Presentation & Public speaking

Sometimes a customer or a prospect gives us a gift, he donates some of his lifetime to listen to us. He decided to do so instead of going home to his family, instead of drinking coffee with colleagues, instead of just browsing the Internet and buying things he needs.

How do we work in such a situation? Is this a business as usual situation, slide deck d-84 of the just downloaded material or even worse, a go in unprepared situation? Honestly if we think so we should consider to simply cancel the meeting OR change our mindset.

If we appear in such a meeting, we have the chance to change the world a bit. We can change the view of a person, the way this person acts and the future by changing the decision he is going to do.

If we want to have an effect we cannot start with the slides, we have to be curious about the persons in the meeting, who are they, where are they coming from, what do they want to achieve, what motivates them every day. If we understand this, we can understand what of our package generates values to them.

Maybe we just know the market better, because we see more different companies, and we can deliver insight what challenges and obstacles they can expect driven by the market or on the journey to their specific targets. Often, we can deliver insight that they were not even aware that they need it, but when we link it properly to their goals this turns into value.

This is also true if we have the task to show technology or solutions. If we preselect what fits to the specific journey and where these pieces help to achieve these targets more efficient, faster or with less risk this can generate this link, too.

Even if we have a large audience where we not know anyone at all we can use this logic combined with good assumptions to make our public speech more related to the audience. There is an easy way to analyze, understand and adjust to maximize results.in a given environment.

Sales & Presales management 

Hopefully you have never experienced what most people have. You made an incredibly good job; you are proud of your achievements and you have gone further than usually related to your role. Your expectation? Someone coming over and thanks for what you did., maybe even combined with a reward. and reality? Most likely you hear nothing, no one will take notice or feel it's relevant to link the achievement with your engagement, in many companies it is even worse, you will then have to justify the hours you worked, why you haven't answered all the mails in parallel and so on. If appointed leaders sometimes find themselves in such situation, we understand that people in our responsibility probably sometimes feel the same.

This brings us to the fundament pjs of real leadership. Quite often the leader is just the person standing for the combined achievements of a team, mostly the number they made. But this is not leadership. The leader is in front of the people, he sees and recognizes efforts and he say thank you. A leader also understand that he cannot directly change the way he is treated in a company, but he can set code how people operate in his team or department and how he operates.

To grow a team, to grow a company substantially and over a longer period it is needs more than a few good decisions, it needs investment in the people, time, effort and money a leader spends to understand, develop and to put the right people to the right position. In sports this is a no brainer, this is what we naturally expect from the trainer, so why not in business? The logic is almost the same. You got defined resources, you can make changes in a given way and you are responsible for how you use the people to achieve the goals.

And here is the point where a natural separation appears between leaders who has been appointed and leaders who are leaders... and are appointed., natural leaders.

Natural leaders know that the generate the setup for success and this includes give directions in a clear way and train the people even if not appreciated. Again, like sports, if the coach cannot articulate what the team should do, and what every single individual should do the team will not play according to the plan. If a sportsman stops training, because it is so hard, it's not a real competition is whatever reason, his capabilities will start decreasing immediately, not really measurable in the beginning, but without any questions over the time.

Combined with a set of well-developed material and processes it is possible to understand, develop and leverage the capabilities and increase the business benefits of a given organization.