This week I was a speaker at Sage's customer conference in Denver, Colorado. The attendees at this event are business owners who use one of the many Sage accounting solutions to run their business.
These two women are Sage customers who run a business that produces clever marketing products like the headgear above. Their company is called "Everybody's Laughing on Planet Earth". Who doesn't love that company name?
I noticed them in every session, including the 3000-attendee keynote presentation. What a wonderful way to get your company noticed. I realize that not everyone has access to wearable hats as their main product, but still. These guys were thinking. They were attendees at this event, not booth sponsors and yet they made an impression.
Their success (I'm talking about them here, aren't I?) proves that there are low cost ways to get yourself in front of prospects and customers if you just keep looking for opportunities.
Now, you'll have to excuse me while I go order some nerd glasses from their website.
I have just come across a great post on how to mess up a sales presentation. It has a killer title and catchy graphic as well. You can read the original post by Geoffrey James here.
Of course I have to add to his list. These come from my own observations of software sales meetings. Here is my list of ways to give a bad software sales presentation:
1. Start off the presentation by saying "I'm not good at selling" and spend the next 2.5 hours proving it.
2. Send a technical support person to deliver the product demo and have him spend 3 hours showing the CEO how to enter a sales order.
3. Don't worry about understanding your prospect's business just proceed to show him every single feature of your product whether he needs it or not.
4. Use sample data for your demo that has absolutely nothing to do with the prospect's business.
5. Ignore everyone at the table except the CEO when you make your presentation. Why waste time making all of those other staff people feel like they matter?
6. Show 4 or 5 alternative ways to perform every task so your prospect leaves the room dazed and confused about what you were showing.
7. Talk about product features and don't worry about how those features might help your prospect in his day job.
8. Tinker with your computer right before the demo so that your screen is completely black when you go before the prospect. (This one comes from the experiences of yours truly, who in fact set every color, background and font to black right before a product demo.)
9. Speak in a monotone and read from a script so the prospect doesn't get the idea that there is anything exciting about your product or company.
Got any to add to my list? Extra credit if you were the presenter and you learned how to get better as a result.
This is one of the best ways to connect with an audience.
I just attended the Consulting Accountants Round Table put together by Mentor Plus, a company that trains exceptional accountants. I attended a great session from Palm Tree, Inc which was all about Kaizen events and eliminating waste. The instructors did a wonderful job of explaining Lean theory and numerous other manufacturing-related concepts to a room full of accountants.
But, when they shared this video about making toast we all understood in an entirely new way. They made a connection and it stuck.
Seth Godin changed my presentation style forever. As a nerdy accountant struggling to find my voice, I first stumbled upon his book called Purple Cow. I was hooked.
His e-book Really Bad PowerPoint, saved my first big presentation - although it caused me to lose an entire night's sleep as I re-wrote my presentation the night before I delivered it.
His messages are clear and he does what he talks about.
A few weeks ago, I joined his group,Triiibes, which was formed in anticipation of his next book. There I found a group of fellow devotees including to my surprise, other accountants.
I was timid at first, and inspired to share and post a blog entry later.
One of my entries has found its way into his latest e-book called The Tribes Casebook. It is a compilation of stories contributed by the Tribe. It is amazing what members of this inspired group have contributed.
Thanks Seth, for giving me my two pages of fame!
Is it a new drug? Quarantine of some sort? Special vaccine? Change in diet?
Nope. It's good ole communication. It seems Unicef is training people to take the prevention message out to the local community.
Listen to one trainee. "This training is very important, because I learned a lot on communication approaches that I was not aware of before,” said one of the participants, livestock official Than Naing Soe, adding that he already had technical knowledge about avian influenza but did not have expertise in communications."
Apparently, Than is a former avian influenza nerd who can now go out into the world and make a difference. And that's a bird of an entirely different feather.
Despite what certain artists would have you believe, dogs are not very good poker players.
Picture this. You’re at the poker table. Everyone has made their contribution to the kitty. The dog across the table gets a great hand. Aside from the whole missing opposable thumbs problem, that dog is going to be at a serious disadvantage when it comes to bluffing. His tail is going to tell the whole story. Bad hand, he’s gonna be scared and that tail is going to be tucked under him. Great hand, tail will be wagging 100 miles an hour.
