“It’s not what you say, it’s what they remember and can be bothered to pass on”

The best material delivered in the wrong manner will go nowhere. Most people make their pitches too vague, too long and too boring. Hence they never get passed onto target audiences and never go viral.

Below are my top 5 communication tips for sales and investment pitches – whether it’s an elevator pitch, full blown sales proposal or coffee with a potential investor.

1: Earn your audience’s attention (be engaging)

Open with something that gets their attention. Remember that only 7% of a message’s impact comes from the words, the rest comes from body language 55%, and tone of voice at 38%. Passion and confidence cannot be faked, equally so the format of the written word matters.

Don’t forget to excite the sensors – Props (physical things) are great memory hooks. Smell and taste are often forgotten.

2: Be Succinct

Use sound bites (10-30 second statements) and headline concepts.

Think like a journalist – what would be your grabbing headline and how can you compact the main message into the first min of your presentation?

Use the inverted pyramid of information – basic journalistic tool.  The power of a message is inversely proportional to its length (less is more).

In creating effective messages you need to decide what not to say.

Changing the order of your sound bites is the easiest way to improve it’s impact and effectiveness.

3: Contrast is the best conversion tool (life before and after)

Illustrate your value proposition by contrasting what the customer’s life will be like before and after they have purchased, or with and without your product/service.

Make it simple black and white, not a million shades of grey.

4: Always quantify gain (be specific)

Be specific in what you say, if it’s faster – how much faster? Use this with contrast. Likewise do not use vague descriptions eg “a customer…”, name them, be specific it has greater impact.

5: Customer stories win minds and get results

Short relevant and concise, quantified customer stories using contrast provide the most efficient way to give others a message they will empathise with, process and pass on.

Research by the “sales brain team” showed the following results to the effectiveness (probability of closing a sale) of 4 different proofs of value:

1: Customer Case (80%)
2: Demonstration (60 – 100%)
3: Data (20 – 60%)
4: Vision (10-40%)

Read the Book “Neuromarketing– Selling” to the old brain …. Best book I have every read on sales.  http://www.salesbrain.com/

“WIFM  – What’s in it for me”

The golden rule for all communication is: “always use your audience’s language of success”, not yours. Work out what is the highest gain for your target audience (financial, strategic or personal gain)

Your first goal is always to excite interest in the outcome (the WHAT). When the audience get the relevance of the outcome they will ask the HOW questions. At this point you have them baited. The How (the technology or process) is your domain, not your customers, they just want a result.

Too often business people attempt to sell their business by talking about their product or craft rather than the “true value/outcome” the client is seeking. This is your language not theirs.

Avoid “The curse of knowledge”

Insiders are the worst at reviewing messages for external audiences, they are handicapped by knowing too much, assuming.  Use an experienced external advisor to help extract your core messages and test their impact for first time listeners.

More on this topic: see other www.succinct.co.nz blog posts on this topics in the GMC top tips:

–       “Link between simple strategy pitch and success”
–       “Value propositions revisited”
-        ” 90 sec Elevator Pitch“

Check out www.Succcinct-Stories.com we can help you prepare your next marcoms brief, test your sales or investment proposal or just help you get your elevator pitch sorted.  This also holds true to how you communicate your business strategy and plan to your stakeholders and team to get engagement.

Can you easily articulate your business strategy less than 60 secs?

Most business owners get that they need a product elevator pitch for sales, but have you considered whether you have a strategy pitch for your stakeholders?

Strategy without execution is just a waste of time. If your staff fail to “get” what your strategy is all about, how are they going to engage with it, think out of the box and work as a team to achieve the goals set out in it? Do not expect your team to read that strategy document you diligently prepared or mind read. How many of your staff could tell you what the company’s growth strategy is?

“A business plan is a document that investors ask for but never read” whether you are raising capital or inspiring your team – you are responsible for creating the interest in your strategy and delivering it in a manner that people will engage with and act on.

