Before reading this you may be interested to read my previous posting No Time to Rehearse? You’re Fired!

At many professional firms, preparing for a sales meeting means many hours spent preparing a PowerPoint presentation deck that will double as a leave-behind. This document and maybe a proposal, too, have been through several iterations, proofed and reproofed, adjusted, adapted and then admired by the sales team who may or may not remember to thank the graphics specialist who stayed up all night incorporating last minute changes.

With document in hand and confidence buoyed, the sales team grabs a cab to take them to the client’s office.  During the fifteen minute ride they decide what they will say and who will say it.

This is insane.

Long ago I was put in charge of a struggling office that was losing pitch after pitch. To turn the situation around, I did post mortem interviews with as many people who had hired other firms as I could.  I used a process for the interview that avoided biasing the clients’ responses (see Chapter 24 in the second edition of my book, Rain Making: How to Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field for a detailed description of the process.).  I must have done twenty such interviews over several months, sometimes with separate members of the client’s selection committee.

I first asked the client why she had chosen the other firm, letting her prioritize her reasons without any suggestions from me.  I then asked what our competitor had done well, what we had done well and not so well, again without offering any suggestions.

Once I had her view of the decision, I asked her to compare what we did with what the competitor did, starting from first contact.  One issue at a time I asked how each firm handled the initial phone inquiry from the client, how each handled the fact finding meeting, the proposal, the pitch meeting, the leave-behind document, and follow up.

Not once was the proposal or leave-behind mentioned by any of the clients until I brought it up.  Not once!  When I did bring them up, it was clear the clients didn’t remember them very well, if at all.  I suspect that many of them never so much as glanced at the leave-behind.  The deck or pitch book were mentioned by two or three clients, all referring to one image, a particularly compelling diagram our competitor had concocted.

What they did remember and what all of them volunteered without prompting was how our people and our competitors had handled themselves in face-to-face interactions with their people.  This they could talk about in detail and with emotion. This is what they cared about!

Like so many other firms we had been putting all our energies into things that mattered little and treating cavalierly that which really counted.  It was insane!
And when we fixed it by taking rehearsals seriously—putting in time and effort where it mattered—we began to win again.
 

For more advice like this, please see Ford Hardings’ new book: Rain Making, Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field, 2nd Edition

“Rain Making, in its new edition demonstrates its position as the single most sensible, accessible guide to building a professional practice…”
David Maister, author of Strategy and the Fat Smoker and co-author of The Trusted Advisor (with Charles Green and Robert Galford)

Any athlete, no matter how talented, who doesn’t practice with the team falls short of being a true professional. Any actor, musician or dancer who doesn’t rehearse, is unlikely to make it as a professional. Professionals who don’t practice quickly find themselves without a position, part or seat with the team, cast or ensemble.

Accountants, actuaries, architects, engineers, executive recruiters, lawyers, management consultants, publicists have to prove themselves as presenters to make partner. That is because partners are professional presenters. They present to their clients, to judges and juries, to arbitrators, to zoning boards, to industry groups and to each other. And, of course, they present to prospective clients.

“When a group of our engineers stands up in front of a selection committee, they are being judged not so much on their abilities as engineers as on their presentation skills,” George Friedel said when, as head of sales for Parsons Brinckerhoff, he was helping stack up one of the most impressive win rates I know of.

“By the time the client gets to the short list, they know that each of the firms they are considering is technically qualified. They choose on the basis of which team will work with them best. At that final meeting, then, your ability to communicate effectively using entertainment techniques, is more important that your ability to engineer,” he added.

Spend enough years participating in the bake-off competitions for huge infrastructure projects that a firm like Parsons Brinckerhoff pursues and you will know this is true. It is equally true, though less obviously so, of most sales meetings that professionals have. The infrastructure engineering firms know what’s at stake and they do rehearse, sometimes well and sometimes not, but they do it.

There are many professional firms that prepare for an hour-long sales meeting in the ten minute cab ride to the client’s office. Or they will spend 30 hours of firm time preparing slides or a leave-behind document and not five minutes on rehearsing. They have all kinds of excuses:

• I don’t have time.
• There’s no time when we can all get together.
• I don’t learn anything from rehearsals.
• I don’t do well in rehearsals, but I’m great in front of the client.
• What’s to rehearse?
• I never rehearsed before and have done okay.