At least my dog would not have a problem keeping a poker face. She’s a Basset Hound and looks sad no matter what. But that tail communicates her every emotion.
But it's that same instant feedback you get from dogs that makes them the ideal audience for a presentation.
Just imagine. You could deliver your message and see what they think while you’re talking. No more waiting for those surveys to come in. And you wouldn't have to answer all of those tough questions. You just look out over that pack of dogs and look for a bunch of wagging tails. If you see them, you will know either a.)food has arrived or b.)you are getting their attention.
Talk about non-verbal communication. Too bad they don’t understand what we’re saying most of the time.
Last week I attended a conference that listed Kathy Ireland as the keynote presenter. Let’s just say I was cynical at best and attended her session with my Twitter finger at the ready. If you follow me on Twitter (evenanerd) you saw my comments as her presentation began. She bounded on stage and began to speak in what can only be described as a stream of words punctuated by an endless stream of exclamation points(and probably more than one per word.) It was the kind of speaking that would be equal to third grade writing where hearts replace the dots over every “i” and there are puffy exclamation points at the end of every sentence. I have no doubt that her notes were peppered with smiley faces she drew herself.
Her presentation was preceded by a video that showed lots of model shots and magazine covers which made you figure we were not going to get a lot of valuable content in this session.
She read from her pages of notes in a stilted and unnatural way with the excess useless energy of a cheerleader who hasn’t a clue that her team is losing.
But that’s when it all began to change.
She started making fun of herself. She talked about her lack of expertise in addressing a crowd such as ours, talked about instead her expertise in holding the right pose. And then she started to show some poses to us. She was letting us in on her joke. She talked about her voice and how difficult it was to get taken seriously. She shared stories of how she had trouble ordering pizza by phone because of her voice (I imagine any pizza eating was immediately followed by purging, but I digress.) She told us how she had to persist for 5 years before her brand and successful business got featured on a TV show. And she talked about her passion for the women she serves as customers. And as her passion grew, she became real. She turned that stereotype on its ear. “Yes I am beautiful, but I have something to say that might help you. And I want to help you succeed like I have. Because it wasn’t easy, even for me.”
She became one of us (a gorgeous, richer version of us) but one of us. She made us yearn to overcome our own weaknesses, to strive for more, to persist in our dreams.
And slowly, before we knew it, we were on her side.
I just gave a presentation online using tools provided by the event host, CPA Technology Advisor. I have made numerous presentations using just about every web delivery mechanism available. But the solution they use, called On24, was a new one for me. Let me just say I was impressed.
First of all, much of the credit for my positive experience has to go to the support team at CPA Technology Advisor. There were three or four people who were just there to make sure all of the technical issues got handled. They made the opening intro, answered questions that were typed in by attendees, coordinated with the call operator, and eliminated the hassle for me, the lowly content provider. I felt like a rock star with my own posse.
But let’s talk about the features of On24 l that made it unique IMHO:
1. It had a presenter view window which allowed you to view the entire slide show separate from whatever slides were live. At any time, you could see what was in the queue for the next slide.
2. It had integrated polling features (these were handled by one of the pros at CPA Tech Advisor so I didn’t have to do a thing but wait for the results to be posted)
3. Apparently, if you are an attendee, at the end of the session you can download your CPE certificate. That’s incredible for us CPAs who have to get our yearly training credits and often have to wait until year end to receive the certificates.
4. It kept the chat area visible on the screen so you could view slides and questions at the same time. It also had a nice way of allowing you to rank the questions and handled multiple people answering questions beautifully.
5. The phone line/conference call was integrated into the presentation and offered a separate speaker access number. (I normally use a separate conference line which makes it harder to record the session for later viewing.)
Many of the competitive services also offer this call feature –so it is probably just ignorance on my part that made this one unique.
