – they are only tracking elephants.

Elephants, though allegedly legendary for their memory, aren’t necessarily going to remember you after that big trade.

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Some time ago I wrote a post entitled I Don’t Trust You; Now What Were You Saying? that addressed the undermining of trust courtesy of the Great Meltdown.

Among the topics covered was the issue of transparency and how a lack of transparency will undermine the trust equation.

Stephen M.R. Covey in The Speed of Trust says about transparency:

It’s about being real and genuine and telling the truth in a way people can verify. It’s based on principles of honesty, openness, integrity and authenticity.

When you are transparent about your actions, your company and your results, you give people a sense of comfort and confidence because they know that nothing is being hidden from them.

So what happens when you throw chicanery into the equation?

How does a well-respected company gets its reputation dinged because a member of its team decides that a touch of skullduggery will lead to more sales?

Here’s a real life example:

Last week I received the following email (edited for brevity) from Tim at a company whose service I have used and whose technology I have recommended to others – Hubspot:

Subject:  I can’t seem to reach you…

I have sent you a few e-mails and tried to reach you via phone, but have not been able to connect. I took a look at your website and noticed you are making some very common mistakes with your title tags and calls to action. These mistakes are likely what’s been holding you back from generating more leads.

I do not want to pester, so If I do not hear back from you after this e-mail, I will assume you are not interested in fixing your site.

Right out of the gate I knew that this was, how shall I put this delicately, blatant BS. Between my three website’s contact pages, email addresses, phone numbers and extremely obvious web presence it’s almost impossible NOT to connect with me.

In fact, as I was concerned that I may not have received a communication (as it could have easily been from a customer), I waded through the murky wetlands of my Spam folder and found nothing.

And then, after assuming that my sites are not working as intended, Tim tosses out the “challenge close”: ….I will assume you are not interested in fixing your site.

My reaction?

I am now suspect of Hubspot and the way in which they engage their clients and prospects in businesses.

Why shouldn’t I believe that if they endorse this sort of slippery marketing that they won’t be the same way if I should become a paying client?

Moral of the story?

If you’re tempted to head down the path of trickery to increase marketing responses, don’t be.

If you are not watching junior members of your team to check for this kind of misstep maybe you should.

After all, why ding your reputation if it’s completely preventable?

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Sometimes we meet people that are simply unforgettable. They say or do things that leave indelible marks on us. These folks have a higher than normal MQ-Memorability Quotient®.

Anita was one of these most memorable people.

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One of the perks of having dedicated 1.5 million miles to United Airlines is the ability to upgrade more times than not – a reward that I don’t take lightly in this era of packed flights, reduced services and full body screening.

Joining me in business class or first, depending on the aircraft, is the typical assortment of business professionals and the occasional leisure traveler. The travelers find their seats, dive into their reading material and frequently pay no attention to the other flyers that surround them.

Truth be told, that describes me. I covet the upgrade and keep to myself – rarely making small talk and not extending myself beyond the common human courtesy that should be an inherent part of air travel. After all, it’ s a dog eat dog world in the “friendly skies.”

Today, as I settled in to prepare for the cross-country journey ahead, the ground crew was assisting a passenger into his seat at the other end of my business class row.

He was a mess. Visibly black and blue and wearing a neck brace and a nose splint, and still displaying a hospital wristband, it was apparent that his last few days had not been some of his best.

The patient gingerly took his seat, reclined his chair, closed his eyes, and prepared for the long cross- country flight – his journey made only slightly more comfortable, I assume, by the fact that he did not have to sit in economy.

It was easy to guess that he was alone. However, a few moments later a woman appeared and said to the patient, “There is a seat next to me, although it does not recline as much, if you want to move.” It seemed that his wife was seated in coach and, in an effort to care for him during the flight, was suggesting  that he move to sit by her.

And that’s when it happened.

The complete stranger sitting next to the patient in seat 9D looked at the woman and said, “Here, take my seat.”

Somewhat stunned she replied, “I’m in economy.”

He calmly offered, as he rose up from his fully reclining 42″ of pitch where they were going to serve edible food and he wouldn’t have to pay for cocktails 9D seat,
“That’s o.k., you should sit here.”

And with that he made his way back to the dark recesses of economy – to sit in 17C.

The woman was dumbfounded, infinitely appreciative, and moved to tears.

The former occupant of 9D expected nothing in return; he simply recognized that someone was in need and rose up (literally) to help.

The woman’s reward was an indelibly memorable moment wherein a complete stranger made a very difficult journey just a bit better.

The passenger in 9D had a reward that was arguably greater still: the quiet feeling of having made someone else’s day that much better.

For his grand gesture, “9D,” rather than being banished to economy, was expeditiously escorted by the flight attendant that witnessed his act of kindness to the cushy, comfortable private digs that only the fully flat reclining private pods and rarified air of United First could afford.

