ve-BINAR Anatomy of a Lousy Pitch

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Good to see you. Welcome everybody to today's Vendex Vibanar. I'm Andrew Miller, one of the partners at the Vendux Group where we focus on helping clients to grow their sales leadership capital. It's often said that nothing happens in business until somebody sells something. Our speaker today is a true expert who gets hired to make that happen. So I'm really thrilled to be here today with Tim Walkel. Tim brings more than three decades of successful sales and presentation coaching experience to today's webinar. Three of his many achievements include one, being recognized as the number one producer and in a 10,000 person sales organization. Two, helping lead a software startup through a successful IPO and three, directing a $50 million sales organization for a Fortune 500 company. The ideas that you're about to benefit from have already helped thousands of business professionals create more effective client presentations. And we're really lucky and grateful to have Tim spend some time with us today. So, a couple of quick housekeeping notes. We'll keep everyone muted for the duration of the webinar and there'll be a Q and A at the end. So you can either use the chat function in zoom to submit your questions or at the end, feel free to open up your mic and engage directly with Tim at the end of the webinar. The webinar is being recorded and it will be shortly available right afterwards on our site and on YouTube where we also get a lot of interaction and engagement. So let's jump right into the heart of the subject today. The anatomy of a lousy sales pitch and tips for. And tips for winning pitches. So, Tim, I know you do a lot of work helping sales professionals and business execs create more effective presentations. I'd love to know, just right at the outset, high level, how did you get into this business and what are you doing every day with clients? And then what, what is the most common mistake or one of. What's one of the one or two top mistakes that you help your customers work through?

Well, thank you, Andrew. Thank you very much. Um, so how I got into this business, I spent the first 20 years of my career in sales and B2B sales and technology. My, my background is I'm an electrical Engineer and spent 20 years in corporate America building, managing, leading and growing sales teams and then found myself at a crossroads and was kind of on the sideline for a while. And a colleague of mine called and said, hey, we're having this sales meeting. We're going to have several hundred people in the room. Would you be willing to come in and. And work with them? We don't want a motivational message. We really want you to kind of come in and kick them in the hindsight and get him focused in the right direction. And I said, you're going to pay me for that. And he goes, yeah. And from that experience, this. This practice was born, and we are going on 22 years strong now. So what I do is I work with clients who want their sales teams to perform at a higher level, and part of that is presentations. I do a tremendous amount of work in presentations, Andrew. And I would tell you that when we. When we run a presentation bootcamp, when we do presentation coaching, you know, in my opinion. And these are all going to be my opinions, obviously, in my opinion, the number one biggest mistake most people make when putting together a presentation is they haven't done their homework. They don't understand their audience. The number one reason most presentations today are way too long and fall short is because we haven't done the heavy lifting up front. So if we don't do the heavy lifting up front, that means that when I show up, I have to do the show up and throw up, right? It's the spray and pray. I really don't understand my audience. I really don't understand where they're at. I really don't understand where they're trying to get to. I don't really understand what's important to them. I really don't understand all the players in the room. So I just keep doing slide after slide after slide, hoping eventually somebody's gonna raise their hand and say, okay, stop. I'm interested in that. Right? You know, you go to the restaurant and the waiter comes by and they talk about, we've got the seafood, we got the pasta, we got the bee, we got the lamb, we got the pork. It'd be a lot more effective if the waiter said, hey, what do you think you're most interested in today? It's like, you know, I'm kind of interested in seafood. Why don't you just focus on the seafood selections? Much more effective way of communicating. So. So, by and large, Andrew, I would say, number one, most people jump at the chance to deliver a presentation before they've really done their homework. I mean, if I'm. If I'm coaching an executive and I'm like, hey, so tell me what you know about your audience. If I get answers, like name, title, and email address, I'm like, you know, we're not doing this yet. Don't even get out of the car because you have not done the homework and you are going to fall short. And here's the challenge is once you fall short with a presentation, it's really hard to get invited back, right? Because nobody wants to sit through a beating a second or third time. And so I'm a real big believer, if we're going to do it, let's do it, right? Let's tee this thing up and knock it out of the park.

