Show notes
David re-reads the 2nd chapter of Blair's first book, leading to a discussion about how sales people have to choose between either presenting to clients or being present to them. TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, we are going to talk today about replacing presentations with conversations. BLAIR ENNS: The second proclamation. DAVID: Yeah, it's actually the second chapter in your book, which I'm holding right now in my grimy little hands. The book, it's black with red, looks like foil to make it look expensive, so you could charge an extra couple bucks for it probably. It says Win Without Pitching Manifesto, and the second chapter is about replacing presentations with conversations, but I think if you would let me, I'd like to make a public confession before we get into this. BLAIR: Sure. DAVID: Your book actually sells better than mine, and I want you to know that that pisses me off. BLAIR: I read a great quote the other day, maybe it was Gore Vidal who said, "Every time a friend succeeds, a little part of me dies." DAVID: I don't know if this was the third or fourth printing, but since we published the book, we got these three skids of your books. Not only do I hate the fact that your book has sold better than my last book, but I have to haul these skids of your book like for punishment, to remind me constantly that they're selling. BLAIR: That's what you get for moonlighting as my publisher. DAVID: Yeah, instead of focusing on what I should be doing, yeah. BLAIR: The fourth printing should arrive any day now, it's larger than all the other ones. Can I just keep bragging here? I'm surprised it's been, well I think it's somewhere around seven years, and sales just keep going up, I can't explain it. DAVID: I'm more surprised than anybody, because I've read it and I know you. The idea is replacing presentations with conversations, and actually I read through chapter two again, it was actually fun to read that part of the book again. You talk a lot about avoiding the big reveal, and the first thing I could think of was several episodes of Mad Men where they have the single pitch board on an easel in the conference room and it's covered, and when they say "big reveal", they mean big reveal, they lift this thing up and there's this tension in the room. You talk about the fact that we're addicted to that. I'm not sure that people would admit that they're addicted to that, can you talk more about that first, to start us off? BLAIR: Some people might listen to that and think, "Well, I'm not addicted to that," but I think you and I probably have different definitions of creativity. You might have kind of a broader look at what it means to be creative, and I take my cues from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow, and he studies happiness and creativity. He says creativity is the ability to see, the ability to bring kind of a new perspective to a problem. It's not the ability to write or draw, he refers to that as "personal creativity". BLAIR: Creative people who can look at things differently, they just see things differently, that's kind of to me the hallmark of creativity, one of the things that goes hand in hand with being creative is the ability to think on your feet, so these two things, for reasons I don't fully understand, they're tied to each other. When somebody has this really strong ability to kind of bring a fresh perspective to a problem, they also have a really strong ability to go with the flow and deal with whatever kind of objections are thrown at them. If your strength is standing in front of a room, saying something, hearing an objection, and then having to react to it, and then kind of sell in the situation or recover from a situation, then you are going to look for as many situations like that that you can create. BLAIR: I'll give you a great example of a friend and a client from many years ago, creative director at a small design firm, and he was presenting a new identity to a consulting firm. He does the big reveal, and it's very quiet, and then he's a little bit nervous because it's so quiet, and he says, "What do you think?" One of them says, "Well interesting, I notice you've changed our name from XYZ Consulting to XYZ Consultants." It was just a mistake, an error on his part, and he responded immediately. He said, "Exactly, because consulting, that's what you do, consultants, that's who you are." They bought it, so they changed the name because he just responded in the moment. BLAIR: Creative people love being in that situation of presenting, having to deal with an objection, and then coming through it, because the euphoria is profound, it's huge. If that's who you are, if that's your strength, commanding a room, having to dance, having to respond to objections, et cetera, not knowing what's going to happen next, then you will create as many situations as possible where you get to do that, and the whole time you will tell yourself and tell others and tell me and tell you, "No no no, that's the way this business works, or that's the best way to communicate this information to the client," and it's not. It's all about you and your personal need to present as a creative person. DAVID: You would say that that's pretty widespread in the creative field, because most of the creative field has been walking down that path for many years, there's something about that personality. I think of it as diving into an empty pool and inventing water on the way down, that's how I think of it. When I think about public speaking, to me that's sort of what's happened, or when I'm doing consulting where I know that within a few hours, we're going to have to have some at least provisional answer, and we don't yet, and that's terrifying but also thrilling. There's something about the creative feel of creative entrepreneurs that's bringing that. Now, would this equally apply to presentations in a new business setting as it would to presentations as the work is unfolding? BLAIR: There are different types of presentations, and there are different times in the relationship in which we feel like it's appropriate to present. If we start with the idea that we are addicted to the presentation and the presentation does not need to exist, if you come around to my way of thinking on that, then you will look at the presenting that you do in a new business situation, and you'll realize that this is not necessary, I'm doing this for me. You really first have to come to grips and be honest with yourself about your own need to present. What I recommend is, reform yourself when it comes to your existing clients. DAVID: First. BLAIR: Yeah, first. Replace the big reveal with a series of little reveals, and then once you get your head around that, then you will be able to think about your need to present in a new business situation a little bit differently. There are all kinds of creative people outside of the creative professions, so most entrepreneurs I think fit this description of a creative person, because I think you have to be somewhat creative to be ... I test for this in the tests that we do for all of the people who enter the Win Without Pitching program, so I can get an objective measure of how creative in that sense, or how much they crave standing up in front of the room and being forced to dance. BLAIR: There's a rudimentary question that's, and I'll ask the audience right now, and I've asked this in many seminars or workshops I've led. Usually I do it after break, I come back into the room and I say, "Hey," and I'm clearly kind of roleplaying or