As it should be.

Rectitude is only one of the attributes of people with a high MQ-Memorability Quotient®. View the NEW video demo of our most popular presentation and then contact us for information about how to bring more MQ to your next sales meeting.

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Last month I received a call from what I thought was Citibank at 5:30 PM. The caller asked for my wife and said they were conducting a “customer service survey.”

Unbeknownst to the caller, my wife:

• Uses a separate phone line (long story);
• Will never take a random call from a survey taker; and
• Does not ever bank with Citi -  just because she’s named on an account does not mean she ‘banks’ there.

To simply get the caller off the phone, I gave her the expedited version of these points.

Me: She’s not interested in taking a survey.

Caller: Can’t she tell me that herself?

Me: No, she’s not interested and take me off your call list.

Caller: We don’t have a call list. Why can’t I talk to her?

Me (more ticked off): She’s not interested, no – you can’t speak to her, and I’m hanging up – goodbye.

Naively I assumed that this would be sufficient to discourage the caller, and that after my blood pressure returned to normal it would be the end of the intrusion.

Until the next day

At 5:15 PM the phone rang. The caller asked for my wife and said that she was calling on behalf of Citibank for a customer satisfaction survey.

Me: You called yesterday.

Caller: Is she there?

Me: Doesn’t matter, she is not interested.

Caller: Do I have the right number? Who are you?

Me: I am her husband, and unless you are calling from Citibank security you need to stop calling and take me off of your call list.

Then she hung up on me.

Yes, she hung up.

And that’s not all!

Almost unbelievably, 2 hours later the phone rang again.

Caller: Is Mrs. Shore in?

Me: Who’s calling?

Caller: This is George calling from Empathica on behalf of Citibank.

Me: That was Empathica? E-M-P-A-T-H-I-C-A, right?

Caller: Yes.

Me: And, George, what’s your last name?

And what do you suppose George did?

Yes, he hung up on me.

The Recovery

The beautiful thing about today’s business world is that information is a click away. A quick search revealed this from the Empathica site:

Our integrated approach to customer experience management is designed exclusively for multi-unit retailers. We understand the importance of multi-location dynamics, brand continuity and the need for efficient and effective communications.

It was stunning to think that a company doing survey work on behalf of Citi was making their customers angry enough to close their accounts.

A few more clicks gave me the name of the President of Empathica, Mike Amos.

The email I sent to Mike at 8 PM said, in part:

Last night and tonight I have had the displeasure of getting calls from your employees at Empathica ‘on behalf of Citibank.’ In two of the three cases, these calls were received after telling your employees that I did not wish to be contacted again.

In two of these cases, your employees hung up on me.

Tonight they called twice in a 2 hour period.

If you wish to call me to learn firsthand of these incidents, please reach me at the number below. In the meantime I’ll use the aforementioned power of social media to get the word out about the aggressive and rude approach your people take.

The following morning I found a reply to my email waiting in my inbox.
Mike and I scheduled a call, at his request, in order for him to learn more about the incidents.

When we connected later that morning, Mike offered the standard apologies one would anticipate.

Then, as I was about to launch into the story that recounted the experience,
Mike demonstrated the true art of the recovery.

He explained that he had already:

• Pulled the calls in question;
• Listened to them; and
• Begun a full investigation and enlisted the appropriate department leaders on his team.

Over the next 3 business days he stayed in email contact and ultimately sent this:

Good Morning Rob,

I hope you had a great weekend.

Thanks again for your feedback and input. We have worked with our call center and Citi and are pleased to inform you that we have:

- Reviewed, and confirmed that the Do Not Call List (and the associated procedures) will be used immediately upon request

- Completed a full review of the assigned employees and customer service procedures to ensure that all future contacts receive the utmost respect and professionalism

We appreciate your input and thank you for your continued loyalty to Citi.

Recovery Lessons

1. Act with speed to acknowledge the issue presented:  Mike emailed me back almost immediately.

2. Get in front of the problem by being as informed and prepared as possible: He had listened to the calls and was aware of the issue.

3.  Don’t delegate the reply: He could have easily had one of his lieutenants handle the complaint, but he chose to do it himself.

4. Spell out what the action steps will be to attempt to remedy the situation.

5.  Follow-up to communicate the final resolution.

Every company, and everyone, screws up – that is just a part of business…and life.

The real question is: do you have a memorable recovery?

Bring the message of shorespeak® to your next sales meeting. Learn about our most popular presentation, read the testimonials, and then contact us to check on availability and rates.

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Turn up the volume and enjoy this year in review. Watch it full screen for best effect.

Did you know you can make a similar video about any subject you wish?

Make a video for a favorite client, hard to reach prospect, or for a family member. It will be most memorable.

See the second video for a sample.

Happy holidays from shorespeak.

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