How to Wash a Chicken Page 4

  The meeting was set for 2 p.m.

  That morning an airplane crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. Then another plane crashed into the second tower. The country was under attack.

  I immediately called off the meeting, despite the fact that rescheduling would be difficult and likely require a new round of revisions to reflect the latest data.

  The thing is, you don’t want to proceed with a meeting when you know your key audience is focused on other things. It is better to delay, find a time when you can get solid focus, and reschedule.

  If you proceed, your audience simply won’t be listening. They might frequently check their mobile device or even get up and walk out in the middle of the meeting. This is an easy way to destroy the momentum of a presentation. They won’t be focused on you, so all of your thinking and effort will be a waste.

  You will never get perfect attention, of course. There is simply too much happening in the world, and senior executives have a lot on their plates. They will always have something on their mind. A bit of distraction doesn’t matter; you can rise above that and capture their attention with a lively presentation. When your audience is very focused on something else, however, it is best to step back and find a new time.

  YOU DON’T HAVE CROSS-FUNCTIONAL SUPPORT

  It is hard to present without support. If you learn that some of your colleagues oppose your recommendation, you usually should delay the presentation to another day. There is nothing worse than being in the middle of a presentation when someone from your team wavers in their support.

  Senior executives want to be confident that things will go well. They are often nervous about being on the receiving end of a half-baked recommendation for a project that will ultimately go poorly and damage their reputation. One way they become confident is by seeing a team with conviction. If everyone agrees with a plan, then it certainly is a more compelling recommendation. If the head of sales, the head of operations, the head of finance and the head of market research all say that it makes sense, then it is hard for a senior executive to stop it.

  Executives become nervous when there isn’t agreement. It is a bad sign when the head of sales shifts in her seat and looks down. Picking up on this, the senior executive might then fire off a question: “So, Susan, are you on board with this recommendation?”

  You want Susan to lean forward and reply, “That is absolutely right. I’ve been through this entire plan, and it all works well. Just two days ago, I was down in Memphis and ran this by the region head. She agreed it all looks good.”

  If Susan hesitates, there is a problem. She might state, “I certainly see the logic behind the recommendation, but I am not confident the sales team can execute this plan.” Or she might comment, “I just don’t think this is going to be successful.”

  Once Susan wavers, the entire presentation loses credibility. Why would the senior executive support this? There are clearly issues. The only possible resolution is that the top person will ask to revisit the recommendation in a few weeks. This is not a positive outcome.

  So if you learn that you have issues on your team, it may make sense to delay the presentation. You need to figure out where people are before moving forward.

  Now, everyone may not agree with every presentation. This is life. People can have different points of view. But you need to know where you stand before the presentation so that it reflects the situation. If you have different opinions on the team, you can do some pre-work to gain alignment. Or you can create a presentation where you introduce two different options, presenting the pros and cons of each.

  If you learn at the last minute that you don’t have team agreement, then delaying the meeting is the best course. There is no reason to go into a meeting when you know your team has significant concerns. In this situation you are not set up for success, and the meeting probably won’t go too well.

  4

  BE CLEAR ON THE PURPOSE

  * * *

  Once you’ve decided to present, you need to sit back and clarify the purpose. Why exactly are you presenting? What do you hope to achieve? If you are not clear on the purpose, the presentation is not likely to go well.

  The Importance of Clarity

  There is a famous scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice is talking with the Cheshire Cat.

  “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

  “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

  “I don’t much care where—,” said Alice.

  “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.1

  It is an insightful observation by the Cheshire Cat. Without a sense of the goal, you are lost. Any direction might be right or wrong. You need to know your destination before you get too far into a journey, or you won’t know which way to go. Are you trying to get to Miami or Tokyo?

  This is certainly the case with a presentation. You can’t make any meaningful progress until you know your objective. As presenting consultant Jerry Weissman writes, “The only sure way to create a successful presentation is to begin with the goal in mind.”2

  If you are trying to sell a recommendation, you will set up the presentation to support the plan. You will lay out your perspective and provide support points explaining why it makes sense. When you review the presentation, you will consider whether the document is clear and convincing. You will ask yourself these questions: Does this presentation sell the recommendation? Does it get the job done? You have a clear task to accomplish and a tight definition of success.

  If you are simply providing an update on a project, you will write a very different type of presentation. You will gather data, organize it, and highlight important conclusions and implications. Your goal is to communicate information rather than sell a particular set of next steps.

  Every presentation should have a purpose. I call this purposeful presenting. You never just present for the sake of presenting. There is always a reason, a point for the gathering. Being clear on this reduces the risk of wasting people’s time and losing their attention.

