Building on episodes 12 and 13, in this episode we will teach you to better ways to present your work to clients, understand your audience and what needs to happen after your presentation to keep your work sold.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-14-presentations-understanding-your-audience-the-aftermath-and-keeping-it-sold/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
Building on episodes 12 and 13, in this episode we will teach you to better ways to present your work to clients, understand your audience and what needs to happen after your presentation to keep your work sold.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-14-presentations-understanding-your-audience-the-aftermath-and-keeping-it-sold/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
Often imitated, never duplicated, and always always crazy. Welcome to the 14th episode of The Crazy One podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design, innovation, and a whole host of other things that matter to creative people. today's gonna be the third and final show, we're going to talk about presenting and presentation skills. And before we jump into that, I wanted to take just a minute to do a quick thank you. And to give you a heads up about two events that I have coming up that you might be interested in. The Thank you is because a couple of weeks ago, I'd mentioned that the show had hit the top 200 design podcasts on iTunes. And I have no idea how many shows are on there. But you know, it seemed like a pretty good milestone that was worth mentioning. Well, since that the show has continued to rock it up the charts regularly landing now in the top 40 which has been fantastic. And so for everybody that has listened for everybody that has recommended the show for everybody that has sent a friend my way written a review or anything else, I just wanted to say thank you The response has been truly overwhelming. I didn't know what this was going to be when I started this little experiment. But it continues to be an incredibly humbling thing. So thanks. The two events that I've got coming up, I wanted to give you a heads up about one is really soon for those of you who actually listened to the show, whenever it first comes out, it's actually going to be tomorrow. And then we have another one coming up in November, the one that's coming up tomorrow. And for those of you who may have no idea what tomorrow is, it's actually going to be September 20 2016. I'm doing a live q&a with the folks over at designer Hangouts. And we're doing it at seven o'clock eastern. It's going to be a live streamed event. That's going to be about an hour long live QA. And I want to talk about a bunch of different things. We're going to talk about form factor storytelling. We're going to talk about design thinking and we're going to talk about how do you bring design to a truly global organization. This is a very, very cool series. If you don't know the guy's a designer, hang out if you aren't watching this series. It's sponsored by envision, who I think is doing some really, really great content. It's something that really is worth checking out. For those of you who maybe are catching the show a little bit late, you missed the live event. No worries, if you go over to their site, they still have the replays available afterwards. If you'd have no interest in that at all, I would highly encourage you, at the very least to go check out designer Hangout. You can find it at designer hangout.co or just google designer Hangout. But it's a really cool organization. And what it is, is it's a invitation only group. That's about 7000 people who just honestly talk about UX and design on slack. And it's invitation only, but all you have to do is just go over to the site, put in your name, get on the list and to get an invitation to it. There's some incredibly talented people in there. There's a ton of conversations that are going on there. If you need help if you need advice if you need resources, it is definitely something that is worth checking out. A little bit Further away, is the second through the fourth of November. This will be, I don't know, it's either the fourth or fifth straight year that I'll be appearing at Adobe Max, fantastic event every year. It's always one of my favorite events to speak at. This year. I'm bringing three sessions and over seven hours of content because apparently I really like to see if I can lose my voice. Unfortunately, two of the workshops already completely sold out. There are two that I'm doing with Jeff stout, who was the head of design over at Adobe was at Google for a little while he and I did a session last year was actually gangbusters. That one has unfortunately already sold out. I've got one left, which I'm doing on leadership called success as a choice. That That one is filling up quickly. It is literally going to be in the largest space in the San Diego Convention Center. I think it's already north of 500 people that are registered. It's going quick but there are still some spots available. So if you have any interest in coming seeing me live, see me talk about leadership. Go over and check that out. But onwards And more than enough with the shameless self promotion. So let's put a bow on all this presenting and presentation skills. Because I think we talked in the first episode on this about some of the foundational things that you need to know. From there we went to look at what are the some of the things you needed to do to be able to set up to give a really good presentation, some of the things to do whenever you actually gave the presentation. And so in this episode, we're going to move on and be able to talk about two other really important parts of this process. And I think that there are two of the things that so often people don't give enough time and enough thought to. The first one is your audience. Because the reality is, there's two parts to