42. Nonverbal Communication: Look Them in the Eye

Major newspapers, along with countless other print publications, have focused on what is rapidly becoming their chief competition (and perhaps successor): electronic communication, especially electronic social networking. Text messages, emails, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, although lacking the organizational breadth and professional depth of newspapers, have clearly encroached on print territory.

One of the major side effects of this cultural change is in the area of interpersonal communication, particularly among young people. A Wall Street Journal article, “Why Gen-Y Johnny Can’t Read Nonverbal Cues,” focused on these dynamics. The article described “a culture where young people—outfitted with iPhone and laptop and devoting hours every evening from age 10 onward to messaging of one kind and another—have resulted in a ‘text-dependent world’ in which nearly all of their communication tools involve the exchange of written words alone.”^F42.1

This might be all well and good among socializing Gen-Yers, but it won’t fly in business. The single most important factor in making business decisions is how people communicate face-to-face. Every business exchange has two sides: the solicitor, a person in search of an objective—a sale, an investment, a partnership, or a project approval—and the solicited, a person who can approve or reject the solicitor’s objective. From the most basic business exchange (a job interview) to the most challenging (an investment), the ultimate decision is always based on how well the solicitor communicates his or her message to the solicited—in person.

The most telling example of this dynamic is in the investment arena, and it occurs at the interface between interpersonal and Internet communications. When a company decides to sell shares to the public for the first time, it files a formal Initial Public Offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. An important adjunct to the offering is a road show: a presentation that the company’s senior management delivers in more than a dozen cities, presenting 6–8 times a day for a total of 70–90 iterations, all within two intense weeks.

Since 2005, all IPO road shows are now recorded and posted on a web site called retailroadshow.com. Anyone with a browser can view any company’s archived presentation displayed in a split screen. One side shows a video of the senior managers presenting, and the other side shows their slide show, clicking along with the narrative. Despite this universal accessibility, offering companies still send their senior management out on the road for those two intense weeks to deliver those 70–90 iterations, just as they did before retailroadshow.com came into being.

The reason for this grueling tour is that no investor will make a decision to buy millions of dollars of stock (as are most such IPO transactions) based on a canned presentation alone. Investors want to meet the senior executives in person, press the flesh, look them in the eye, and interact with them directly.

I was privileged to coach the IPO road show of a Massachusetts technology company called A123Systems. Before the tour, the investment bankers expected to price the offering somewhere between $8 and $9.50 a share; after the road show, they priced the shares at $13.50, for a total deal value of $380 million. At the end of the first day of trading, shares were at $20.29.

Dave Vieau, the A123 Systems Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Rubino, the company’s Chief Finance Officer, did their full two weeks on the road, meeting the investors in person, pressing the flesh, looking them in the eye, and interacting with them directly.

Person-to-person counts big-time in the Big Time ... and every time you present.