  First Things First

  Some people get right to the task. Once they schedule the presentation time, they get busy creating pages and laying out the deck. These people believe procrastination is the enemy. They take joy from getting a quick start.

  We tend to admire people like this. “I wish I had that sort of focus and energy!” we might think. Getting a draft done seems comforting and feels productive.

  The problem is that you can’t write a great presentation until you know what you are presenting. You have to know your message before you get started, so make sure you understand your goal before you begin putting your presentation together.

  One of the simplest ways to get into trouble when working on a presentation is to start creating the actual document too early in the process. Unfortunately, this happens all the time. Someone schedules an executive update a week or two in advance, then the responsible team gets to work.

  The first step, they think, is to develop a draft. So the team sits down and begins pulling together pages. They grab this chart and that chart and put them in a rough order. Before long, the presentation takes shape. There is heft to it and substance. It feels like it is really coming along.

  The problem, of course, is that in many cases the objective—the message—isn’t clear. What is the recommendation, anyway? Are we proposing to launch a new product? Are we suggesting we increase the price? Or should we decrease the price?

  Without knowing the objective, the document is just a collection of facts. It doesn’t make a point, because there is no point to make. There are charts and graphics, but there is no overall story. The document bloats. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan notes, “When you don’t know what you’re saying, you take a long time to say it. When you know what you are saying, you get pithy. Audiences know this.”3

  Writing a presentation without knowing the objective
is like driving without a destination. You only feel like you are making progress.

  You get started on your long drive and then call your friend, “Hey, Bob, I’m making great time!”

  He replies logically enough, “That’s great! So where you are heading?”

  “I have no idea. But the good news is that there isn’t any traffic!”

  A collection of facts is not a good presentation. It is just a collection of facts. It has little value. A collection of charts and graphs with no direction is actually worse than having no pages at all, because once you put a chart in a presentation, it is very difficult to take it out. It is tough to cut an analysis, so you justify its inclusion. You think, “This is such a neat segmentation analysis. Look at that: the nine purchase groups, and the three attitudinal groups.” Even though the analysis may contribute nothing to the presentation, you leave it in.

  So the first step in developing a presentation is to be clear on the recommendation. What is the point of the meeting? What is my message? What are my goals for the discussion? What do I want my audience to think, feel or do? Being clear on these questions will ensure that you write a presentation with purpose.

  As legendary Roman orator Cato said many years ago, “Find the message first and the words will follow.”4

  A New Strategy for Kraft BBQ Sauce

  One of the most challenging presentations I had to deliver in my career at Kraft was to recommend a restage of the Kraft BBQ Sauce business. At the time, Kraft BBQ was doing well financially; revenue, share and profit were growing. The overall financial metrics all looked healthy.

  The problem was that the growth of Kraft BBQ was due to a combination of cost reduction products and deep promoted pricing. Historically, we had sold a bottle of Kraft BBQ Sauce around Memorial Day and July 4—the two big summer holidays in the United States—for 79 cents. Three years earlier, the Kraft BBQ brand manager decided that it would be a good idea to reduce the price to two bottles for 99 cents for the Memorial Day promotion event. This move generated a very large boost in revenue, share and profit.

  The following year, in a bid to continue the growth trend, the BBQ team offered the deep discount price at both of the big holiday weeks: Memorial Day and July 4. This was another very successful year for the business, with additional revenue and profit growth.

  The next year, the team dialed things up once again, now selling three bottles of Kraft BBQ Sauce for 99 cents at the big holidays. This generated yet another year of growth.

  At the same time, product quality was falling due to a series of cost reduction projects; the team reduced the amount of tomatoes, molasses and spices in the formula and increased the amount of inexpensive ingredients such as water, vinegar and salt.

  This was clearly an unsustainable path. Sales were up, but only because we were cutting the price. We were attracting price-sensitive customers, including a lot of people who simply used our sauce as a base—they doctored Kraft’s sauce to get the precise flavor they wanted—but our brand preference was actually falling. People were buying Kraft BBQ, but their perceptions of the product were getting worse.

  I took over the business at this time and quickly realized the business had to shift course. I worked with my team and developed a plan to improve product quality, cut back promotions, and invest in advertising and marketing. It was a solid plan. There was just one problem: it would lead to a sharp drop in revenue, share and profit. In the short run, results would fall as the price-driven customers left. In the long run, the business would be stronger but this would take time. You can’t change people’s perceptions of a brand overnight.

  Selling this recommendation was not easy. I had to develop a presentation that explained the situation, projected the road ahead and then introduced the alternate plan. It wasn’t a happy story; the business was in for a couple rough years.