every presentation. There's you and your deck and what it is that you want to present or what it is that you want to sell. But the reality is there's also your audience, and the audience is a huge, huge variable. It can go well, it can go badly, it can go anything in between, but I want to spend a little bit of time sharing some of the insights that I've had about Your audience about what to think about and some of the tips and tricks that I've learned from there. What are we talking about those people that make it not go well, or they're problematic. This is one of those things that will so often prevent people from wanting to do more presentations. Because not everybody is engaged. Not everybody is easy. So I want to share some of the things that I've learned some of the insights some of the archetypes of these people, and ways for you to deal with problem audience members. And then we're going to wrap it up. And we're going to talk about what I always call the aftermath. You go, you give the meeting, you do the presentation. And then there's so much that happens after that. And I think that they're just one of those areas that you need to spend a little bit of time thinking about what happens there and how can you make sure that that goes well. So you don't have a good meeting, sell your work only to walk away and then watch it all fall apart? Let's start with your audience. And because it's like I said before, there are two parts to any presentation. There's you and then there's your audience. And the way that I've always thought about this, is that to do this really well, you almost need to think about your audience like it's a bag of golf clubs. I am not somebody who plays golf, I would much rather go and play billiards or play pool because the hole is about the same size. But the dimensions are much, much closer. I find golf to be incredibly frustrating. But in this case, it makes for actually a pretty perfect metaphor. Because your presentation style and the way you think about how are you going to deliver your talk should be like a bag of golf clubs. Because the reality is that your audiences different people are different, what they respond to is different. So it's one of those cases where if we think about it, like a bag of golf clubs, you don't use the driver for every shot and you don't use the putter for every shot. You have to mix and match your skills mix and match your techniques, mix and match your approaches to be able to deliver the best results and I think presenting especially Working with an audience is very much this way that you have to tailor your style. tailor your storytelling, and think about your audience and think about who is it that we're talking to. I have some clients that do really, really well, with big conceptual work, they can do sketches, they can do wireframes, they can see it and understand where it's going. I have other clients who can't do that at all, they need much more tangible, they need something that's much more fleshed out because they can't deal with the ambiguity of not knowing exactly what it's going to be. And I think this is what you have to think about. For those of you who are on the client side, for those of you who are at an agency for those of you who have clients that you've worked with for a while, this gives you a massive advantage. Because what it allows you to do is to truly know your audience to understand what works and what doesn't. The The hardest part of this, the hardest part of working with any client is working with the one that you don't know, you don't know what they respond to. You don't know what they don't respond to. So I think it's like I said, you have to start out by tailoring this and if you don't know who they are to really watch this. And a lot of this in terms of getting to know your audience is also knowing how do you control their attention. Some of the things we talked about in the last episode were things like using assigned seating to keep people who are problematic from becoming a distraction. We talked about making it an event for really letting people know and letting your audience know that this presentation is going to be a little bit different than anything else. And there are a number of other things that we talked about. And I'm not going to rehash those here. If, if you didn't listen to that episode, you need to go back after this and to be able to take some time and go back and listen to what we talked about there. One of the most interesting things that I use all the time was this concept of 12 feet versus four feet. And what that was, just as a reminder was the fact that if you are inside of four feet from someone, you're inside of their personal space, and depending on what you do when you're in there, it's either very intimidating, or it's a very kind of personal reassuring, sort of interaction. If you're more than 12 feet away from somebody, you're in what's considered disconnected space, it's that I'm physically far enough away from you that I feel like I can tune out. So the sweet spot that you always want is to be somewhere between 12 feet and four feet away from your audience. That was the foundational part of it. But now as we're looking at how do we start to get to know our audience? And then in particular, how do we start to deal with some of those audience members that need a little bit more attention, either out of reassurance or because they're kind of a problem. I think this concept comes back and can be used very effectively. One of the things that I always do whenever I present is that I always stand for me it again, it helps me focus the room, it helps me get the center of attention. It helps everybody be able to really kind of just pay attention to what it is that I'm doing. But what most most people don't realize is the other reason why I do that is because it allows me to really manipulate this 12 feet versus four feet concept. Because if I