Yeah, that. That's a great one. A classic. I can. I've been there, but I. It's. It's great advice and insight. So you, you see so many presentations. You work with a lot of people. You, you. So what's another characteristic of a lousy pitch that you see on a regular basis?

Okay, super. So, you know, step one to me when we're coaching people is you got to do your intelligence, got to do your homework. Step two, then is, I believe every presentation should have an objective. So what does that look like? If I'm coaching you, I'm going to say, how are you going to know whether or not this presentation is successful? And it's like, well, I hope they like it. It's like, really? I don't know how to monetize likes. I guess I'm just not that young. I don't want people to like it. I want them to like it, and then I want them to take some sort of action. I want them to make a new decision, move in a new direction. So another challenge is really helping presenters understand what their objective is. And when we break it down, let me, let me kick it down a level for you. A presentation objective consists of two things and two things only. The first thing is you got to answer question one. And question one is, what specifically do you as a presenter want? AKA what are you going to ask for? And sometimes people are like, well, I'm not in sales. I'm not going to ask for an order. Well, that's okay. So because we can ask for an order, we could ask for a referral, we could ask for a recommendation, we could ask for an introduction, we could ask for a next step. There's a lot of things we could be asking for. But before I make a presentation, I want to have it in my mind, hey, this should be the next practical step, and I'm going to ask for that. So that's question one. What are you going to ask for at the end of the presentation? Then question two, you got to answer is, well, why in the world should the listener do that because every listener, when you're doing a presentation, everybody in your audience is tuned in the magical radio station, W I fm. What's in it for me? And if you're not, if you're not pounding that home, they are tuning out. They're thinking about dinner, they're thinking about a tea time for the weekend. They're thinking about, what time do I have to pick up my kid at daycare, Right? So a presentation objective is that one, two, punch. And I'm a real big believer. Early on in the presentation, you say, ladies and gentlemen, the reason I'm here today, I'm going to ask you to buy my widget. And you're probably thinking to yourself, why in the world would we want to buy your widget? Well, my research leads me to believe we can save you $1.2 million a year. And I'm excited to share that with you. Let's get started. And when you've got a solid objective like that, you're drawing your listener in because your listener's like, there's no way you can save me 1.2 million. And they're leaning in versus leaning back. Plus, you're already presetting how you're going to close because most presentations have a lousy ending, Right? Most presentations end like this. Any questions? Okay, thank you. Right. And we crawl back to the office. If you, at the very beginning of the presentation say, hey, folks, the reason I'm here today, I'm going to ask you to buy my widget. Why? I believe it'll save you 1.2 million. I'm excited to show you how we came to that conclusion. You go through the entire presentation, and then at the end of the presentation, you say, remember 45 minutes. When I started, I told you guys I was going to ask you to buy my widget because we believe we can save you 1.2 million. So here's the point in the presentation where I'm going to ask you to buy my widget. So it's. And it's. It's. Those are two hard questions for most people to answer, Andrew, when we're doing coaching. But it's the bedrock of every presentation. If I don't care how pretty your slides are, I don't care if you're using a Tahoma font or an Arial font. It does not matter to me if you cannot tell me about your listener. Who are they? What do they want? What are their challenges? What have they tried? Why is this important to them? If you can't tell me what your objective is, AKA what are you going to ask for? Why in the world should they do that for you? Don't even fire up PowerPoint. I mean, when I coach, we're real big believers in. You should design your PowerPoint presentations in analog. Don't, don't even launch PowerPoint. Get out a pen and a piece of paper and answer these key questions and then knock your slides out.

Yeah, great insights already. So with these two broad level observations, one is knowing your audience and then the objectives. You're already getting into the essence of structure. Presentation structure. Right. Well, so can you address that? And then what's, what's another characteristic of a lousy sales pitch that you would see? Like, what's number three?

