By now, the pitch team has a clear Communication Objective and has a clear Meeting Goal that will move them further along the sales process, closer to winning. A Story Plan has been written that identifies topics and a logical structure as well as the key messages the pitch team want the customer to hear and remember. Content has been refined in the light of the audience who will be at the presentation, and the words and style have been carefully considered and refined to ensure that the presentation evokes the appropriate sentiment and asserts why the supplier offers the best solution to the customer.
Delivering the presentation is step six and the finale of becoming a Master of Persuasion (Figure 8.1). It is the culmination of all the thinking, preparation, and refinement that enables the supplier to be an effective and persuasive communicator.
It is now time for the team to pitch the story that has been carefully crafted to the customer. Being good on one’s feet and a confident and capable speaker are goods skill to learn. To be effective in front of a client requires the presenter to think about the way they project themselves, how they bring the story to life using their voice, and how they perform and physically engage the audience.
However, presenting is not the same as acting. The speaker doesn’t need to play a part, as though they are in a play or a film. In many respects what counts more, from the customer’s perspective, is for a supplier’s pitch team to be authentic. After all, the big difference between performance and reality is what happens after it has finished.
The audience in a theater watching a film will go home. They can acknowledge the quality of performance and the spectacle, but that is it. In business, the customer works with the supplier’s team, and often in a close relationship. Therefore, approaching presenting as a performance completely misses the point.
Figure 8.1 The process of persuasion
Many customers want the team they will work with to be involved in the pitch. They want to ask the people who will do the work to answer questions and explain how they will solve problems and deliver service and support.
This is especially true of the supplier’s team involved in technical matters, where a key element of what the customer is buying is expertise. Being a good communicator is always going to be important, but having trust and faith in the supplier’s team in terms of their competence and ability to provide reliable and useful advice far outweighs any presentation polish.
How to Behave (Physically) in Front of an Audience
Some of the points in this section apply to presenting online using video conferencing, and there is a section specially addressing the challenges this poses.
The way a speaker behaves in front of an audience is crucial. They are, after all, in the spotlight, and therefore, everything they do will be observed. It is also worth remembering that so is everyone else in the pitch team. Therefore, everybody has a responsibility for thinking about the way they act, and to be aware how their behavior can shape the customer’s perception and influence the dynamic of the presentation, both positively and negatively.
What It Means to Own the Floor
The presenter is in the spotlight, and they own the floor. What this means is that the audience becomes subordinate. They have handed control of the meeting to the presenter who not only owns the content but also controls the physical space. It is for the presenter to choose how they engage the audience, communicate the story, and drive key messages home.
How the presenter uses the physical space depends on how the meeting is set up. Remember, pitching is quite different to public speaking, where someone is speaking to an audience in an auditorium. In a meeting room, there is obviously a lot less space and the focus will be on either documents or handouts brought to the meeting, or a presentation via a screen on the wall. However, there is often some space to move.
Standing up gives the speaker a big advantage, even in a relatively small room. Clearly, if everyone else is seated, they dominate the room. This means they can be seen and heard by everyone, and just as importantly, they can see the faces of every customer.
Making sure everyone is engaged with and listening to a presentation is much easier to do standing up. All the speaker has to do is look directly at someone in the audience, and inevitably they will grab the person’s attention. As much as it is a way of getting attention, it is also a way of engaging everyone, because the speaker can ensure they talk to every customer in turn, which is a much more inclusive behavior.
One of the key messages I always try to get across when running presentation skills training is that being a presenter is not the same as being an actor. In a way, it is hard to blame anyone for jumping to this conclusion given the number of training courses that have advocated a presentation method. Suggestions that include standing with feet apart, hands by one’s side, and similar ideas amuse me for two reasons. One is that they seem so artificial. The idea that there is a way of presenting that is set in stone seems so counterintuitive. Just look at the TED talk and see how different they are. The other point is where I watch people try to apply these rules, to the point where the presentation ceases to be about communicating at all. Far from representing business, I had been transported back to university and was looking at a class about method acting! People should present in their own skin. This doesn’t mean they can’t learn how to speak in public or at a meeting with a customer. What is important is that they behave authentically, and don’t think they have to pretend to be something they’re not. Apart from the obvious difficulty in getting people to learn rigid presentation rules, there is an important business reason for not doing so. Business presentations are often, and accurately, described as chemistry meetings. The idea is that they are a test of whether the customer and the supplier get on and will be able to work together effectively. Given that business relationships sometimes mean people spend more time with their customers or suppliers than they do with their partners, it is important both parties get on. Therefore, from a pitch perspective, it is really important the supplier’s pitch team behave the way they normally do. The customer is buying products, services, and solutions from a supplier who employs people, and therefore, there is no value turning up to a pitch “in character,” instead of yourself. The mantra I espouse is to always present in your own skin.
Movement
There is nothing wrong with presenting standing still, but there are sometimes benefits from movement. For example, moving toward the screen allows the presenter to emphasize a key point, or to explain a diagram, or to underline a key message.
The act of moving itself will lead to short pauses in a presentation, which is good because it gives everyone a moment to think. It also creates energy because the speaker appears more expressive.
Hand Gestures
Hands are expressive too. They communicate and reinforce what is being said. Using hand gestures is a perfectly normal thing to do and can help a speaker underline a key message. For example, counting out a number of features of a product creates emphasis and creates time for the audience to take in the benefit.