playing a scenario, I say, "Hey, in the hallway, I just ran into the chairman of the board of your most highly coveted client. Think of the company that you've always wanted to work for. They're having a board meeting in the meeting room right next to ours, and I told them that I was spending the day with you, and they said, 'Oh great, can you send somebody in to do a 15-minute presentation on their firm? Because we're looking to hire a firm like theirs.'" BLAIR: Then I say to the audience, "You have 10 seconds to get over there and present. You have no time to prepare," you get up out of your chair and start walking, and then I say, "Okay, stop. What's your reaction? Everybody just measure what your reaction to that is, I've just told you you have no time to prepare, you have to go to a 15 minute presentation, you have to be there in 10 seconds, what's your reaction?" You look at the audience, and you can see the range of responses in their faces. Some people are grinning, these are the people, they would say, "I'll think of what I'm going to say on the way over there," and they love the stress of that moment because they have this great ability to respond, to think on their feet. BLAIR: These are the people, as you say, who love to dive off the diving board and invent water on the way down. Then you've got the kind of low autonomy people that are very systematic and process-oriented, and these people are horrified, they need vision and clarity of what's going to happen next. They need to know what their steps are, they need to be prepared, it's their worst fears to come off unprepared. They haven't even considered what they might say or the objections that they might encounter, and they need to be able to think through all of those things. BLAIR: If you're in that first category, then I can all but promise you that you have built your business around that strength of yours, and you have driven your cost of sale way up, and probably your closing ratios down. Now obviously, there's some places where it's served you well, but for the most part when it comes to getting new clients, I'll bet you it's hurt you more than it's helped you. DAVID: Do you remember years ago, when some creative firms, especially designers, would take a portfolio book, and there were pages that you'd flip? I remember reading this study, I don't remember where it was, how the pacing was so different if you controlled it as, say, the principal of the firm making this presentation, or let the client control the pace, how much faster the pace was. They were not interested in the presentation, they were much more interested in getting to their issue. I think that plays into what you're talking about, but the question specifically that's coming to my mind right now is, like so you talk a lot about how the expert needs to direct the relationship, how is the expert directing the relationship if they're not talking that much, if the client is doing most of the talking? In other words, if we're letting the client fulfill their needs here, how are we not relinquishing this need to direct the relationship? BLAIR: Well, I think you know the answer, because if you're not talking, what's left? DAVID: Listening, or asking questions. BLAIR: Yeah, if you map out the role of the two parties, buyer and seller, over the length of the sale, you will see that when it's done properly, a proper consultative sale, early in the relationship, the salesperson is talking about 25% of the time, and they're using their 25% to ask questions, and the client is taking 75% of the time, and they're using that time to give their responses. Then at the end of the sale, the close, it's reversed, the client is speaking 25% of the time, and they're asking you, the seller, the questions, and you're taking 75% of the time to respond to their questions. Nowhere in there are you standing at a PowerPoint deck in presentation mode, you're either asking questions or you're responding to the clients' questions. BLAIR: It's interesting, that portfolio book and the amount of time. I had a really interesting conversation just a week or two ago with a principal that I know well, and we were talking about capabilities presentations, and I was saying, "No, the capabilities presentation does not need to exist." We were getting into a very constructive, respectful argument or a discussion where we're each advancing our views on the subject, about capabilities presentations, he was saying, "No, it's valid, you have all this information you want to communicate about your firm." I said to him, "How long does it take you to get through your capabilities presentation?", and he kind of looked a little bit sheepish, and I said, "Is it more than five minutes?", and he kind of looked at his feet, and I said, "Is it more than 30 minutes?" He said, "Well, it's about an hour." DAVID: I'm already bored just listening to that. BLAIR: Yeah, just by answering that question, I think he got the realization that, "Okay, this is all about me," but in fairness, this person is more kind of on the low autonomy process-oriented type person who's more comfortable, and it takes more training, more practice, and never comes completely easy to him to kind of stand up and be responsive. DAVID: Right, so we're going to have different perspectives on this based on who we are as people. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: One of the things that you say, and as I read through this I made a note of this phrase because it really intrigued me, you said, "We cannot be transparent if we are withholding information for the presentation." First, I'm not sure I completely understand. My mind first went to, are you talking about like putting the price at the end of the presentation? I don't think you're talking about that necessarily, but what do you mean and why do you say this specifically? BLAIR: I'm talking about in your relationships with existing clients. The big buzzwords of the last, I don't know, decade or so, authenticity is one, we need to do a whole podcast on authenticity. DAVID: God, I'm so tired of that word. BLAIR: My least favorite word on the planet. DAVID: "Storytelling" is close second for me. BLAIR: People talk about authenticity, transparency, and collaboration, these are three of the big buzzwords of our time. Let's just put authenticity aside, and talk about transparency and collaboration. Firms are out there saying, "We work transparently and collaboratively with our clients." Okay, well if that's really true, transparent means the client has a window into what you're doing, what you're thinking, where the project is at any time, you're not withholding. DAVID: Like and they know that you haven't even started it, and you've had it for three weeks and it's due in three days, that's transparency. BLAIR: Yeah, and they know it, that's transparency. Collaboration is where you're working with your client, rather than going away and coming back and presenting, so transparency and collaboration. You think about it, the presentation can only exist in the absence of both, right? The need for presentation is only there if you are withholding information from the client. DAVID: Yeah, if you're delivering new information that you previously had and chose not to give them, you're saving it for the presentation, so that's what you're talking about. BLAIR: Yeah. When I was still a consultant, I had been writing about this and talking about this for years, and then one day I realized, "Oh my God, I still do this." When I'm doing a b…
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