Incumbent vs New Supplier: Should Your Pitch Strategy be Different?

Several people have asked me lately which is more difficult – developing a wining pitch presentation for the incumbent already delivering the service, or for the competition attempting to unseat them. As with all things, there is both a short and a long answer.

In Short, No.

There should be an advantage to being in place already, but in reality there is no difference. We have completed 36 sales presentations over the last 2 years with a win rate of 78%.  The ones lost are split fairly evenly between incumbent and competition. So I would say that your chances of winning with us are at least 2 out of 3 regardless of whether you are rebidding for existing business or pitching for new work.
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Don’t Print Your PowerPoint Slides

Should you produce handouts for your presentation?

The process for my company’s newsletter allows me to edit and vet before it is published. It’s a process that never quite works and this month pretty much failed, hence I get the uncomfortable job of publicly disagreeing with the team.

Their position in the article “PowerPoint Handouts” (in my opinion) is fundamentally wrong. The short answer to the lead question isn’t that there are pros and cons to the use of handouts at all. It’s a resounding NO NO NO.
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Humour and Presentations: Yes or No?

Sometimes, I feel like all of us professional presentation coaches are either a bit hypocritical or bit egotistical. We all collectively seem to have the opinion that humour is really beneficial if done well, but disastrous if not.

Since the telling of jokes is a black art that none of us understand, and in the absence of a set of codified rules about it, we usually resort to advice that says:

“Unless your really good at it (CAVEAT) don’t try, the risk is too great” and then we take to the stage ourselves and start off or end with a joke.

Well, I want a set of rules. When can I tell a joke? What can I tell a joke about? Enough of this avoiding the issue, lets given the clients the rules (even if complicated and needing practice) and then let them decide to try it or not.

I have some ideas, some great blogs and resources and a few good books and so far some pretty clear ideas on what may be a set of rules but what do you think? Where have you seen it work? Seen it fail?

In short, please respond, with a joke if possible? And maybe I can pull it all together into something better than “Be careful” cop out…

Presentation Iconography

If a picture paints a thousand words, why do we use thousands of words and one picture (pie chart!) in our presentations?

When, how and why should we use icons in a visual presentation?

Iconography is often associated with art or religion (Cross, Star of David, Ichthus  (little fish shape used by Christians during times of religious persecution now seen on the back of cars) but the idea of using a small image as a symbol has a long tradition.

Modern usage can be blamed on Apple, the mass of computer graphic interfaces needing icons for every application and function at your fingertips. But, in essence the benefit of using icons is that they bypass the language centers of the brain. They speed up information transmission and reduce the amount of cognitive load needed to assimilate information, and idea or concept. Think about using a computer that displays text in a foreign language—on the whole you’d still be able to do quite a bit because the program and function icons all transcend the language barrier. Continue reading →

PowerPointless: Presenting Without a Point

So here is my most used quote, from Lewis Carroll:

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Why? Because most people begin a presentation focused on content and design rather than purpose and objectives.

I’m not sure why people attempt to write presentations without this crucial step but they do—all the time. Today I sat with some sales guys bidding on a £350m project for which they have spent 6 months developing the solution, 6 months in dialogue with the prospect and 6 months getting ready for the big day.

And when I ask what’s the objective, they laugh and say “to win!”

Well, that would be the objective of the entire process–the months of work that led to the invitation to present. Today is the day they figure out what they hope to accomplish in the 45 minutes they have in front of the prospect. Continue reading →