Other gestures include using a sweeping hand to represent the inclusion of the wider audience or the team in what is being discussed. Opening hands toward an audience meaning “you” and closing the fingers back onto the palms meaning “us” to emphasize or underline working together.
The point of listing these nonverbal communicators is not to suggest that there is a list of good gestures or hand-movements a speaker needs to learn. It is instead to point out the obvious thing that when people talk to each other, they naturally use hand gestures to express themselves, and that the presenter should feel they can use them too if it helps them to engage the audience and to communicate and underline what they are saying. It also makes a speaker appear more natural and more authentic.
Props
The obvious prop that will most likely be used, and one that has already been mentioned, is the presentation that runs on a projector or a screen. Using a screen is a perfectly acceptable way to present; however, it can become overbearing. The “death by PowerPoint” experience is something everyone will know, quite possibly from both sides of the meeting table! Just because a presentation is long, doesn’t mean it has to be insufferable. However, if everything is being presented from a screen, then inevitably it can become monotonous, over time. This is where props come in.
A prop is literally anything that becomes the focus of discussion away from the screen, including a demonstration product or sample, or a document, flowchart, or diagram. The point of a prop, in the context of communication, is to disrupt the meeting by taking everyone’s attention off the screen and bring it back to the presenter and the pitch team.
A prop allows interaction with the customer in a direct way that wouldn’t happen when the audience is focused on a screen. For example, a pitch team might present a flow chart of one of the processes they run to deliver specific services to the customer. Printing it out makes it visual. Putting it onto the table and taking the customer through it step-by-step using the diagram makes it easier to understand and is likely to prompt questions and more discussion.
The prop, because it is physical, is also something that can be left behind at the end of a meeting—a tangible reminder of what was talked about.
How to Engage an Audience Around the Meeting Table
Standing up and moving about is probably the best way to engage an audience. However, that isn’t always practical, and after all, it is the customer who decides the format of the meeting.
If a meeting is setup with everyone sitting around a table, that doesn’t mean the presentation team cannot properly engage with the customer. However, there are few specific challenges they may need to overcome.
If there are several people representing the supplier siting side by side, then the first obvious problem is that those sitting on either end of the line cannot see each other. Therefore, they cannot interact in the way they would have done, if the speaker had been standing up.
It is possible to avoid the presentation team having to crane necks to see each other, if the line is slightly curved. For example, if the pitch team in the middle move their chairs back a little bit. Team members at each end will be able to see each other, as well as those in the middle of the line.
In terms of engagement, just as with the stand-up presenter, it is important the speaker is working the room and engaging directly with each member of the audience. Having sat on the customer’s side, it is extremely off-putting if a presenter only speaks to one member of the audience. In any normal setting, this would never happen because it would be considered rude.
One of the manifestations of being nervous is for a speaker to develop presentation tics. Away from presentations, tics are real and serious things. They are unwanted, involuntary, and repetitive movements of parts of the body (motor tics) or involuntary sounds (vocal tics). Presentation tics are temporary and are driven by fear and stress. They manifest themselves in a number of ways including swaying from side to side, dancing feet (stepping weight from one foot to the other repeatedly), tapping fingers, jingling change, or something else in the pocket, repeatedly clearing the throat, or adding other emphatic interjections such as “erm,” “umm,” or “err” at the beginning of every sentence.
Such behaviors are often unnoticed by the person. They are, however, distracting to the audience. The way to deal with these distractions is through practice and rehearsal.
Engagement (or Lack of)
One of the curious things about presentation teams is how often they are active participants only when it’s their turn to be in the spotlight, that is, when they are speaking and not when other team members are speaking. It’s almost as though they spark into life from standby mode to speak, only to switch off afterward.
Every team member will have listened to one of their team speak before, and if they have engaged in becoming a Master of Persuasion should know the Story Plan inside out. However, that is no excuse to switch off. The job of all nonspeakers is to be active listeners in front of the customer. After all, why should a customer be interested in what a supplier is talking about if everyone else in their pitch team isn’t paying attention?
What is worse is if the rest of the team actively distract the audience from what the speaker is saying, even if they do so accidentally. Distraction activities are many and various, but include popping the end of a pen, or twirling it round in the fingers, looking out of the window or up at the ceiling, doodling on a piece of paper, or whispering to other colleagues. All these activities distract attention from the speaker.
The job of the nonspeaking team is to be fully engaged with what is being said, to be supportive of the speaker so that the impression the wider pitch team convey collectively, is that what their colleague is talking about is important and relevant to the customer; and worth listening to. Distractions inevitably create the impression that what is being said doesn’t matter.
How to Control and Project the Voice
The voice is a powerful instrument. Although business presentations are dry by comparison to the performance of an actor in a play or film, that shouldn’t mean the capabilities of the voice should be ignored when communicating with a customer.
When we listen to someone who speaks well, we hear a richness in their voice that demands our attention, stimulates us to think, and stirs our emotions on many different levels.
Speaking is something everyone takes for granted, and in a normal setting, most people would not think carefully about whether they should modify how they speak; and that is because modifying the voice is something everyone does naturally without thinking.
Pitching is not a normal situation nor done in a normal setting. However, how someone projects their voice will have an impact on whether a presentation is successful and whether it is convincing and persuasive to a customer.