I have a response for all of these excuses. Say: “Okay, you don’t have to rehearse, but if you don’t win the business, you’re fired. You’re fired because you have been unprofessional and wasted firm time and money and were unwilling to do what it takes to minimize the chances of losing. You will have set a bad example for the others in the firm, and I must make it clear to all that what you did was unacceptable.” And if they don’t rehearse, and they lose, fire them.

Whew!! I feel so much better having gotten that rant out of my system! Could you visualize me letting him have it? How I whipped that office into shape! Oh, that felt good.

I can now focus on something more helpful to you. In next week’s posting on being prepared, I will describe what preparing for a sales meeting means.

(Sims Wyeth also discusses presenations in his post The Show in Business

In my last posting, I described three kinds of people (beagles, babblers, and big shots) who will highjack a sales meeting by talking at length. They do so regardless of agreements made in a rehearsal to hold back until you understand the client’s issues. In this posting I will suggest some ways for dealing with them.

As I prepare to write these recommendations, I am reminded of an office I once saw of a high school literary magazine that had a banner with publication’s motto boldly displayed over its three desks: Our Best Is None Too Good! Before providing suggestions on how to deal with those who highjack sales meetings, I must caution you that though these are the best suggestions we have, they won’t work in many cases. Hijackers are tough to deal with.

Here are some things your can try:

Don’t bring the hijacker: See if you can bring someone else who can fill the role the hijacker plays on the team. Though this would be my first choice, it often isn’t possible. The firm may have but one thought leader on the subject the client is most interested in. The hijacker may be the head of the practice and so gets to decide who goes. There can be many reasons why you must bring him. Still, the potential for leaving him at the office is worth brief consideration. At the very least it allows you to daydream about the possibility for a few pleasant minutes.

Plan and rehearse: Carefully plan out who will do what for how long and then rehearse as if this were the plan that everyone will follow. Plans and rehearsals seldom stop a hijacker, but when you apply one of the other techniques, the hijacker will be more likely realize where you are goings and sometimes fall in line.

Bring someone who outranks the hijacker: You may not be able to control the hijacker, but someone more senior in the firm might. This is particularly true of the “big shot” described in my preceding posting. Big shots may walk on people lower in the hierarchy than they are, but usually kowtow to those more senior.

Rehijack the meeting: At the appropriate moment—such as when the hijacker pauses to take a breath—say something like, “Thank you, Scott. That provides the big picture of the way these issues are addressed. I would now like to focus our conversation on the specifics of your (i.e., the client’s) situation. Please, describe . . . “ If you are seated, it is best to stand when you seize control of the meeting this way. If you are standing at the back move forward. This language identifies you as the practical manager of the effort, implying that the hijacker’s role is to provide the big picture.

This approach is most likely to work with “beagles” and “babblers” and especially if there is an agreed upon and rehearsed plan for the meeting. On the downside, it risks the appearance of an argument among the members of your team, which is almost certain to result in the client choosing someone else. So, think carefully about how the hijacker is likely to react, before you try it. I would not attempt this approach with most “big shots.”

Don’t give up control until the client has set direction: Briefly introduce yourself and your colleagues, stating why each one is present. Then, ask the client what she how she prioritizes her concerns, by offering a slide or page of a document that lists alternatives. Say, for example, “These are the issues that most companies concerned with the effectiveness of their sales forces have. Which, if any stand out to you?” The list might read:

The client will then prioritize issues. If your colleague hijacks the meeting now, at least he will be talking about the issue the client feels is most important.

This approach relies on knowing enough about the client’s problem to prepare an issues list and on keeping the hijacker from talking at all until the client says what he is most concerned with. These are big ifs, but I have seen the approach work and, notably, seen it work when a junior person is trying to control someone more senior.

Split one meeting into two: If you can arrange to have a first meeting to talk about broad issues and a second to work out details specific to the client’s situation, you can sometimes go to the second without the hijacker. You might, of course, never get to a second meeting.

Dealing with sales meeting hijackers remains a tough issue. I would be interested in hearing about other techniques. If you have one, please leave a comment.