After helping many business owners over the years with their investment pitch I have come to the conclusion that: the leaders who fail in the ability to deliver a succinct version of their business strategy, will fail to grow beyond where they are now – irrespective of investment or not.  This is evident when I see companies year after year going nowwhere – failing to achieve the growth talked about but never delivered.

Too many businesses suffer from the lack of clarity, wasting time with a team not empowered to say no to stray activities “off strategy”, basically letting fate decide what they should be focusing on. In many of these cases the business owner has it all in his head but fails to communicate it. Or worst still a non- connected or busy management team that have parts of it but are not aligned.

High growth businesses live in a chaotic world, most staff living on the edge chasing tails. Failure to articulate your business strategy to your stakeholders (team, board, investors) is just as bad as not having a strategy at all.

My advice is take your business plan / strategy and condense it down to less than five key statements – themes that people get.   Eg Market share is king, more important than profits.  The power of the message is inversely proportional to the number of words used.

This condensing could even be considered as a bolt-on-phase to your existing planning technique.

Creating and expressing your business strategy as an elevator pitch is a mind bender, but the resulting clarity is empowering.  The conversations that you and your team will have around condensing your strategy is a worthwhile exercise in its self.

Some tips:

• Have a go at presenting your business strategy verbally: no props or power point, can you do it? Have your strategy challenged by someone fresh outside your business or a new employee.
• Use an external facilitator who excels at this to help accelerate the extraction of the core strategy and listen with fresh ears – BTW this is GMC’s speciality
• Use diagrams and pictures to focus thinking, business model canvas, balanced score card diagrams
• Engage specialist graphical recording – facilitation techniques to record and stimulate complex enterprise strategies and problems. This powerful technique is relatively rare in NZ. Here is a link to one of the many you tube clips explaining this technique.  Two NZ providers GMC work with are: www.motive8.co.nz/ and  www.martincoates.com contact GMC if you want to give it a go.
• Everything can be simplified, strategy does not need to be complex

Irrespective of whether you are thinking of raising capital or not, creating clarity and simplicity in your business strategy is key to getting staff, board and potential investors engaged and actually achieving goals.

If you can clearly and succinctly articulate your strategy you have a far higher chance of actually executing it.

The acid test of your pitch is did it get passed on and ultimately did it go viral.

Talking  in the language of our target audience not ours takes practice. If you are a scientist and/or technologist seeking endorsement and funding from investors, start talking their language.

Here are 10 tips to creating effective pitches:

1. Get attention be different – Opening WOW.
   Stand out from the crowd, wake people up.   Just because you have their physical presence you do not have their mind.
   Don’t be boring.
2. Be succinct  – Talk in simple 10-30 sec sound bites, create a 3 min version first.
   Long messages are hard to process and seldom get passed on. The power of your message is inversely proportional to the number of words used.
3. Build simple context for relevance
   The more complex the technology, the greater the need to add a 10-30 sec statement that simply explains why we should care about this topic and why is it relevant to other people.
   
4. Customer Stories engage audiences
   The most powerful way to explain a technology is to give us an example client, their problem and what difference your solution makes for them.  Customer cases are proven to be 80% efficient in closing sales. Ignore the temptation to explain how your technology works – its secondary, almost irrelevant, wait to be asked.
5. Contrast & quantify outcomes not technology– (with & without)
   Build on your customer story by quantifying the difference your product made comparing life before and after your product. Audiences like black and white, not complicated shades of grey.
6. Explain your business model – including how you make money and go to market.
   Use the business model canvas or a variant of it to illustrate your business model in a page.
   
7. How you say it is more relevant than what you say
   Research showed that message impact is determined 7% by content, the rest is by body language and voice (vocal variety). Don’t make your pitch boring by the way you deliver it.
   