A number of aspects of speaking can make a difference to how a presenter sounds, including rhythm, intonation, and inflection.
Rhythm in Speech
From a high-level perspective, rhythm is the sense of movement in terms of the timing, stress, and number of syllables in speech. It has an impact on whether the listener understands what someone is saying.
English is a rhythmic language, with a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The rhythm of English is different to other languages, which is why sometimes it can be harder to understand a non-native speaker, speak English, because their natural speech rhythm is different.
The rhythm of speech is affected by the speed at which someone is speaking. When it comes to presenting, a common problem is that people get nervous and talk too quickly.
From a speech perspective, the consequence of speaking too quickly is that vowels and consonants, that should be distinct, begin to sound like each other (assimilation), and sounds or syllables can be omitted completely, which results in words being shortened (e.g., He is to he’s) (elision). The point about these very common effects on language is that they do not make it easier for an audience. The reverse is true, because the speaker will inevitably be talking much faster, and the audience will have to try harder to listen to and process all this information much faster too.
The remedy is to slow down. Not to speak slowly, but to be measured in terms of the pace of speaking. Some suggest speakers practice using a metronome to establish a rhythm that gives them the time they need to speak clearly. The audience needs to be able to follow what someone is saying easily. If they can’t hear it, they can’t understand it and therefore cannot be persuaded by it either.
Intonation
Intonation is the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice and is associated with the emotions being expressed by a speaker. It is often described as the music of the voice.
In the context of pitching for business, raising and lowering the pitch of a voice enables a speaker to communicate their excitement, interest, and enthusiasm for what they are talking about. Being positive and enthusiastic, without going over the top, is important. If the supplier cannot display enthusiasm and commitment for their own proposal, then who can?
The effect on the listener is really positive, because it makes the speaker much more interesting to listen to, than say a presentation delivered with a monotone voice. It is through expressing this energy and commitment that the speaker becomes significantly more persuasive.
Intonation is a feature of everyday speaking. It isn’t something that only happens in speeches or at presentations. Therefore, it is something everyone uses every day, and with a bit of conscious thought and practice can enhance the impact of a presenter very significantly.
Inflection is the way a speaker emphasizes a particular part of a word to add weight and meaning to it. In this way, a speaker can underline something they want the audience to recognize is important.
For example, imagine saying the following sentence: “The reason we have proposed product X is because it is the best solution.” Clearly, it can be read exactly as it is written, with every word being given the same stress.
However, it also possible to add emphasis in two ways that change how the same sentence will be heard and understood by the audience.
(a) The reason we have proposed product X is because it is the best solution.
(b) The reason we have proposed product X is because it is the best solution.
In example (a), the words “reason” and “best” are stressed. This is intended to sound sincere and underline the message that the solution is the “best” in the mind of the customer.
In example (b), the words “proposed” and “is” are stressed. This is a more assertive way of speaking, which underlines a confidence in what has been proposed.
Inflection is a really useful thing to learn, which can really change the impact on the customer. Clearly, time allowing, what should be stressed could be a key point of discussion in a final rehearsal.
Dramatic Pause
A pause is a deliberate short gap between sentences. The pause has a number of purposes and is a versatile tool in terms of public speaking and presenting. Apart from providing an opportunity to take a breath, it breaks a presentation up. It provides a moment of time for the audience to absorb and think about what they have been told, and it is also a moment for the presenter to reset themselves ready to move on to the next point.
Pauses are also useful in indicating a change in direction of the presentation. For example, if a presentation is in sections or has a number of discreet topics, then it is natural to pause for a few seconds when the speaker has finished one section or point before moving onto the next. This helps the audience to follow the story.
Both of these examples reflect what happens in normal speech, and it is sometimes worthwhile for a presenter to remember to include pauses in the way they deliver a presentation, as it makes it so much easier for the listener to follow what is being said. Thinking about pausing is also useful in helping to identify when sentences are too long.
The idea of a dramatic pause is where a pause is used not only to break sentences or parts of a presentation up but to demand the audience’s attention. The construct is a simple one. The speaker might ask a rhetorical question or make an assertion, or claim, and pause for several seconds before answering their own question or explaining the assertion.
For example, imagine the speaker says, “I am now going to explain the reasons our solution will transform your business” <Dramatic Pause> “First, . . .”
The dramatic pause demands the full undivided attention of the audience. It signals to them that something important or significant is going to be said. It is, therefore, a very useful way of referencing benefits and key messages, and works really well provided it is not overused.
Rule of Three
This rule has its origins in Roman times and is a speech mechanism that has been used for years by many speakers, including famous politicians and broadcasters.
The idea is a simple one. In constructing a speech, there should be three points in support of an assertion, proposition, or message, as this is deemed the most effective way of communicating with an audience.
Three is the magic number because people remember three connected points, whereas they won’t remember a much longer list. Having three points that support an assertion or argument lends it a sense of power and credibility, that is, therefore sometimes more convincing and persuasive. In terms of listening, having three points simply sounds more pleasant.
An entire presentation cannot always be written using the Rule of Three. However, it is certainly very applicable when summarizing the benefits or key features of a proposal, to wrap up a specific section or in the concluding remarks at the end.
Signposting
Signposting is a technique to make sure the audience clearly understand what they have been told, and a way of providing them with context about what is going to be spoken about next.