Yeah. So you hit the overarching theme, Andrew, is that 99% of people, when they put together a presentation, have no structure. If you sit down with an executive or sales professional and you say, hey, I'm looking at your deck here, help me understand, what structure did you use? What methodology, what roadmap did you use to put this deck together? You know, could be categorical, could be pain, could be past or present. There's a lot of different ways to organize a presentation. When I ask people, what structure did you use? Right. They shrugged their shoulders and slap their forehead. It's like, I don't know. Because most, what most people do is they pull one slide and they go, ooh, I like this slide. And then they pull another slide and, oh, my boss always wants to see this one. So it's some sort of bastardized cobbling of information. So it's, it's important to have structure. And so I structure. And this is kind of where we're going, quite frankly, is step one, gosh, know your audience. Step two, come up with an objective. What do you want? What's in it for them? Step number three, then is I think most great presentations should be focused around three talking points. And three is not a rule. It's a rule of thumb. And talking points are like chapter titles. They're your big ideas. Because here's the deal. If I showed up and I said, hey, gentlemen, the reason I'm here today, I want you to buy my widget. Why? It's going to save you 1.2 million. And I got 21 things I want to share with you. Most people are like, 21 things now, I don't think so, Sparky. I'm tuning out. But if I show up and go, hey, listen, the reason I'm here today, I want you to buy My widget? Why, I believe I can save you 1.2 million. And here's what's really fascinating. I'm only going to talk about three things. Now you're being provocative now. Your audience is like, really? You save us 1.2 million, you're only going to talk about three things. Do tell. Plus, when you only talk about three things, your message becomes transportable. Right, so earlier this week, I'm doing a presentation on Wednesday morning. If somebody who was in that presentation walks out in the hallway and bumps into their colleague and their colleague goes, who is that guy? Well, that was Tim Walkhole. Well, what does he want? Well, he wants us to buy his widget. Well, why in the world should we buy his widget? Well, it's going to save us $1.2 million a year. Well, what'd he talk about? Well, he talked about tools, he talked about technology, and he talked about their track record. Wow. Right, so now my audience is. They've got the DNA. Oftentimes people are like, well, you don't understand. I've got like, 25 different things I want to talk about. You could probably talk about all 25, but you've got to. You've got to lump them into buckets. You've got to make it really easy for your listener to digest the information. So maybe bucket number one is user interface, maybe bucket number two is processing speed, maybe bucket number three is customer experience. I don't know. But most presentations, we get too granular, too quick, and as a presenter, we get a little bit confused. And as if a presenter, you get a little bit confused, I guarantee you, your listening audience is like, where is this going?

So, yeah, yeah, the. The rule of three. So let's say you've got multiple stakeholders and audiences in the room. You've got finance and legal and tech and hr, kind of. We, we've all been there. Sometimes we know ahead of time that there's going to be some diversity of stakeholders in the room. And then other times they just show up. It's like, oh, I thought I'd bring in my legal team or my finance colleagues in to listen in as well. And you've prepared and you think. Or you've prepared to pitch to HR and tech and now legal is in. So you have some thoughts and strategies about stakeholder management?