8. Investors invest in people first – technology second
   Tell us something about your team and why with them on board this project/venture will succeed.
9. Be clear about both where you are today and what your BHAG is
   inspire use with your vision, but show us how you will get from where you are to the end goal
   
10. Be true yourself and your brand
    Authenticity and personality counts- have a character and a way and be proud of it
    

And do not forget to listen … pitching is all about baiting an audience to begin an intelligent  two way conversation…

more on this topic including an elevator pitch template >

• Price leadership:  lead with an aggressive price strategy either: price well above your competition or well below not the same.
• Quality
• Mass Appeal: adapt known concepts to a broad set of people
• Focus: on what you can control. Do not get distracted with too many product variants do something and do it well.  Stick with your winning formula and make it better.

The pricing strategy makes sense – why be just the same as every one else. Either you have been able to package your offering with lower costs and can hit the market with a new price point, or what you have is so good it demands a special place above every one else.

Lovegrove also explained how speaking in a Kermit frog voice – was great training to become an opera singer.

MORGO is  a entrepreneurs conference / networking event hosted each year by Jenny Morel. Now in its 9^th year, this event has become a “must attend event” for both inspiration in the technology business space and building networks.  In this post I share a few notes that I scribbled down on day one.

Speaker 2: Scott Yara CO founder  Greenplum, his lessons for success:

• Timing: Being ahead of time is a bad idea.
• Have Passion: “Earn the right”  – to be heard by customers and  staff alike.
• Solve Real World Problems

Jades’s Craig Richardson  gave us all an update on  JADE’s reinvention.  I remember JADE in the 80’s with their unique and superior software platform. Unfortunately it became another example of a great product that failed to break into the mass market despite its superior performance.

Great Companies defined:

• Good products
• Know the audience
• Talk to heart and head
• Reinvent themselves
• Stay close
• Preoccupied with growth
• Culture and capability to manage complexity

Rules for Development:

• Only go where the category is well defined
• Look for growing markets (20%+ growth)
• Go where 2 or 3 trends clash
• Concept to market in less than 12 months

Building on Yara’s comments of being ahead of time is a bad thing, the concept of attempting to create a category is bold move. Hence Jades new approach of only going where the category is defined.

Too often I see businesses attempting to educate customers of a problem they are not aware off. Typically all this means is very long sales cycles,  slow growth resulting in a slow death.

Altitude’s Michael Pervan gave us a fascinating insight into airline interiors and luxury jet fit-outs.  Some customers spending $60M for a jet then spending another $60M to fit it out. Altitudes strategy was to hit a small niche on a mega market that was to small for the big guys to bother with.

Like wise they have applied the IT outsourcing model to a market that has traditionally focused on in-house manufacture. Instead Altitude have taken the high ground of owning IP, Brand and process.

Michael Pervan gave a great endorsement to the NZTE better by design process, with their key change being around improved team collaboration.

Chris Mardon Energy Mad – gave us some hope for affordable LED like lighting. They are introducing a new technology LES “Light Emitting Snakes” which will be available next year at a great price point.  Ye ha..perhaps Hils and I can ditch those pesky halogen down lights in our living area that keep going on the blink.

Next we jumped into the world of AI and robots with an David Hanson from Hanson Robotics. It was a little freaky, but in the same way fascinating. There is a cool geek like toy coming out soon “RoboKind” that uses some of this great new technology. The prediction I took away – was simulating brain power of humans by 2050. All the same amazing use of computing power and robotics.

Quid.com’s Sean Gourley gave us an update on his mission to solve world war & peace with his mathematical genius. Although his keyword analysis tool looking at web activity on search gave a great insight into tools that will be of great use for predicting market interest.

Unfortunately I had to miss Day Two due to a speaking engagement in Wellington.

But I will be back for year ten in 2012 to catch up with many friends old and ones I haven’t meet yet.

For more on MORGO check out twitter hash tag #MORGO or the Morgo website

Thanks all a great event as always…

So we all know we need to have a USP (unique selling proposition)  – Elevator Pitch. But what about when you are in the services business ? …”we are the best” or a derivative of it “we are the leaders” fails miserably on the unique test.