  Fortunately, I had a very clear objective heading into various meetings reviewing the plan: I had to get support for a risky and unpleasant but necessary strategic shift. Ultimately, I managed to work with my team and convince people it was the right course for the business.

  5

  KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

  * * *

  People are not all the same. We aren’t robots or standardized mechanical devices. Some people like tomatoes and some people don’t. Some people like numbers and some people don’t. I like rodeos and county fairs. My wife doesn’t.

  This simple insight is at the heart of great marketing. There are so many differences between individual people that it is impossible to make everyone happy. If you try to delight all sorts of people, you will likely end up with a mediocre product or service, something that is adequate for everyone but perfect for no one. This will lead you to the bland middle where your product is just fine. Unfortunately, in a word full of competitive offerings, being fine is not enough.

  To succeed, you can’t be fine; you have to be outstanding. This is the only way to have an impact and get noticed. This means that you have to focus on a group of people with some common characteristics. If you are designing a perfect sandwich, you need to focus on carnivores or vegetarians. People who love onions or people who don’t.

  Picking and understanding your target is essential for success in marketing. It is one of the first lessons in a marketing class. It is also a tough concept to embrace—people don’t like targeting.

  The idea of targeting applies when you are presenting. People have different wants when it comes to presentations. It is highly unlikely that a presentation will be successful at reaching everyone. As psychotherapist Susan Dowell observes, “People have genuinely different ways of looking at things and interacting and you need to respect this right. Read their cues. Pay attention to how they talk about things.”1

  For this reason, you need to think about your audience before you start creating your presentation. It isn’t enough to know what you are trying to communicate; you also have to know who you are presenting to and then consider what they want.

  Presenting Is a Marketing Task

  At the core, marketing is about understanding and interacting with customers. When you approach a task with a marketing lens, your focus shifts from the product to the customer. The question isn’t “What am I selling?” or “What are my product attributes?” The question is “What do my customers want or need?” And “How can I help my customers achieve their goals?”

  You can see the shift even when you are selling a basic product like a pencil. Your first instinct is to talk about the pencil. You might discuss the durable lead, the robust eraser or the bright color. These are all good points and notable product features.

  With a marketing lens, the emphasis shifts; the focus isn’t on the pencil but on the customer and their needs. So if my target is a business executive, I might talk about the productivity that comes from using a pencil or the power of quickly changing things with a good eraser. This could eventually lead me to a discussion about the importance of failure in the innovation process and the need to be resilient when dealing with challenges.

  The same dynamic works with presentations. Your first instinct is to focus on the presentation itself: the text, the charts and the points you want to make. With a marketing lens, your perspective shifts. What does my target want to see? How do they want to see it?

  Be Clear on Your Audience

  One of the first tasks when developing a presentation is to clarify your target. Who is the most important person anyway? Is it Susan, Michael or Eduardo?

  You need to zero in on a specific individual. Since people are different, you will struggle if you try to speak to multiple individuals at the same time. You want to identify the most important person you will be trying to reach.

  There is always a most important person. Many times this will be the most senior individual. If you are presenting to the CEO of Lufthansa, you will think about the CEO. If you are presenting to the president of the United States, you will think about the president.

 
Sometimes the most important person in the meeting isn’t the most senior. If you are trying to recruit new MBAs, for example, your key person will be your top prospect. The CEO might be at the presentation, but they aren’t the primary target.

  If you aren’t clear on the key person, you likely aren’t clear on the objective. What is the purpose of the meeting? When you define this, the target will usually become apparent.

  Identify Their Preferences

  Once you have clearly defined your target, you can get busy understanding them and figuring out what they want. This is an important step in the marketing world; if you don’t understand your target, it is difficult to connect with them.

  Consider your target’s preferences. How do they like to review material? Is there a format or structure they prefer? People can have very different opinions. Companies vary, too, so it is useful to consider firm culture and norms.

  HOW DO THEY FEEL ABOUT GROUPS?

  People react differently to gatherings. Some people love large groups; others don’t. If you are presenting to someone who is comfortable with a large audience, then you can present with this format. If your audience likes a small group, you’ll want to present with just a few people.

  Your goal is to make your audience comfortable so they can listen and then communicate. If someone is most at ease with a small group, putting them in the middle of a large group will make them nervous and stressed. They will be deliberate and careful about what they say. This is not a good way to get their support and honest feedback.

  If your target likes large groups, on the other hand, then showing up with just two or three people might leave them disappointed or deflated. Where is the team? Why do we have such a small gathering?