Crazy Idea: A B2B Sales Presentation without Slides?

Here's a crazy idea: Give one presentation without slides. You'll learn so much!

The sales rep with whom I was riding along looked at his iPad and panic set in? 2% battery and the charger was forgotten at home! Doing the call without a digital sales aid was unthinkable, crazy! Luckily, I carry an extra charger. I am happy to value where I can!

But I know the panic. A few years ago, I was forced to give a presentation without my slide deck. The hotel conference room had a broken projector. Nothing could be done. We didn't have time for hotel tech support. I started to sweat.

I gave the presentation. Rocky at first, but the room was with me. So I gained confidence. The questions were good, the room was engaged. Where there was a vital graphic to share, I walked my laptop around the room for all to see. This gave an added pause for participants to ask thoughtful questions.

I thought it was a good meeting. Great? Well, the absence of a presentation on the screen was too radical for many in the room, and that unfortunately was the meeting's biggest takeaway.

But I learned 3 things from having no digital support.

1. You realize , if you have done your job preparing, that you know your material. You'll be able to land your key points in a more human, natural way.

2. Your audience actually pays attention to you, and not the screen You will be able to better discern if they are following you and establish synchronicity.

3. You will become a better listener. You'll be less concerned about getting through the slides than staying attuned to your audience's needs.

In sales, digital aides are great! iPads have enabled reps to show rich multimedia content to enhance arguments.

But try encouraging your team to go without it just once to ensure that it hasn't become and enabling crutch.

Such exercise will also reveal where you truly have content gaps.

Set the Right Goal for your Digital Strategy

Marketers: We are are setting the wrong goals for our digital strategy.

Your transformation will fail if you don't aim for simultaneous customer and company value creation. Here are three common mistakes with digital transformation.

1. Maximizing Company Value at all costs: If you focus only on company, value you impose a change on your customer. At best, customers will use your new digital channels begrudgingly, or, at worst, struggle to adapt forcing your sales team to become unwilling customer IT support.

2. Focusing ONLY on Customer Value: Your customers may rave about the change! But if later you conclude that the new channels have low impact on your KPIs, you are in a bad situation. Take back the nice thing you have given, and you'll have a riot on your hands. The change has become ingrained.

3. Not creating any value: This happens too often when a project pursues technology for techology's sake. Consideration for improving KPI and customer experience are ignored, no value is created, and customers are resigned to the status quo. What a poor investment of resources!

Instead, make sure that your digital transformation expects increasing company and customer value!

Start there, and your strategy is on the right track!

Book Recommendation: A World without Email

There is nothing I love more than catching up on email over the weekend.

Ok, that is absolutely not true. It isn't true for anybody.

In my favorite book in 2024 so far, Cal Newport - Georgetown University Computer Science Professor and author of "Deep Work" - imagines a world without email.

Invented in the late 20th century (that makes it sound old, doesn't it?), email was hailed a solution for asynchronous office communications. Phone calls were laborious to schedule, and email would allow the sender and receiver to send and treat respectfully the message's demandes on their own schedule. It would change how we work.

And it certainly did.

Today, we can never seem to dig ourselves out of our inboxes. At best, it simply takes way too much of our time. At worst, email distracts us to the point of misery leaving our productivity and creativity to suffer in its wake.

The parts of the book that stand out to me are when researchers experiment by cutting internet in an office and observing what happens. What they find is better collaboration, more time for creative work, and less stress.

I love productivity experiments, and one Friday I decided to put my computer away for the day and work only with pen and paper. Though I never fully got over the withdrawal, I couldn't believe my focus.

Can you imagine work without email?

"A World Without Email," by Cal Newport. Available to order from your local, favorite independent English-language bookseller. Title also available in French.