Yeah, I've got thoughts and strategies, but again, these are my ideas. So I always tell everybody, if I was so good at presentations, I'd be doing this broadcast from my boat. And I'm not. So, you know, Take the best and leave the rest. Here's the deal. As part of your homework, you need to lock down with whoever you're dealing with exactly who's going to be in the room. You need to eliminate those last minute surprises because if you don't know the legal guy is going to be in there and the legal guys in there, that's on you. Right? You didn't get the commitment up front to say, hey, help me understand very, very specifically who's going to be in the room during this presentation. Because then, with your permission, I'd like to go out and interview all of them prior to the presentation because I want to make sure that, that the time we spend together is valuable for every stakeholder in that room. So as much as we want to point the finger at our customer, when other people show up and we don't know it, I think you need to look in the mirror. That's, that is you not managing that meeting. Then my second point, Andrew, would be as, as, as often as it's possible, I prefer to have a more homogeneous audience. So if I've got the technical guys in there and I've got the finance guys in there, and I've got the legal people in there, and I, I got the, the, the, the process owner in there, it's really hard to be effective because that's like having a somebody who speaks German, somebody who speaks Spanish, somebody who speaks French all in the same room. And it's just hard to. I think that's a very, I think that's a difficult challenge and some customers are going to push back on you after four decades of doing this. I push back on, I go, listen, I can come in and do that, but it's, you know, yeah, it's not going to be effective. It'll be a lot more effective than we could parse it and maybe we split the presentation up and we spend the first 15 minutes with legal, the next 15 minutes with technical, the next 15 minutes with people in finance, and then let's bring them all back together for the grand finale. But when you try to be all things to all people, you end up being nothing to everyone. So I'm going to speak French for the next 15 minutes. Let's get all the people from France in the room, right, I'm going to speak German. Let's get all the Germans in the room. That would be, that, that would be my, again, my rule of thumb, when possible, push back, help organize the meeting.

Yeah, that's great advice. I want to come back in A little bit to this notion about interviewing your stakeholders ahead of your presentation. That is a very interesting thought. I think it's often overlooked. It's not pursued, it's not even considered. But it's. It's such great advice. What, what's another. So you can, you can address that if you want now. But I'm also curious, you know, other elements, other characteristics of lousy sales pitches that you see.

Sure. Well, let me continue to build. So I said the first step is you're not doing your homework, which is part of interviewing your stakeholders. So first job is you got to ask a ton of questions. You got to understand where everybody's at, who's going to be in the room, how are you going to handle the day? Step two is get this objective. This is what I want. This is what's in it for you. Step number three, I'm gonna try to organize my presentation around three big ideas or four big ideas. Again, three is a rule of thumb, not a rule, but it shouldn't be 12, 15 different big ideas. Three, four big ideas. Then the next step is now we start organizing what I call our supporting evidence. So whatever talking point one is, it's like, okay, how am I gonna drive home talking point 1? Most presentations that I see are brimming with supporting evidence. Another way of saying supporting evidence, it's data, right? It's bits, bytes, and bandwidth. So now we got to start organizing our supporting evidence. So we got talking point one. It's like, okay, what data. What data do I need to present to drive home my first idea? What data do I need to present to drive home my second idea? And what data do I need to present to drive home my third idea? So we want to organize that data, and then the next step, which is the most important is now we got to make the data sexy. We've got to make the data fun. We've got to make the data sticky way, too. So that the group I'm working with this week, Andrew, all electrical engineers. And I mean, here's our 3dB bandwidth. Here's the noise floor where this many DBM below the rotation of the earth. I mean, it's just like, guys, listen, that's important stuff, but we gotta dress that up a little bit. And the little quip I always go is, you know what? No child says, mommy, will you take me upstairs and share some data with me? No, it's, mommy, will you take me upstairs and tell me a story? So tell stories around your data. Share personal experiences around the information you're sharing, use antidotes, use quotes. But data for the sake of data is just dull, boring and doesn't stick. So you got, you got to make your data fun. And the people that are real data heads out there, I know you're rolling your eyes is like, you can't do it, you can't do it. I'm here to tell you you can do it. It can be done. And I've got hours and hours of video of people who have done it and accountants, lawyers, engineers, architects, once they get it. And here's the deal, as a presenter, once you start making the data fun, it's fun for you, right? Because if I'm just talking 3db bandwidth for the sake of talking 3db bandwidth, it's like I'd rather go suck on a tailpipe. But if I can talk about 3db bandwidth and use examples and stories and personal experiences, then I start seeing chin music in my audience. My customer starts going, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, okay, now they get it. So you got to organize that supporting evidence and you got to make it fun.

I love that headline, dressing data up to be sexy. So I guess related to that is an audience's attention. Any other thoughts about specific techniques or strategies that can help capture and maintain an audience's attention throughout the presentation?