Professionals I work with often complain about colleagues who hijack sales meetings by ignoring agreed upon plans and dominating the conversation, barely allowing the client a chance to talk. This problem is especially hard to deal with if the talker outranks everyone else on the firm’s team.

This posting will describe three kinds of hijackers. My next posting will describe some ways to deal with them.
There are many reasons that a person will highjack a meeting. In planning how to deal with them, it often helps to see if they fit any of the following three types: beagles, babblers and big shots.

Beagles

It’s hard not to like beagles. Small, cheerful and friendly, they win a place in your heart. Smart, they quickly learn to behave, or so it seems . . . until they see a rabbit.

Upon seeing a rabbit, centuries of breeding short circuit every other thought in a beagle’s head. RABBIT! Off goes the beagle in pursuit sounding his wonderful bay. “Heel!” you may command, but something in a beagle’s head screams “RABBIT.” “Sit!” you yell. RABBIT is what the beagle hears.

You can shout, stamp your foot, threaten, cry, cajole or do whatever else you may think of, but RABBIT overwhelms everything. RABBIT! RABBIT! So overpowering is this genetically based focus on RABBIT that there is little you can do except watch the hunt.

Fortunately, rabbits usually run in circles. If you can find the center of the circle, chances are the dog won’t be far away.

Some professionals behave in much the same way when a client raises a specific issue. Everything short circuits and they begin to pitch whatever it is they specialize in. FORECAST! (or INTELECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION or ASBESTOS REMMEDIATION or whatever).

You may have agreed to sit back and hear what the client has to say before talking yourselves. No matter. That agreement is overwhelmed by the word, FORECAST!

Thought leaders often exhibit this behavior. They seem to feel that all clients hunger to hear their knowledge of a subject. Firms reinforce that belief by trotting them out to talk about their specialty at marketing events.

Like beagles, these people aren’t malicious. Rather, it is as if they have been bred for one purpose, to talk about their specialty.

Babblers

My wife is a second grade teacher. Every fall she must get her young scholars, who have run wild and free all summer, adjusted to the limits of the classroom.

On the first day of school last September, she told a talkative seven year old, “Now, Rachel, remember that in school you can’t just talk whenever you want to. You have to wait for the teacher to call on you.” To which Rachel replied, “You know, . . . I had the same problem last year.” One imagines Rachel having the same problem for a long time to come.

Rachel isn’t the only one who talks too much in spite of reminders. Some professionals suffer from the same malady. The babbler may be an extreme extrovert who gets such a high off of human contact that he talks away, missing the chance to learn about the person he is addressing.

In other cases, the babblers confuse the deference we show to those in power with interest in what they have to say. I can think of at least one hierarchical firm where promotion to partner increases a person’s prolixity even more than it does his paycheck.

This isn’t the talk of a young person who seeks to prove herself or who just doesn’t know techniques for getting the other person to talk. (See He Talks Too Much.) This is the talk of a person who believes, often mistakenly, that other people want to hear what he has to say, of a person who sees a conversation as an opportunity to sound forth rather than to take in.

These people seldom realize they have a problem. Last summer I was asked to coach a former CEO turned executive recruiter. When I cautioned him about talking too much, he looked at me as if I were crazed and then proceeded to talk in almost a monologue for two hours, starting with a denial of his talkativeness, before rambling from subject to subject.

Big Shots

Big shots are firm partners who sell aggressively and believe that there is no other way. They dominate in sales meetings, because they always dominate. If another partner says, “Green,” they are likely to say, “Red.” They have personally landed most of the firm’s major clients and developed it’s most profitable services . . . just ask them. Actually, you don’t even have to ask.

They also knew all along that a hurricane would wreck New Orleans, advised Bush not to go into Iraq (by way of a close personal friend who knows a cabinet member who passed the advice on to the president), taught Robin Williams how to be funny and could bring peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, if someone would just let them.

After dominating a sales meeting, they will tell you that you should have spoken up more. They cannot see their domineering behavior as having anything to do with your silence.

These are the three common kinds of hijackers. In a future posting I will suggest some ways to deal with them.

In his current post in his blog, Trust Matters, Charlie Green argues for listening largely so the client realizes she has been heard. He argues that you should “listen for the sake of listening.”