Unfortunately unless the output of your service is significant – it is useless at differentiating you, in fact doing a great job is what I call a hygiene factor – something any decent professional will give.

Very seldom, if at all, it is the firm that differentiates the service provider. There is always someone else that has the “expert team” or “boutique personal service”. We need to hunt further than that.

Think about how you choose your last: Dentist, lawyer, architectural designer or business adviser?

Differentiating in the services game is hard, as the string of poor web sites  are testimony too.

My guess it came down to one of these:

• Referral from a trusted source – the great thing here is price is often eliminated with a great referral. So make sure all your endorsements are succinct and powerful and not hidden away,
• They stood out from the pack in some way. This could be from:
  • Making a stand eg Being thought leaders or just different
  • You just liked them, because they are “like you”.

Notice I am not talking about a logo or fancy tag line. It is more about your approach, attitude or way you are. Once you are conscious of what your customers like, give them more of it. Make sure that this “way” is consistent across your entire organisation. Have you ever fired someone because they did not adhere to your company values – brand attitude?

It still blows me away when I see people referring to their craft rather than a measure of success from the client’s perspective. Here is classic from a web site “Accounting is our passion,” If accounting is your passion, enjoy yourself. But what can you do for me?

For something completely different check out this law firm www.valoremlaw.com/ (see the tease below)

They are making a stand:  “the billable hour is dead”

Check your web site out,  how much of relevance do you offer your clients?

Some more ideas on standing out from the crowd:

• Share customer stories, highlighting what your customers got beyond your basic service
• Make sure all your headline stories on your promotional material talk the language of your customers need and success – not yours
• On referrals, make sure you make it easy for people to refer you:

• Be clear on what you do and don’t do. give them a simple sound bite to pass on…
  Particularly if there is some overlap of your services with them.
• Be clear on what market segment you are after.
• Make sure you have a LinkedIn profile and its up to date (google is great at finding you here)
• Reciprocate – people you give referrals, will give you ones in retutn
• Your existing and past customers will give you the best referrals, they know you. Always ask for an endorsement and highlight rather than hide them on your web site. Third party endorsements have an 80% probability of closing a sale.
• Google yourself and see what people see of you. Do it on an I-pad and see how your web site looks – influencer’s are generally busy people and they steal time by using these portable devices

More GMC articles on Networking or Pitching , or if you want more information specific to  selling professional services I found a great resource here  http://www.marcusletter.com/Differentiation.htm

This is an ongoing dilemma for all business owners.

I have just finished an enlightening book on creating performing teams in this modern age by Paul Marciano – “Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work”

 This book should be compulsory reading for anyone who has staff.

It’s amazing what people managing people, claim to know about leadership – but seldom practice.
Paul has a way of bringing this point home with some simple questions in each of the early chapters, clearly illustrating this point.

When was the last time you said an individual “thank you” to your staff?

I cringe when I hear executives say “people our most important asset” yet there is no evidence in their actions.

Paul like others, I have recently reviewed take an axe to reward and recognition programmes (carrots and sticks), stating that these only stimulate short-term change and never influence culture.  He gives numerous  (20) examples of the harm these programmes can bring into companies. In many cases all that happens is a culture of entitlement is formed.

Paul separates motivation from engagement.  “Employees who are motivated will work hard when there is something in it for them, engaged employees work hard for the sake of the organization and because it gives them fulfillment”

Another differentiation between engagement and not: “When I feel highly engaged with a project, I find myself thinking of it all the time-inside and outside work.; when I’m not engaged , I think about the project only when I am on the clock”

Engaged employees do things like: bring ideas to work, when did you last get an email in the weekend from an employee saying …”I’ve been thinking…”, or an employee informs you of problems solved, rather than bringing you dead bodies.

The interesting point he does make is that “it is all to do with the organization and manager and less to do with the employee”.

Motivation is what gets you started; habits are what keep you going.

Habits are persistent and resistant to change and do not go away because we are motivated.