Yeah, so couple thoughts on that. This topic came up this week, as a matter of fact, because this part, part of the team I was working with very specifically, it was like, how do I keep their attention, but how do I keep their attention in a zoom or a teams type environment? And here's, here's my two cents worth, folks, is that the pandemic and this, this forcing everybody to a virtual presentation reality. The pandemic really exposed a lot of warts and weaknesses because when I could show up on site, I could kind of rely on my charm and my wit and my humor to kind of, you know, shore up my presentation. Now all of a sudden I got a little thumbnail, you know, one inch by one inch. And man, if you were, if you were just okay pre Covid, you're probably, your children are probably getting real skinny right now because you're just not getting it done. So my, my tips are, number one, you got to keep slides moving, whether virtual or live. When somebody puts a slide up and, and let's say there's five bullet points and all five bullet points are up there at once. You're not controlling the flow of information. And that slide stays up there for three Minutes, you've lost them visually. You have to keep refreshing. So what does that mean? If I've got a slide that's got five bullets, I release the first bullet first, talk about that, gray that one out, release the second bullet, talk about that, gray that one out, release the third bullet. So at least there's image changes. Plus, we all know that if you put all five bullets up there, 15% of your audience is reading all five and they're going to raise their hand and ask you about number five before you get to number two. And it's just going to derail you. So you got to keep the images changing. And the other thing too, Andrew, is you gotta, you gotta really work on your delivery skills. If you're monotone, you better start working on it. If you don't have any confidence, you gotta, you gotta start working on looking confident. If you don't smile during a presentation, there's, there's some low hanging fruit. Because here's the deal. When you deliver a presentation, there's somebody there that wants you to be more successful than you want to be. And that's your listening audience. Nobody woke up today and said, I'm going to listen to this seminar by Tim and I hope he just blows. No, people are hoping this is going to be a good use of their time. But if I'm up here delivering and it looks like I just had a root canal, people are like, oh, that's so painful for him. I want to look away. So try to have some fun. Because if you're having some fun, it makes it more fun for your audience. I mean, somebody told me years ago, the height of listening happens immediately after laughter. So again, it's not about being silly. But so many, so many people get up there that are full of energy, full of life, full of personality, and the minute they go to the first slide, it becomes a robotic presentation. It's like, what are you doing? Let your personality come through, modulate your voice. Right? I always tell people, use your voice like a roller coasters because roller coasters go really, really fast and then roller coasters will slow down. Roller coasters go up, roller coasters go down, they get louder and they get softer. So you got to work it, folks. Unless you're, unless your data is so damn good it sells by itself. You got to work it.

Excellent. Well, you have an excellent radio voice. So I think there's some questions coming in through the chat. So I want to ask what. I have a whole bunch of questions, but I'm not going to Fill the room. Tim, what's, what's one more characteristic? And then maybe Henning, you want to moderate some of the questions that are coming in and we'll, we'll take one or two from the floor and we'll go from there.

Yeah. So the next characteristic again, working through the process that I teach people. Know your audience, do your homework. Step number two, get an objective. This is what I want. This. What's in it for you? Step number three, organize. Get. Get three big ideas, three talking points, three or four talking points. Step number four, organize your supporting evidence. Then step number five is develop your hook. The hook is the first 60 seconds of a presentation and most people lose their audience in the first 60 seconds. Hi, my name's Tim. I'm president of the Walker Group. I'm so excited to be with you today. Gosh, can you believe how nice it is outside? Anybody catch the ball game last night? When you start your presentation, you need to start with an interesting fact, a relevant story. I believe you want to catch people off guard. You want people to be like, where is this going? Because they're going to be leaning in when somebody starts a presentation, something like this. You know, I'm driving into the office today and this really weird thing happened. And I want to share this story with you because the way I handled this weird thing, the way I reacted to it, bears directly on what we're going to be talking about today. And everybody's like, what weird thing happened? How did you react? Right, so we want to bread. We want to breadcrumb people in. And I just don't see that happen because I guarantee you, I can't guarantee you, I would be willing to take the over on an over under bet that if, if everybody listening right now opened up their last five presentations, you, your first slide looks identical to everybody else's. It has the company name, it has your name, it has the title of the presentation, it has today's date, and it says company Confidential. Whoa. There's some, there's some information I had no idea how to get a hold of. Why are you starting that?