For example, imagine a presentation has several sections covering a number of different topics. Before beginning a section, the speaker sets out in simple terms what they will be talking about. Then, at the end, they recap what they have just been speaking about, before repeating the exercise for the next section.
The value of this approach is two-fold. Firstly, it provides the speaker with an opportunity to communicate key messages. For example, the speaker could introduce a section by saying they intend to cover the most important features of the proposed solution and explain how they will add value to the customer’s business. Straightaway, the audience knows the context of the next section and is also primed to listen to the features. Then, at the end of the section, signposting provides the speaker with the opportunity to recap, to summarize what those key benefits are before moving on. This, in communication terms, provides two bites of the cherry to persuade the customer.
The second benefit is to facilitate a presentation that has multiple speakers, because signposting allows for a coherent handover from one speaker to the next. Speaker 1 can introduce Speaker 2 and summarize the topic they will be covering. Bearing in mind that the audience won’t know the Story Plan, it provides structure and context for the audience, and that means they already have the right mindset to be active listeners the moment the next person begins speaking.
Personal Insight
There were few occasions when at the start of a presentation skills workshop, one of the participants wouldn’t openly admit that they were scared of presenting or terrible at doing it, or both! It was almost like people would get their excuses in first, especially when they saw the video camera had been set up. If presenting wasn’t something they naturally enjoyed, then being filmed made it ten times worse. The purpose of teaching presentations skills is not to humiliate or scare anyone. In my view, the more someone comes to understand how presenting works (as a discipline) the easier it gets. It’s actually in some ways more important to debunk what many people think presenting is all about. The purpose of using a camera to record someone presenting was for two reasons. The first was it brought a heightened degree of pressure to the session, which created a setting that was as near as possible to the real deal of presenting to a customer. From a practical perspective, filming the presentation allowed me to playback what the presenter did, because it would be impossible to remember what someone said verbatim. What was almost always true was that a person’s opinion of themselves, of their ability to present, was always much worse than it actually was. People would say they felt nervous and were shaking, and couldn’t think clearly, and therefore muddled up what they were saying, and they were unable to speak clearly, and so on. Comparing the personal criticism to the film almost always showed how very little came across. From the outside, they looked and sounded fine. What was actually going wrong was that they couldn’t remember what they were supposed to be saying. That was the stumbling block, more than their ability to present. The stress of the moment was the cause of their lack of confidence, and this is relatively easy to solve with practice.
Presentation Practicalities
Why Process Is a Safety Net for Nervous Speakers
For less confident speakers, this process provides an important and useful safety net. Many people think of presenting or public speaking as an exercise rooted in thinking on one’s feet, in having the capability to make things up on the spur of the movement with ease.
For nervous speakers, this image presents a nightmare scenario because the act of delivering a speech is nerve wracking and challenging enough. Nerves manifest themselves in a number of ways, a dry mouth, palpitations, blanking out, or losing the thread of what was being said, or conversely, speakers find themselves infused with a sudden burst of adrenaline and burst into life and speak at a thousand miles an hour!
This process advocates carefully planning pitches rather than jumping into delivering them off the cuff. Great communication is the result of a Communication Objective, a Meeting Goal, a clear Story Plan, carefully selected Content, and thought being put into Style and Language. All this happens before presenting to the customer begins.
What makes the process a safety net for those who find delivering presentations challenging is that it is a comprehensive and detailed blueprint of what needs to be presented. It provides the intellectual reasoning as to why communicating this story is the right thing to do. Slides, or other meeting props, are created from this thinking. Everyone involved in the presentation will be familiar with the same blueprint, and therefore, because there is a Story Plan, presenting (individually and as a team) is something that can be rehearsed and practiced. The whole process, therefore, makes presenting easier (if not easy!).
Referring to Notes or a Script When Presenting
Some people have a strong opinion that presentations ought to be presented note and script-free. The view is that the act of referencing notes undermines the impact of a presentation and the presence of the speaker. It is deemed to signal that the speaker lacks confidence either in themselves or in the content they are presenting.
Referencing a script is certainly problematic. It is true that if a speaker is reading a statement out loud from a script, then the attitude and atmosphere at a presentation can be adversely affected, and what makes this really apparent is the sentiment of what is being said.
Imagine a meeting where the speaker is reading from a script when describing how the supplier is committed to providing outstanding service to the customer. The script, because it is prepared in advance, undermines the statement of commitment; after all, why would the presenter not be able to express this feeling themselves?
The other obvious problem using a script is when the speaker loses their place, and therefore has to stop speaking to locate where they are. This clearly makes things difficult, and really ought to be avoided.
Those who feel the need to read from a script are likely to be under-prepared and under rehearsed in terms of giving presentations. Having a script is an obvious mental crutch, as the person doesn’t have to remember the content they are speaking about. However, it is highly likely that if the person is taken out of the meeting or presentation setting, they will be more than capable of explaining the content. It is the situation that is the problem, not the ability of the speaker.
Presenting is something that everyone can get better at, even nervous speakers. The way to get better is to practice speaking out loud and to rehearse presenting the content they intend to present live in a presentation. This is the only way to become a more confident and better speaker.
Speaker notes (or cue-cards) are quite different from a script, and there is no reason why a speaker shouldn’t have a set of bullet points to remind them what they should be talking about. Not everyone needs them, but it is clearly much better to have them than to miss key points.
How Detailed Should Slides Be?