have somebody who's in the room who's really being a problem, they're having a distracting conversation, they're really just not kind of buying into the concept. And they're really kind of being really argumentative. Or if it goes the other way, if I have a client who really wants to buy in, but maybe they don't really understand kind of what's going on, maybe there's somebody who you know, aren't going to raise their hand and say that they don't really understand everything that's going on. Well, the reality is, is that whenever I'm standing, I can manipulate that space. So that if I have one of those people, what it allows me to do is that I can move around the room, I can go over and stand next to whoever that person is. If it's somebody that's being a problem, I can do it because it allows me to use just the physical proximity of me to them, to get them to stop to get them to calm down to be able to get them refocused in for me to get my meeting back under control. Or if it's somebody that needs that reassurance, I can go over I can put my hand on their shoulder, I can have a quiet conversation with them whenever we have a break, or there's a pause in the action to make sure they're okay to make sure that they're bought in to make sure that they understand what's going on. And that they feel good about this because I know that they need that little bit of emotional reassurance. And so I want to make sure that I give that to them. But this is the whole reason why I stand whenever I present because for me to do this, if I was sitting, all of a sudden I spring up and you know, walk across the room to go stand next to somebody. Everybody knows what I'm doing. It looks incredibly awkward, even if it's just to be reassuring. It creates this really, really weird moment. But if I'm already standing, then it allows me to do it seamlessly. And a lot of times what I'll actually do is whenever I present I paste a little bit because what I want to do is I want to hide that fact I want to hide that I may need to do this at some point so that if I do need to move if I need to go stand next to somebody, it doesn't come off as strange. It doesn't come off as weird that it really just comes off as this is what I do whenever I normally present So they aren't quite as aware of what it is that I'm really doing. But I think the ability to do this, to understand your audience to even understand how do you reassure them? How do you control them, if they're being a problem, these little things can become incredibly important because that's the problem your audience is the one part that you can't control. So you have to find ways like this, you have to think through some of these little tricks that are going to help you maintain the focus that are going to help you keep the center of attention for what's going on. But let's spend a little bit more time as we talk about kind of what are the common problem audience members, because I really think that that often is so often what inhibits people, it's what stops them. It's what prevents them from wanting to do more presenting to wanting to do more selling because some people just genuinely enjoy trying to destroy ideas. Some people genuinely enjoy disrupting an event like that they they really just need to be there. center of attention. They need to be the contrarian, like there's a number of different things that they may need to do. And I think that so often, I've really boiled this down to probably what I think are the four types, the four most difficult types of audience members. Let's walk through those. And once again, just so you don't have to feel like you have to jot notes down furiously. I'll put all this in the show notes. Just go over to podcast, Stephen Gates comm check it out, it'll all be there. These are going to be the four that I think you need to keep an eye out for. And more than just keep an eye out for it. I've got some tips and tricks that I'll try to share that I think may help you try to figure out how to deal with them a little bit more effectively. The first one, and the first type is the one that I always call the silent cynic. What's not that they distrust what you're doing, but they're not really engaged. They can be scribbling notes, maybe they're on their phone, maybe they're looking around, they're making it just obvious that they aren't going to engage with this meeting. If it's something where If we're doing a brainstorm, or if it's more of a team activity, they're just not contributing, they're sitting quietly on the sidelines. And I think that that is always a problem. Because if you're going to do this presentation, if I want people to buy into this, especially if this is an important client of mine, well, then I need to be able to kind of get them to believe I need to be able to get them to buy in and participate. So a couple of the tricks that I found to be really effective. One is, in some cases, I've gone so far as to ask that there be no notes, or at the very least, there's no mobile phones, that it's one of those things where you can kind of make a joke, everybody put their phone in the middle. The first person that reaches forward buys everybody lunch or something. But I think part of it is just to figure out how do we take away those distractions. And I think that the other thing that I'll often try to do is to figure out how can I get them engaged and the best way that I've so often found to do this is to give them some sort of a job. Give them something needs to be discrete. But just something that I can start to work on getting them engaged in the meeting. This could be, I could ask them to take notes. If it's a brainstorming, maybe I'm going to ask them to photograph what's going on. Maybe I'm going to ask them to take notes up at the whiteboard, so that they actually could write down the notes. Maybe they're the sketcher. Maybe I'm going to ask them to present a little bit of something