That is.

That is the COVID of a leave behind. That should never be your first slide. People ask, what should the first slide be? You know what I think the first slide should be? Black. A black slide. Because when you got a black slide on and you come up and you get in front of the room, you are it. All eyes are on you. Nobody's looking at that silly slide that says company Confidential, right? They're like, wow, this does Is the, Is the bulb burned out? Does he know? There is no information on that screen. It's like, no. I want to have the first 60 seconds to connect with you, then let's roll into the presentation.

Well, how about, we've been in business for 17 and a half years. Who cares?

You know, and, and, and, I mean, we could go on for days. That's another thing. So many presentations, people start by pitching themselves. People don't care. You want to organize a presentation with three talking points. Here they are. What, how, why? There's your three talking points. What, how, why? I call it my emergency room example. How does it work when I go to an. If I got sick tonight and had to go take myself to the emergency room, when the attending physician comes in, do you want the attending physician to come in and say, oh, you're in great luck. We have over 525 beds. I actually studied at the University of Chicago and then got my medical. It's like, I don't really care about you, dude. The first thing I want to know is what. What is wrong with me? So when you're presenting in a business world, what is the problem? What is the challenge? What is the opportunity? What is the risk? Because when you talk about the what, you're talking their language, not about you. The second thing I want to know, when I go into that emergency room, first thing is, what, Doc? Tell me what's wrong with me. The second thing is the how. How are you going to make me better? So when you're organizing your presentation, here's the what. Second step is. Let's talk about the how. Here's how we're going to take advantage of this situation. Here's how we're going to mitigate the risk. Here's how we're going to grow your sales. Here's how we're going to make your customers at whatever. And then the third talking point is the why. The why is now you have finally earned the opportunity saying, this is why we believe we're the right partner. When you start with the why, hey, let me show you this map of the US with all these little red dots, because I know that's going to influence your buying decision. No, it's not right. Talk about them and at the end, then position yourself as being the right person to deliver. But share those insights first. Sorry, I get a little passionate about this. I thought we were going to do.

A Q and A. Yeah, great. Henning, are there any questions from the virtual room?

Yeah. All right, well, then, now is a Question. Because, Elon, you. You are active in the chat. Do you want to unmute and ask your last question?

Yeah, just.

Tim, was it what, why, how, in that order.

I like what, how, why. And again, the way you remember it is if you're sick and the doctor comes in the room, first thing you want to know is what is wrong? Second thing you want to know is how are you going to make me better? Third thing you want to know is why in the world should I trust you? Why? Why are you the right doctor? Okay.

Thank you.

You're very welcome.

Thanks, Johan. Any other questions for the moment from the group?

I have a question.

Yeah.

Can you talk a little bit about your research process? You said number one thing was to know your audience. I'm interested to hear what your research process is, how you go about it, and what specific information you're looking for when you're looking for the audience so that you know you can connect with them. Are we talking job roles? Are we talking pain points? Are we talking dogs names? What are you looking for when you do that research and how do you work it into your presentation?