There is always a lot of debate about whether there is a standard in terms of the amount of content a slide should contain. The point made earlier is that slides are an opportunity to communicate directly with an audience. Therefore, the information they present and the messages they communicate are important. The audience will be focused on a presenter, but they also will read the slides at the same time.
Slides that are essentially speaker notes or cue-cards are pointless, in that they add nothing to the meeting other than to signal the list of topics that will be spoken about. It, therefore, makes sense to have slides that have a communication purpose and that explain something of value to the customer or reinforce key messages.
This does not exclude slides that carry a lot of detail, whether in the form of a diagram or text. However, briefly referencing a slide that contains a lot detail before moving rapidly on to the next does not aid communication. Therefore, if the presentation doesn’t allow time to cover a slide properly, then it is good practice to omit the slide rather than to present it and immediately gloss over it. If the detail is worth going into, then the rest of the presentation should be edited to fit the available time.
How many people would pick up a tennis racket for the first time, play a game, and expect to be really good? Maybe some people do this, but they are rare. As it is with most things, skills have to be learned properly and perfected through practice, and the skill of presenting is no different.
Imagine going to a theater performance. Everyone would recognize that there are two things that need to be done well. The first being the focus on an actor, who needs to perform well individually. The second being a focus on the cast as a whole, who all need to perform well together. When both parts work well, the performance works well. When an individual or the collective doesn’t perform well, then the impact and enjoyment overall is diminished.
Presenting, in many ways, is similar to a stage performance. Individuals need to perform well, but so also does the pitch team, which is why businesses should focus on the “performance” as well as the presentation content, and recognize everyone plays their part, whenever they are speaking but also when they are not; and to do it well requires practice and rehearsal.
Practice Makes Perfect
Practice makes perfect is so true of presenting. The more someone presents, the better they get at doing it. However, it probably isn’t wise to practice on customers. In fact, given the amount of time and effort that is invested in winning business, it seems extraordinarily negligent not to learn and practice presentation skills, and instead leave performance to the gods.
If the pitch to a customer is the first time a presenter speaks something out loud, then, by definition, they have not rehearsed or practiced at all. Just as in the example of tennis, applied to presenting, who would expect this approach to deliver the best and most persuasive result?
It is, therefore, important for individuals to practice out loud. They need to rehearse how they will talk through the topics they are to cover, so they become familiar with speaking about them. They also need to hear how they sound, to assess whether what they are saying makes sense and be certain they are getting across the key points they want to communicate to the customer.
Because every smartphone has a camera, it is possible for virtually everyone to record themselves practicing, so a speaker can play their presentation back, and keep practicing it until they are confident, they have got it right.
Team Rehearsal
As with the example of performing in a theater, being a good presenter individually is one aspect of a presentation. The pitch team as a whole also needs to work well together, and that comes from practice.
The more often the team pitch to customers together, the better they get, as a team. Of course, from a customer’s perspective, the focus at a presentation will always be on the speaker. However, that does not mean the other pitch team members are irrelevant. The way they listen and behave will have a big impact on the audience too. The more they appear to be a team, demonstrating a confidence and familiarity of working together, the stronger the impression they will make on the customer.
Before the pitch takes place live, rehearsing as a team is a great way to polish and perfect the presentation. The pitch team should be supportive of each other, rather than appearing to be a bear pit. Every member of the team should feel able to provide constructive feedback to improve the impact of what is being said, to point out the parts that don’t flow well, and to provide positive encouragement to less confident members of the team.
Rehearsal is also important because it confirms timings and helps a team to practice how one speaker will hand over to another, if different sections are being presented by different speakers. Clearly, if the speaker of a section of the presentation becomes familiar with what the preceding speaker is saying, then they will be ready to take up the role as presenter seamlessly when their times comes.
Personal Insight
Rehearsal is defined as a trial for a future public performance. However, it is quite common for pitch teams not to take the rehearsal seriously. It is as though “performing” in front of colleagues is harder and more embarrassing than presenting to a customer. One of the common mistakes in approaching rehearsal is to treat it as though it is a read through, each person describing what they intend to cover, instead of delivering it as though for real. As a consultant to pitch teams in all sort of industries, I try to encourage suppliers not to do this, as a read through is a bit of waste of time for a number of reasons. The content isn’t close to what will actually be said, and it doesn’t reveal is how long it will take for each speaker to deliver their bit. As I am not involved in the final presentation to the customer, I always ask for feedback. How did it go? One of the common responses is that the presentation didn’t go exactly to plan because the amount of time allocated to each speaker turned out to be unrealistic. In other words, the pitch team ran out of time, and therefore had to rush or cut the last few sections of the presentation. Estimating timings isn’t easy to do from what is written on a slide, because how long it takes depends on how the person presents it, on what they say, and how they embellish the points they want to make. The very act of presenting can provoke verbosity and people lose track of time, in the thick of it. Every minute a presenter speaks longer than was intended equals a minute that will have to be deducted from someone else’s slot. This quite common experience really underlines why rehearsing properly is so beneficial and should be a regular activity for all pitch teams.
The Dry Run
The step above a normal rehearsal is often termed a dry run, where the supplier attempts to create as closely as possible the conditions that mimic the real-world experience the pitch team will face in front of the customer.
This is a good idea, because creating a degree of tension and pressure is good practice for the real event, and if the audience, of handpicked colleagues, plays their part properly, is a much better test of not only their performance of the pitch team but also whether the content and structure works as well as it was hoped it would.