I am not sure whether we disagree or we use different words to say much the same thing. Your goal, I believe, is to figure what the client wants from you when she talks to you. If she wants to know if you can help her with a problem, tell her yes or no, and if it’s no, try to help her find someone who can. If she is trying to scope out a problem, help her do so. Hold the selling until you both have a clear understanding of the problem. If she simpley wants to vent or brag a little, let her do so.

Clients quickly catch on to the professional who claims to be able to help them with any problem. Saying that you can’t do something and refering the client to someone who can is both the right and professional thing to do and good business. If you have helped a client find someone who can solve Problem A better than you can, the client will trust you when you say you can help with Problem B.

Your first objective should always be to understand the client’s problem as she sees it, rather that as you think she should see it or would like her to see it. And once you do, if you can help her solve it, get on with the selling. That’s why she called you.

Different consultants, seeing the same client situation through different disciplinary lenses, can come up with strikingly different guidance. Three of us, all of whom consult to professional firms, thought it might be interesting to see how our different orientations influence the advice we would give to a client about the same topic: Things you shouldn’t say or do at a competitive presentation of your services to a potential client.

We are: a) presentation coach Sims Wyeth who can show a wet blanket how to set itself on fire when on a podium, b) marketing consultant, Suzanne Lowe, author of Marketplace Masters: How Professional Firms Compete to Win, who can get a burlap bag full of cats, dogs and canaries humming the same tune, and c) me. Our firm helps professionals becomer rainmakers.

I decided to establish criteria by which submittals (all from me) for inclusion in my list of Five Biggest Presentation Don’ts could be rated. To do the rating I assembled a committee of fifteen totally objective judges carefully selected to ensure inclusion of representative members by gender, education level, geography, political leanings, age, race and ability to hold their liquor. After assuring myself that all fifteen could meet the last criterion, I asked them to rate 114 entries for the things you shouldn’t say in a presentation of your services to a prospective client. Each submission was rated on three criteria, which are:

a) Relevancy: Thou shall not talk about things of no interest or importance to the client.
b) Redundancy: Thou shall not say things said by your competitors.
c) Believability: Thou shall not tell any whoppers, or anything that sounds like one.

Ranked from weak to laughable, the committee chose the following five things not to say:

1. We are organized into seven practices (or studios). Only one judge rated this entry, the others falling immediately into a deep sleep upon its being read to them. The insomniac judge’s mark was for lacking relevancy. As he dozed off, too, he muttered, “The client doesn’t care. Tell her about the part of the organization relevant to her and skip the rest.”
2. We want to be your partner on this matter. Three judges revived enough to give this claim three marks on believability. As one judge said, “The last time I tried that one, the client said, ‘Really? How much money do you plan to put up?’ This is just an inflated way of saying you’ll give good service.”
3. You will be our most important client. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” said one judge in falsetto. The other judges tittered quietly at that comment, while the funny one added his mark to five others on the basis of believability. Said another, “Even if it’s true, what will happen to your other clients, if I hire you? If a client comes along who is even prettier than I am, what happens to us.”
4. We are the oldest and largest . . . This got ten marks. The first six for being totally irrelevant. Again a judge said “The client doesn’t care.” To which I said, “What if there are many fly-by-night competitors in this field and you want to show you’re different from them?” “Then tell them that,” snapped a judge. “Say, ‘In a field where a lot of companies come and go, we are committed to being long term providers, and the age and size of our firm prove it.’” One judge also gave a mark each for redundancy and believability, saying, “I once attended competitive presentations where two firms claimed to be oldest and largest. Because their definitions of what they were oldest and largest of differed, both were telling the truth. The selection committee members weren’t impressed.”
5. What makes us special is our people. Every member of our totally objective panel rolled on the floor at this one. One laughed so hard, he rolled under the conference table, and we had to listen to his sporadic te-he-he’s for the rest of the meeting. The other judges marked this one down by 38 points, giving it the lowest score in recorded history. (I know, there were only fifteen judges, but they had become drunk with their power by this time and insisted they had to have more than one mark each to give this one the rating it deserved.) Thirty of these marks are for redundancy. One judge exclaimed “Don’t ever say those words! Don’t ever say them, because everyone does at every presentation!” She began to mimic presenters, saying the overworked words again and again in different tones of voice with mock sincerity, causing a howl of laughter once again. “Your people’s specialness must be in a way that is important to the buyer or he doesn’t care,” explained one. The final mark is for believability. The oldest judge said, “It sounds like so many warm words to me. I don’t want warm words. I want meat.”