Well, I don't work it into the presentation. So the research, Peter, happens way before I do a presentation. I'm not going to do the presentation until you allow me to do this research. Because if I, if I do the presentation without having done my research, I'm wasting your time and I'm wasting my time. And we all want to be more effective because time's the one thing nobody has enough of. So I, it's. To me, Peter, it's a two step process. We're going to do some discovery first and then we're going to present our conclusions. So when it comes to doing the discovery, when it, when, when we talk about the audience, number one, who specifically is going to be attending the presentation? Number two, what exactly are their concerns? Because when somebody asks me to come in and do a presentation on negotiation skills, I automatically assume negotiation skills is the center of their universe. It rarely is. So whatever I'm being asked to present on, it's like, hey, you guys are asking me to present on this, but what are the other concerns that are going on in the organization? And how does this topic, how does this relate to everything else? Is this number five? Is this number two? Is this number eight? Third thing I want to know is why? Why are the people that are going to be in the room or on the call, why are they there? Some people are there because they want to be there and some people are there because they're being forced to be there. I want to know who are my students and I want to know who are my prisoners of war. Because the people that are going to put you in the weeds are the POWs. Tom. I'm going to make sure I understand very, very specifically how much time they're going to give me. I want to know whether or not I need to put any kind of credibility into my presentation. I. E. When I step up, they're going to be like, oh yeah, we know this guy in his background. Or do I need to drip some credibility into that? I'm also going to want to know where am I going to face headwinds? Where are the weak points of my presentation? Where are the objections? Point being this. If I know during my due diligence that I'm going to go into this room and pitch my services and I'm going to be one of the most expensive people pitching, I'm going to bake that right in my presentation. Why hide it? You're going to wait for them after the presentation, be like, oh, you guys look like you're more money. So in the body, my presentation, I'm going to say, hey. So you guys are probably thinking to yourself right now, wow, this looks kind of expensive. I'd love to address that because when you tackle that stuff head on, you take the wind out of their sails. So part of my, part of my due diligence is, hey guys, given what I shared with you right now, where do you think my weaknesses are? Where do you think we're going to have a hard time? And they'll be like, well, G Tim, it looks too expensive. G, Tim, it looks too complicated. Gtm. You can't get it to us fast enough. G, Tim, we really want it in this shade of blue and you don't offer it in the shade of blue. So that's all part of the due diligence. So. So I think it's five parts of asking questions, one part delivering information. Hope that helps.

That's very helpful. Thank you. It's just what I wanted to hear. I appreciate you.

You betcha. Peter.

That was a great question. Tim, are this approach, this research approach, are you assuming that it's the first or intro or discovery meeting? Right. What? Well, I mean that that's a question like, when is this appropriate? It sounds like it's hugely appropriate for an intro or discovery meeting, but what about subsequent meetings and pitches and presentations? Once you get information, you've engaged, you've established credibility qualification, they invite you back A month later, are you undertaking the similar kind of research?

Probably not as in depth, Andrew, but there would be more research because when I make a presentation, I'm usually there to get the whole enchilada. So I've done as much due diligence as I can. So we only have to have one meeting, one meeting only. And at that end of that meeting, you're going to decide do you want to move forward with me, yes or no. And then if you're going to move forward with me, then it's a matter of just inking the deal. Very rarely do I get called back for a second one, but if I was going to get called back for a second one, I'd be like, again, I'd feel like I fell short because obviously we didn't get it done with this initial meeting and sometimes you can't. But yeah, if I'm coming back, I want to understand, well, gee, why exactly am I coming back? Where did the first presentation fall short? What did we not address that we needed to address? What new concerns have come up since the first presentation. So, yeah, there's probably some more scraping that's going on. Probably not as in depth or as deep as the initial scraping. But I don't want to just recycle the same presentation and pitch it again. I got to show I've got new insights and new ideas. Yeah.

Any, Any other questions in the chat or anybody else want to open up their mic or.

None in the chat.

Tim, you, you talk, you were talking a little bit about time. And so it just made me think about the, the subject of time management. You know, you 30 minutes, a 60 minute, you're, you've prepared for a specific chunk of time. Now there's objections and there's conversations and you, you've gone in, you've got your cadence prepared, but there, it's easy to get sidetracked. So what? Any specific tips or strategies for managing time effectively during the pitch to ensure that, that all of the essential information is covered?