As well as observing the presentation as though “live,” the audience can also prepare questions to test the pitch team on topics or points that are deemed the hardest to answer, in anticipation these may well be ones that come up. Finally, it is also a great way to check whether the timings allocated to each section are correct, and therefore, whether the Story Plan needs to be modified or the speaker needs to change their approach and cut out some things.
Filming the rehearsal or the dry run is really instructive, because it clearly shows the pitch team exactly how they sound and look, and it also provides the opportunity to assess content in detail. It is also extremely useful to see how the pitch team interact with each other, and to test whether they act as a team, which is what they should do. Being an outsider can be a big help in a rehearsal, because it is easier to see what’s wrong and provide detailed constructive criticism. Although a consultant has been hired by someone at the supplier, they don’t have the same relationships with senior management, which sometimes allows me to say things everyone is thinking but others, who are more junior, simply don’t think they can say. The behavior of the pitch team as a whole, and in particular the senior manager, was a real problem with one client I worked with. Fortunately, I had filmed the dry run and had time to play back a 20-minute presentation. The content on the whole was good, but the interaction was extremely poor as nearly everyone spent the time they weren’t speaking, doing a great job of distracting the audience. This included twirling a pen, looking out of the window, and doodling on a pad, and the person who was probably the worst culprit was the senior manager of the team, who had a habit of tapping their pen on the table. The film was irrefutable, and therefore something that was easy to point out, and everyone could see exactly how dysfunctional it made them appear as a team. It also allowed me to challenge their collective attitude. One of the key messages they wanted to communicate was the level and quality of the service the customer would receive. They talked about how the customer service team would work together to address problems quickly. My challenge to them was whether they thought that message was helped or hindered by the lack of respect they showed team members when they were speaking? Did they think they acted as a team? Did they think the customer would look at them and feel reassured they would receive the kind of service they wanted from this group of people? The obvious answer was no. It is all well and good for the supplier to have principles and values that shape the way they work, that they were proud of, but it is equally as important these principles are evident to the customer whenever they interact with the supplier. Therefore, the behavior of the supplier has to live up to the commitments they have made, or these commitments will appear hollow.
What’s Different About Presenting Online
The global pandemic clearly had a significant impact on business throughout the world, resulting in people working from home, and business being conducted online. The number of face-to-face meetings has significantly decreased, even after governments relaxed restrictions with regard to personal movement. Many companies have chosen to keep their staff working from home, and essential travel has been redefined.
Meetings have moved online, and the major software companies, and some new players, offer platforms to host meetings of all sizes, including sales pitches and presentations.
However, meeting a customer online is quite different to meeting them face-to-face because it requires, if not a completely different approach, a new way of talking and presenting, additional planning, and careful management.
While every point already covered in this chapter applies to presentations and customer meetings online as it does to pitches and presentations that are face-to-face, a number of specific considerations can help ensure online conference and video calls are successful.
Conference and Video Call Management
Online video conferencing technology works best person to person, or with a small group. When two people meet online it really isn’t different to them meeting in person. However, as soon as the meeting group expands, and especially when it involves customers as well as suppliers, then everything becomes significantly harder to manage.
The worst kind of call is one which turns into a free for all, where speakers interject and interrupt each other. If it were a piece of music, the worst conference call would be described as staccato, where each note (or voice in this case) is detached and separated from all the others.
One of the reasons it is difficult to manage conference calls, compared to face-to-face meetings, is, in part, because of the way the technology works. Video conferencing technology responds to the active voice and switches the face that appears in the main window to whomever is speaking automatically.
Therefore, as soon as anyone on the call starts talking or even when they make an audible and distinctive sound, the video conferencing software will automatically replace the person currently active and whose face is displayed in the main screen, with the person who has started speaking (or is the source of the noise). As soon as this happens, it is a natural reflex action for the current active speaker to stop talking.
This is why conference call golden rule number 1 is to always be on mute, until it’s your turn to speak. However, people forget, and those who have braved (or valiantly embraced) the new world of work that has become dominated by conference and video calls will have learned this!
Of course, disruption, when participants interject or interrupt someone who is speaking, is not always intentional. In fact, the cause is often due to the way we naturally converse. We talk all the time, and when we talk to others, meaning when we have a conversation, we follow a set of rules that we have learned from childhood that are the antithesis of conference and video call best practice.
The flow of a conversation, the back and forth, is really what makes conversations fun. Clarifying what someone means by asking a question, or commenting on something someone has said is perfectly normal. When people don’t follow the rules of conversation, things can actually become rather awkward. It starts to feel like you are talking in a vacuum, which is quite strange.
Interjecting with supportive remarks and phatic responses are another good example of standard conversational behavior. In a conversation that takes place across a table, or even at a customer presentation, when someone makes a good point it would be perfectly normal for someone to interject in a supportive or confirmatory way. They might say “Good Point” or “Yes” or other words that express their agreement or support.
Imagine what happens when these perfectly normal behaviors are transferred to a video conference call? Whoever is speaking is likely to stop in their tracks. The flow of what they were talking about will be lost, and there will then have to be a conversation to clarify the interrupter doesn’t want to speak before the original speaker carries on.