Culture derives behavior and behavior reinforces culture

So given we accept carrots and sticks don’t work, what do we do about it. Paul’s model is based on an acronym RESPECT.

• Recognition (& acknowledgement)
• Empowerment (do your staff have the tools to succeed)
• Supportive feedback
• Partnering
• Expectations
• Considerations
• Trust

Building on Pink’s Drive purpose, Paul emphasizes the importance of people understanding the context of their role in the organisation and knowing that their efforts make a difference to others and the business.

Some other quick notes I made give you a taste of Paul’s approach:

• Giving effective Praise:  The winning formula Timing, specificity, proximity, enthusiasm.
• Lack of training and advancement are the 2 leading reasons for staff turnover
• “Your Job gives you authority, your behavior gives you respect”

This book is going on my top 10 list to recommend to owner managers who want break the employee – owner attitude gap.

Read more on Paul’s respect model on his web site:  http://www.paulmarciano.com/respect-model/

Paul was looking at coming to NZ in 2012, so keep an eye out for his name on the speaking circuit.

Harold Star’s book “Chicken and Pigs – Business Models and Competitive Strategies” puts  businesses into 4 categories.

These models are referenced by transaction frequency and revenue contribution from each transaction.

My takeaways from this book are:

Business models are about customers not end users, often people get these stakeholders mixed up. Customers are the ones writing the cheques.

•  Few companies know why their customers came to them and why they stay
•  It takes different skills to attract customers and retaining them
• Once established a business model is very difficult to change. This comes from the customer behaviours and required skills associated around maximizing operational efficiencies working each model.
• Business models are predicated around decisions made by management around three model elements (strategic DNA) : Customer, Resources and Capabilities and Value Proposition.
• Many companies operate multiple models,  as such they need to be conscious that each model requires different skills and behaviours

Through his book it he never actually mentions why he calls them such, perhaps obvious, but my take is:

Chickens: Lay eggs – lots of regular contributions
 Pigs: good for bacon and ham at the end, lots of reward once
 Black Widows: Mate and kill their prey, like big customers who consume your business leaving you  at risk with a small number of large customers
 Locusts:  lots of them and they move in packs, short life expectancy

Check out both Harold Web Site and his book for more detail on this pragmatic approach to classifying and developing strategies to manage your customer pools and business model.

The web site has plenty of great information. Click on each model to get more information.

My advice to people is that this activity is wasting your live away. My motto is – new ventures should “grow fast or fail fast”.

5 Steps to Kick Starting your new venture:

1: Find out what you don’t know – you don’t know
2: Create a brief business plan and get it challenged
3: Identify what’s in the way of getting started
4: Validate your market
5: Revise you plan and get it challenged again.

GMC in conjunction with Grow Wellington run the Activate – Jump Start boot camp. Taking  new ventures through steps 1-3 in 48 hours, helping all of them make significant progress in moving their businesses ahead.
Then following the weekend up with a support programme, including a post weekend strategic review and follow up mentoring.

Learning’s from the weekend included:

-   Peer review of your business model and plan is the quickest way to transform your thinking
-   Being away from home and the internet for a 2 days and nights can aid your thinking process and help you get clarity
-   The simple act of presenting your business model and plan to someone – will help you get clarity.

If you are sitting on the next big thing, or are stalled making the next big change to your business than would recommend signing up to one of the remaining jump start weekends for 2011  Wellington-Palmerston North 18- 23 Nov or Auckland 25 – 27 Nov.

If you have a GST registered business you may qualify for up to a 50% discount for events like this, contact me for more information.

Typical feedback from the weekend and follow up sessions:

“Relevant and to the point… with immediate and significant impact on my business.  It has paid for itself in the smart decisions I have made since.

The Activate weekend is different to all other business workshops I have been to, no hypothetical cases leaving you to interpret and apply to your business.

It was amazing what we all learnt from analysing each other’s business; I left having made some fundamental shifts in my business strategy.

The post weekend mentoring has been invaluable in accelerating the journey of my business.  