Yeah, great question. So a couple ideas. Number one, if you're given a 30 minute presentation, you should be done before 30 minutes. You know how you know how you know how you know you've got a great presentation is when you're done at 25 minutes and your audience says, no, no, please tell us more. Can you stay? We'd like to hear more about this. Right. Most people get done and your audience is like, thank God, right, so get done early. Pride yourself on getting done earlier instead of, instead of worrying about telling Them, everything about everything. Tell them the most important stuff, and if they're interested, they'll. They'll pull you back. They'll say, well, wait a minute, tell me some more. Tell me some more. So if you got an hour, try to get done in 50 minutes, 55 minutes. So always aim for getting done sooner rather than later. That's tip number one. Tip number two is if somebody starts taking you into the weeds where it's like, okay, you're adding on and there's all these objections, all these questions, that's where it gets back to having a great presentation objective. Right at the very beginning, he said, hey, the reason I'm here today, I want you to buy my widget. Why I'm going to save you 1.3 million. I'd love to show you how somebody raises an objection or has a question early on. As a matter of professional courtesy, I will answer that question. If they come back again five minutes later and got another question, I'll say, you know what, Andrew, that's a great question, but it really doesn't support what we agreed the objective for this presentation was, which is, I want you to buy my widget, and I'm here to show you how we're going to save you 1.3 million. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to go to the rest of the team. Team. Would you like me to kind of divert and answer Andrew's one off, or do you want me to stay on the rails and get to where we said we wanted to get to? And I would tell you, the vast majority of the time, Andrew's team will tell Andrew, that's enough. Because they, they agreed to what the objective was, and it's like, no, let, let this guy get finished and, and then maybe we can have another meeting and, and address your concerns.

Wow, these, these are great pearls of wisdom. I've taken a lot of notes. This is great. Any other. I'm just looking at the clock. Any other questions from the audience? For the moment.

Either they're not interested, or I had the stun gun turned up too high.

No, I know they're interested. All right, just. Tim, as we wrap up here, parting words of wisdom. Do you have another big, you know, big picture characteristic, A lousy sales pitch, a major hack, a tip for, for being more effective, and then, like, what can our listeners do if they want to learn more about making better presentations and perhaps engaging with you directly after this webinar?

Yeah. So final tip would be rehearse. Most people Refuse to rehearse. And rehearse means standing up loud or however you're going to deliver, deliver and deliver out loud. Going over the presentation in your head is not the same because that little voice inside my head is brilliant. It never uses a filler word, it talks at the right pace, it never misses a point, right. And, and the, the team I was working with this week was like, well, we're just, we're just too busy. We just don't have the time to rehearse. It's like, look, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. You either invest the time up front and get to where you want to be or you don't invest the time and it's a lousy presentation. And then you got to spend time post presentation, patching a bunch of holes in the drywall. So rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. That's where your confidence is going to come from and that's where you're going to be more convincing and more compelling moving forward. I'd say there's a couple things, Andrew. Obviously, number one, hit me up on LinkedIn. I try to post three or four times a week on LinkedIn. Whether it's little pearls of wisdom, as you say, or whether they're little video vignettes that I'm shooting. It's usually just top of mind stuff on presentations, relationship building and all things selling. And then the other thing is, you know, the folks that have signed up for this and or are watching the recording, if you'd like access to one of my online training programs, all you got to do is send me an email, timwakhl.com and in the subject line put Venn Ducks offer. That's all you got to do. Venducks offer and we'll set you up in our system. You'll get an email saying, hey, you got access. It's like a one hour program called Anatomy of a Lousy Pitch. The 10 worst presentation habits and how to avoid them. And what you're going to hear is going to support a lot of what I've said today. So when you listen to it, don't be like, well, he already talked about that. We just go a little bit deeper because it's a full one hour program.

Tremendous. Very good, Henning. Anything else from you, any other questions or wrap up. Otherwise.

Thank you Tim for being on the show.

You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

I echo that, Tim. Thank you very much. We're really grateful for your time today and your nuggets and pearls. Very, very much appreciated. Great to have you, everybody. Thank you for your. Your questions, your participation, for being here with us today. We'll see you on our next webinar. And, Tim, thank you for the offer as well.

You bet. Thanks, everybody.

Have a great rest of the week. Thank you, everybody. All the best.