The lack of conversation, of the back and forth we are all used to, is challenging for everyone, because whomever is speaking has to be focused. They need to say what they need to say, without any of the normal conversational injections, and this requires a lot more concentration. It also requires them to be absolutely clear what they are talking about.
This is where the Story Plan comes into its own, especially where a call involves the customer. The Story Plan contains a list of topics and details that will be covered, set out in a logical and meaningful sequence. Therefore, it is a blueprint everyone can use to help them to manage the call.
Managing the Flow of a Presentation to a Customer
The smoothest presentations flow seamlessly. Even when a person finishes their part, and hands over to someone else, there is no stalling or significant pauses before the next person starts to speak.
This is best practice because once there is a delay between speakers, the listener may lose their train of thought. The energy is somehow lost, and the speaker will then have to work doubly hard to get everyone’s attention back.
The virtual team, of course, cannot see each other in the same way they would be able to in a physical meeting. They will, of course, see the faces of their colleagues. However, it is much harder for team members to communicate with each other, and that is what makes it harder to achieve a seamless flow throughout a presentation on a conference or video call.
Managing a presentation or a pitch seamlessly requires more than a Story Plan. The Story Plan explains topics that will be covered in reasonable detail, but not enough detail so everyone knows precisely when a section will end, and it’s their turn to speak.
Therefore, the team has two choices. They either determine exactly how they will finish their part, and let the next speaker know so they are listening out for their cue to come in, or the current speaker uses the Signposting technique, summarizes what they have been talking about, and introduces the next speaker who will, therefore, be ready to pick things up immediately.
Managing Body Language on a Conference Call
Active listening, where you make clear to the speaker and everyone else on the video call how interested you are in what is being said, is the modus operandi for every member of a pitch team. For obvious reasons, anything but complete concentration on what is being said will be a distraction.
Where there are a number of people on a call, it is common to view in gallery-mode, so everyone can be seen. Because of the position of the camera, the face will be in close up inside a frame. Every facial expression and every movement will be seen immediately by everyone.
However, being completely focused every second is what is required from every pitch team member, and there is no doubt this is hard work especially if the participant has to spend most of the call waiting for their turn to speak or perhaps are only attending to answer the odd question at the end.
Inevitably, people become distracted and forget they are on view. They move about, talk to other people who have come into the room where they are taking the call, leave their desk to get a drink, take calls on their mobile phones, write e-mails, and so on.
Of course, all these activities would never happen face-to-face. No one would dream of doing anything like it if they were sitting in the same room as the customer. Imagine being in the middle of a pitch, and suddenly one of the team pulls out a phone and takes a call, or gets up and walks out?
Hard though it is, there are a couple of things the supplier can do to focus the pitch team on what is required. The first step is to make sure the pitch team have a check list of things to do to prepare for an important customer presentation or pitch. This should include having a clear and tidy space wherever they are taking the video conference call. Everything the participant needs should be ready, including pens, paper, drinks, and any files or paperwork they need to refer to. It might even be better to have some documents printed out, so the participant doesn’t need to go searching through e-mails or folders to find those documents that are most likely to need to reference. Home deliveries should be planned so they don’t interrupt the call, and finally, but not least, everyone in the pitch team should make sure they don’t need a comfort break in the middle of the call!
All of this is really standard preparation and would be automatic if the supplier was going to the customer’s offices to meet them. Being remote somehow brings with it a lot of lax behavior, which is entirely avoidable, with a little thought. However, even if all of this preparation is followed to a T, it is hard to look interested on video conference calls for extended periods of time.
One option that can be considered if for each member of the team to upload their personal photo to the video conference software and add it to their profile. When video is enabled on a call, everyone will see them “live.” However, if a participant turns video off, the profile picture will be displayed instead.
Then, when the participant wants to contribute something or it is their turn to present, they activate video, and the profile picture will be replaced by the live shot of them instead. This approach, therefore, avoids the things people do wrong, however inadvertently. This approach does require everyone to remain attentive throughout, so they are ready to come in if asked, and it is also a good idea to inform the customer how the pitch team intend to manage the call, because it is possible the customer might think the supplier’s pitch team are acting strangely, if everyone switches their video off.
Managing Questions and Answers Online
Conversations break presenting online norms, where a speaker might expect to be able to talk without interruption. In a conversation, it is normal to stop someone in mid-sentence and ask them to clarify or confirm something.
However, from a supplier’s perspective who is pitching or presenting to a customer online, being interrupted is the last thing they would want to happen, because once the meeting has moved into a question-and-answer format, they may never get to finish their presentation, and they will have completely lost control of the agenda.
The fact people cannot be seen properly in a virtual room makes it extremely difficult to manage them, even if an attempt has been made to agree the rules for handling questions and answers with the customer beforehand, as even with agreement sometimes things go wrong. So, the supplier needs to have a Plan B.
The best way for the supplier to manage questions that disrupt their pitch or presentation is to have someone in the team to be the co-ordinator, like a maître d’hôtel, whose job is to handle any questions or interruptions from the customer.
Having a co-ordinator is a very effective way of handling things. To begin with, the rest of the supplier’s pitch team know they are to wait for the co-ordinator to decide how to respond to a question rather than jump straight in to answering it.
Secondly, the co-ordinator can manage the situation, to perhaps put answering questions off until the team has finished their presentation. Or, if that isn’t possible, they can filter questions. For example, if the customer were to ask a quite broad question, they can break the question down into a number of points, and then ask different members of the team to answer each part, in turn.