We all adjourned to the cafeteria for lunch.

If you would like to submit additional things that shouldn’t be said or done in a presentation, Suzanne, Sims and I would be glad to pass them on to our totally objective board of fifteen judges for rating. To see a marketing expert’s choices for presentation don’ts, go to Suzanne Lowe’s blog. To see a presentation coach’s choices, go to Sims Wyeth’s blog.

Yesterday I saw George and Ira Gershwin’s musical, My One and Only, in Stratford, Ontario. The show must have collected every professional tap dancer in Canada. The twenty-person cast tapped its way through three delightful hours.

Tap dancing may be alive and well in Stratford this summer, but it’s on the decline elsewhere. For many of us, the last tap dancer we have seen was Gregory Hines, and there is a whole generation which has never heard of the man. Today, we use the term, “tap dancing,” metaphorically far more often than we use it to describe a real dance. And that lead me to wonder, why do we use the term “tap dancing?”

The metaphors we choose tell a lot about our view of whatever it is we use them to describe. “Tap dancing” is a good example. We use it to describe the deft handling of a risky and difficult inquiry. We might say, for example, ”You really had to tap dance your way out of that one.” In this sense it connotes survival of a near disaster. When used this way, it often draws a laugh, usually a laugh of relief and the pleasure of having gotten away with something. That’s because it may also suggest a less than full disclosure of the facts or at least walking a fine line between truth and misrepresentation.

Usually, it is used as a complement, though it can have a negative slant when used to describe how a person maneuvered himself out of a mess he had needlessly gotten himself into.

The term interests me because it is used so frequently to describe what happens in a difficult sales meeting. It might be used to describe the answers to such difficult questions as:

1. Isn’t it true that XYZ Corporation replaced you midstream on their project?
2. Why should we buy the same solution from you that you have already given to our competitors?
3. Do you mean that you have never done a project like this one before?

The ability to address questions like these, especially when unexpected, is highly valued by professionals. What does the choice of “tap dancing” tell us about that talent? I believe that is tells us the following:

1. It requires skill. This is true of both the dance, itself, and the verbal ability. Many may aspire but few can do it.
2. It is done under pressure before an audience. Unlike some forms of dancing, tap dancing is used almost exclusively as performing art. You do it under a spotlight before an audience. A critical audience is essential to metaphorical tap dancing, too.
3. It is hard work. Other dances may disguise hard work behind smoothness and grace, but tap dancing is obviously physically difficult. A difficult conversation with a prospective client at a sales meeting is also exhausting;
4. There is a competitive aspect to it. Unlike other forms of dancing, competition is almost always present when tap dancing. The competition between the lead and another actor-dancer that I saw so recently in My One and Only is repeated in form again and again when tap dancing is featured. A challenge and a response is essential to the application of the term to a conversation between two people, as well. While the client tries to catch him, the professional dances furiously to respond acceptably to each question.

There is a school of thought that tap dancing at a sales meeting isn’t necessary, because a professional is always open with clients. I lean in that direction, too. But I have tap danced through a sales meeting or two in my years as a professional and in doing so, have won some work that helped the client achieve her objectives and helped the firm I was with avoid a layoff. And I have enjoyed the admiration that others in the firm expressed afterwards.

Yes, we should always be honest with our clients. But we also should put our firms before them in the best fair light. That sometimes requires tap dancing. I would wager heavily that those who learn to tap dance make partner more often than those who only know how to waltz.

All of which leads me to conclude that when a rainmaker dances to make rain, it is sometimes a tap dance.

After weeks of heavy travel, it feels good to be in the office again.  My chair is familiar.  My mug sits on the shelf where I left it waiting to be filled with tea.  I have easy access to old-fashioned paper files.  Briefly, there are no immediate deadlines or airplanes to catch or sales meetings to get to.  I can wade through a little of the pile of small matters that have accumulated while I have been away.  It’s all comfortable.  Too comfortable!

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