There is, however, one big limitation of this tool– apparently it does not allow you to share your full desktop. It only shares slides that have been pre-loaded. So if you will be showing slides and live product, you are out of luck. It is ideally suited for educational topics that are slide show based.
So what are the other options for delivering web events for your clients?. I have checked out the options for offering small events via the web and these are the tools that I have tried:
1. Webex – they were one of the first services I used for software presentations and demos. They are fairly expensive but offer a proven solution with different options for small events and larger ones. There is a 14 day free trial. They offer a monthly plan for $69 per month that handles up to 25 attendees. They also offer a pay per meeting option, that I have used, but it gets very pricey fast. I spent $128 for a one hour meeting with a few participants.
2. Citrix Go to Meeting – known for their remote access capabilities, this is the one I am currently using. They have an option that goes for $49 per month for up to 15 meeting attendess.
3. IBM has a product called Lotus Sametime Unyte which is pretty reasonable – it starts at $48 per month for up to 15 participants and scales to 999 participants for $99 per month. They also offer a free one user to one person version of their product. I tested the free trial for this product and I was not impressed with the speed. There seemed to be a significant lag time between my actions and what was visible to my audience.
4. Adobe offers its solution called Acrobat Connect Pro but it is very pricey – a 5 user version goes for $375 per month.
So what do I recommend? If you can get a team of helpers to handle the technology for you, that would be my first choice. Barring that, you need to consider the kinds of requirements you have and the number of attendees that you plan on having at your events. If you want to try a service out, go for one pay per use option on the site of your choice. And then make a decision that fits your budget. You can't go wrong with any of these services.
What’s your opinion on the tools listed?
20 of the finest paws I've had the pleasure of meeting. 4 Labrador Retriever siblings and their Mom gathered to celebrate Labor Day in Carmel Valley. (Owners Brooke Osborne and Corrin Beaumont are their talented trainers.)
While most of you are focusing on the words or the performers (I mean Politicians) who give those political speeches at first one and then the other convention, I have been focused on the moments of silence.
That's right. I have been noticing those times during the speeches when the speaker pauses. Take Sarah Palin's speech tonight, for example. She effectively used the pauses to allow her audience time to respond to her words. The delegates were able to build up excitement and energy at each pause. That's also when her spoken words had time to actually reach the brains of her listeners.
When I took stand-up comedy training, I had a really hard time with those pauses. We would practice our routine every Monday for six weeks and each of us in the class would nervously try to talk over the pause - which meant our audience didn't have a chance to laugh at our material. (It couldn't have possibly been the fact that my nerdy material wasn't all that funny.) The instructor, Jeff Justice, would display every ounce of good humor he could muster week after week as he tried to convince us to embrace the pause.
He taught us that we had to get comfortable with the pause if we were ever going to hear the magic sound of laughter. It seems it takes time for humor to work its way to the funny bone. All of the good comedians know this.
Good speakers know it too. Obama knows how to work the pause, as does Hillary. Bill Clinton and Jessie Jackson are master orators and know how to squeeze the last ounce of enthusiasm out of every single pause.
The first time I stopped to take a breath and just stood there - it happened. Someone laughed. It felt wonderful.
It's not easy to stand there without talking, but with practice, you too can learn to embrace the pause so that you can hear the adoring cheers of your fan club.
Okay this is my new favorite thing ever,for today. Have you ever been up in a front of a crowd and wished you knew what they were thinking? Well do I have a solution for you.
You can create a free interactive poll and get your audience members to respond using just their cell phones. No need to buy those goofy handheld devices, now everyone in your audience, including that guy who forgot to turn off the ringer on his cellphone, can vote on a poll and you can share the results live on screen.
Checkout www.polleverywhere.com for all of the cool details. Basically you create a question - either multiple choice or requiring a text answer and they publish it on the web. Then they provide either a text message code that your audience uses to vote, or a number for them to use share their text answer. They offer a free service and more advanced paid options. You can embed the polls into your website and what's even better -you can download the poll as a PowerPoint slide and it will update with polling results. See my examples below.
Don't just guess what your audience is thinking! Go ahead and ask.
Sample poll created for text messaging.
Same poll using HTML code they provide.
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