John Matsis – Founder Tonic Foodgroup Ltd

“Exhausting and inspirational in the same moment… this is gold.”

“Mark and Activate have transformed my business from a cool product, into a focused business with a clear strategy to market. “

The ability to get clarity out of the chaos for my new venture is invaluable, the investment to participate paid for itself 10 times over in saved time.  

Rachel Hatch – Founder Mexis – Virtual Reality Devices

“Brutal and inspiring… don’t start a new venture without attending Activate.
It begins with a startup bootcamp weekend that exposes and plugs any gaps in your business model“.

“Mark has a great way of saying what needs to be said – even it’s not what we want to hear – and making us feel good about it.”

“We are operating at warp speed as a result of attending Activate The follow up support has been key in keeping me on track and focused on getting the important high value stuff done. I recommend any business owner, new or nearly new, attend this practical programme.”

Judith Eastgate – Founder, Perfect Accent

Creating and building effective teams has got to be the biggest challenge facing business owners. I am yet to find a business that is successful without getting this “people” stuff sorted.  I recently  found a great model for describing how team dynamics work.

I had previously been aware of the work of the Grove guys from their work with “visual meetings” (good book btw),  but I was unaware of the fact that in the 1980’s David Sibbet and Allan Drexeller (founders of Grove) also developed a great model for creating and building teams.

Here’s a snippet from their web site…

Teams are more like athletes and artists than buildings, and are in a journey that fluctuates between freedom of aspirations and real-world constraints—seeking a resolution of the two in action. They pass through different stages of engagement and often go back and forth between these stages as the team coalesces. Drexler and Sibbet decided to visualize the Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model® as a bouncing ball. It starts with people “up in the air” imagining the purpose and bounces off the “ground” of current realities, regaining freedom of movement through mastery of the constraints.  Read more from their blog site here>

Their 7 stage model also works for new people joining a team. Noting that at any point you can revert back to the previous stage.

Are you working on the right stuff ?

Whether you are starting a new business or you are eager to accelerate success in your current business this is the programme for you.

Activate – Jump Start begins with an intensive “live in” weekend, 10 back to back business workshops. Topics covered include: Pitching, capital raising, business planning, creating high performance teams, governance for SME’s, maximising value from advisors. Our aim is to help you avoid common mistakes, save money and accelerate the growth of your business. You will leave the weekend with a draft business plan for your business.

One month later you will have a dedicated facilitated strategy session for your business, 3 follow up mentoring sessions plus much more all included in the price for the weekend.

Aimed at the start-up and SME market with less than $5M revenue this high impact programme is pegged at an affordable price point.

Typical GMC client feedback we get is…

“It’s a harsh reality check that’s brutal, but uplifting and utterly necessary. Mark runs you through it with passion and insight. Highly recommended.”
Ollie Langridge – Netfilms Ltd

“This will make me get out of my comfort zone and put my “dream” into action” CEO Traverse Developments

The pragmatic delivery style of Mark has gained rave reviews and we can promise you the only case study we will work on is your business.

The activate programme is an extension of the original Activate launched by Grow Wellington for the Wellington Regions start-up community. GMC have partnered with Grow Wellington to refresh the Activate programme and combine it with GMC’s pragmatic and fast paced learning style. With Grow Wellingtons assistance we are launching this new revised programme for Wellington on September 2-4 at Tatum Park.

For Auckland businesses we have scheduled the 2011 session for November 25. At this stage it is envisaged that this programme will have 3 intakes per year, limited to a maximum of 15 companies to maximise learning.

Growth Management Consulting (GMC) and the Jump Start Weekend are registered with NZTE as an approved workshop that business capability vouchers can be redeemed for. This can provide up to a 50% discount on course fees.

For more information available at http://www.growthmanagement.co.nz/activate.html including full programme and registration.

Register now and get a free copy of Rob Adams “if you build it they will come” (read book review here)

Or  call Mark Robotham direct on 021 61 8850