Of course, questions are asked not only by customers but also by suppliers. It, therefore, makes a lot of sense to plan questions before the meeting and agree how best to ask them. The same co-ordinator approach may be the best solution, or the team might have a preference for a different approach. The point is that it is much harder to wing a meeting online; in the way, it is possible when everyone is in the same room together. Therefore, the onus is on the supplier’s pitch team to agree on a plan in advance.
Chat
Video conference software often has a chat feature, which can be used by attendees to post comments to everyone on the conference or video call or send a private message to a specific individual.
In many ways, Chat provides the opportunity for the supplier’s pitch or presentation team to communicate in a way they wouldn’t be able to in a physical meeting space. However, it is best planned in advance, to ensure the presentation team know to actively use Chat and have it enabled (otherwise they may not see messages that are sent).
Chat can be useful for a number of things. For example, if the team see that the responses of the customer indicate things aren’t going well, the team or current presenter has the opportunity to change the approach or move on to the next topic. One member of the presentation team can be the timekeeper and manage Chat to keep everything running to the agreed schedule. It can also be used to proactively handle customer questions and in more general terms allows members of the team to post ideas and thoughts to everyone else.
If the video meeting software being used doesn’t allow this, then running chat software separately is an alternative.
Lip-Reading
One of the obvious differences between face-to-face meets and video conference calls is that the individual participant chooses how they will appear on screen at a conference call.
This choice is largely driven by technology and how the individual hosts the conference call. If the participant is using a built-in laptop camera, they are only able to control the angle of the screen and how far they sit away from it. If the camera is independent to the computer, there is a lot more flexibility.
Why does this matter? One of the things people frequently do when listening to other people speak is to watch their lips as well as listen to what they are saying. This isn’t only something done by people who are hard of hearing, but also by others for a number of reasons. There may be ambient sound making it harder for them to hear. English may not be their first language, and therefore, reading lips helps them to comprehend what is being said more easily.
Therefore, it is worthwhile for every participant to think about how they are appearing, and whether the position of the camera and where they sit in relation to it hinders or enables other participants to lip read.
Pronunciation and Clear Speaking
Listening to someone speak requires good concentration and bearing in mind the purpose of the meeting from the supplier’s perspective is to communicate and persuade a customer to buy from them, it is even more important that the presentation team does everything it can to make it as easy as possible for the listener.
The technology, however good it is, can sometimes distort the voice or adds noise. Therefore, speakers need to be much more aware of the need to speak clearly and slowly, and to pronounce words crisply, so they can be certain the audience will hear them.
Personal Appearance and Setting
No one would argue that personal appearance does not matter in business. In terms of clothes, clearly what constitutes appropriate wear depends on the situation, and may also be driven by the industry or business sector an individual works in, as there may be expectations to meet. How an individual looks is important, and so is the setting in which the call is made.
The important point is to remember that in terms of winning work, how someone appears will influence and shape the perception of a customer. Even though it is possible to be critical of someone who makes a superficial judgment about someone, based primarily on their appearance or their home (if that is where the call is made), it is also worth remembering that a new customer doesn’t have a knowledge of the supplier or a relationship with them. Therefore, how they appear is one point of reference in helping the customer make up their mind about who to choose to work with.
Personal appearance matters as much on a video conference call as it does at a physical meeting. It is a big mistake to think that just because the call is made from home, rather than an office meeting room, that it doesn’t matter how a person looks and it won’t influence the customer.
There are two important goals, from a supplier’s perspective, the first is to communicate a sense of professionalism and the second to avoid creating the wrong impression. Therefore, changes in working practices don’t mean the supplier should dress or behave casually.
This requirement also extends to the setting of the place the conference call is made. Ideally whatever the setup technically, the participant won’t need to wear headphones.
If the call is made from home, it is important to manage what is revealed in the room that will be visible to everyone else on the call. A view behind a participant that is cluttered and untidy probably won’t project the best image to a customer, and it obviously makes sense not to have anything on view that the individual wouldn’t want anyone to see.
One of the obvious points about video conferencing is that the quality of the picture and sound is really important. The better they are the better it is.
Three things that determine conference quality include broadband connection speed and bandwidth, the camera and microphone, and lighting.
Clearly, even a fast broadband connection may not always be reliable, and that creates its own problems in terms of managing a call when things go wrong. However, the blunt truth is that the broadband service itself has to be up to business standards, and it isn’t OK if the picture and sound quality are consistently poor.
The camera and microphone also need to be high quality. Laptops often have their own cameras and microphones built it, and some are not really great quality. The other point to remember is that if the camera is in the case of the laptop, there will be very little flexibility as to how the participant appears on screen. They will have to sit directly in front of the laptop in order to be seen and also to see any documents that might be shared or presented. Having a separate camera and microphone, therefore, may offer not only a better image and sound quality but also greater flexibility.
Lighting also needs to be considered. Firstly, it is important to be seen properly, and that can be made more difficult depending on the light fittings in the room. For example, if there is a bright light in the ceiling or bright sunshine through the window behind the caller, then it will make their face appear very dark by contrast and cast a halo-effect around their head. Therefore, the best light is that which illuminates the person, projected onto them as a whole from behind the camera. Some of the external cameras and microphones incorporate adjustable lights that illuminate the participant and compensate for poor lighting conditions.