How to make a boring subject interesting.

The phone rings. It is your boss in the accounting department and he wants you to make a presentation to your co-workers on revenue recognition. 

The co-workers in question all happen to be salespeople who work for a software company. Their definition of "revenue recognition" is the day their commission check is deposited in their bank account.  It seems they have been bundling software and maintenance fees which is playing havoc with your accounting.  They are pulling a few other stunts in an effort to hit their monthly targets.  It is your job to get them to understand the impact of their behavior on the business.


Here's how I would tackle this project. Keep in mind that I am not an expert on this particular topic but the people at Softtrax probably are.

Step 1:  Determine how your audience likes to receive information.  
You can turn to behavioral tools like the DISC profile or the Meyers Briggs research for help understanding different audiences.  But for this exercise, we will assume that salespeople are visual.  They have relatively short attention spans and don't like details.  That makes them polar opposites to the accountant who will be making this presentation.

Step 2: Decide what you want your audience to take away from your presentation. If you are the accountant making this presentation, you want the salespeople to stop entering orders incorrectly.

Step 3: Write down all of the pertinent facts and sources.  
Here’s what a typical accountant is going to write down in his Excel spreadsheet for this step:

¨      Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) 101
¨      AICPA SOP 97-2 – licensing, selling, leasing or marketing computer software
¨      Separate components based on VSOE– “Vendor Specific Objective Evidence of Fair Value”  - yes, this is straight out of the accounting literature.
¨      SOP 91-1 – Recognize revenue only after delivery of the software  
 
Step 4:  Ignore most of what you wrote in Step 3 and decide what part of this topic impacts your audience.
In this case, if orders are entered wrong, it means the salespeople will not get paid their commission. Ahah!  This is why they care!  

Step 5: Determine what your audience will expect you to deliver and do the opposite.
Salespeople expect accountants to be boring.  So make the session fun.   

TO BE CONTINUED --  To see a sample presentation on this topic, tune in to my next post.