about that. But what I'm going to try to do is to get them up out of their seat, I'm going to force them to try to engage. And I think that the other part about this is that whenever I see this happening, so often, I think the other thing that is really helpful to do is to get a bit more curious about them to go and have a casual talk, have a one on one. This is one of those things where I think especially in this day and age, do not underestimate the power of lunch, because I think I have solved more problems, built more relationships, had more breakthroughs happen over a simple lunch than probably in any meeting that I've ever Had, because there's something about taking a person like that, taking them out of the context of the meeting, where it's just one on one, it's not as intimidating. There's just a different dynamic to it. Go and buy him lunch, sit down and just have a conversation. Talk to them about how whenever you're in the meetings, you can see that they aren't quite as engaged as everybody else. And isn't that they don't find it interesting. Do they not understand it? Do we need to do a pre meeting? Do we need to get them more engaged? I mean, give us give them some options of some of the things they can do. But so often, the times I think it really is one of those things where you have people that are that kind of cynical, that it really helps. And I think that especially as you come in as you try to work with new organizations as you tried to do anything new, you're going to come across a lot of these people, because cynicism and fear is so much easier, and so much safer than actually risking something. And so people will find comfort in it, they find ease in it, they find the ability to just simply sit back, be disconnected. And so if something goes wrong, they can say Well, you know what, I wasn't really a part of that, you have to take that away, you have to get everybody all in. So spend a little bit of time in that one on one to see how you can craft that. From the cynic, we move on to the other interesting personality and probably a little bit of the other end of the spectrum. And these are those people who really, really crave certainty. Because these are people that they want to understand every theoretical detail before you move on. They're really uncomfortable with this thought of like, learning by doing or uncomfortable with really kind of exploring something if they don't know, what is the distance from A to B. Well, the problem is, is you know, if you do anything creative, that's an incredibly hard approach to take. Because whenever we're exploring whenever we're thinking through something, when we're trying to solve a problem differently, a lot of that detail might not be there, because the reality is to do something innovative. You don't always know where you're gonna end up whenever you start. So that's a process That these people really have a problem with you really see this come to life if you ever tried to get them to work in an app and an agile methodology if you try to get them to work with design thinking or something like that, because the simple uncertainty of it and having to rely on the process and trust other people really drives them crazy. And so I think that this can probably be one of the biggest inhibitors to trying to do creative work to do new things to have new ideas. Because it's one of those things where they'll derail the meeting with constant questions. We're trying to poke holes and everything to try to tell you why stuff won't work. And it's hard, and it's frustrating. And so a few of the things that I think about this are the few of the things that I've tried on people like this are things like, have them keep track of their questions, so that they're not derailing the entire meeting. Every time they have a question. What I'll ask them to do is to write it down, to keep it to see if is that question going to get answered later on in the press. entation or if they still have it, then let's talk about it. Because so often with these people, you'll have this interaction with them. And you'll say, look, if you just will let me get to the next slide, if you'll just give me a minute to explain this, I'll be able to get to what your question is. So get rid of that distraction, and to be able to announce up front that anybody has any questions, write them down, we want to get to all of them, but just save them to the end of the presentation. I think that there are a few other things in terms of actually engaging them to try to take it on a bit more head on to let them be a part of the process and let them see what they can come up with. Because again, it's it's very easy to be the critic, it's very easy to point out what's wrong with things. This is why I mean, good lord, go to any social media channel and just look at the comments. That's all it is, are people who are emboldened by the anonymity of the internet, sitting there taking potshots at people who are trying to actually do something will take away that position. And so Let them actually get engaged, let them be a part of the process. This is why so often I genuinely believe design thinking is so powerful, because there's just a base human psychology, that people invest in what they're a part of. So that instead of them being engaged only at the end at the time, when they can just shoot holes in things, well, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to get them involved in that process, I'm going to let them be a part of it and see what they can come up with so that they can start to deal with some of their own questions. And I think that the other thing, and so often is to, if they don't want to engage, it is one of those things where sometimes I will just quite blatantly put them on the spot. If they're going to sit there and tell me how something can't be done. If they're just going to be all roads to know and no roads to Yes. Then it's one of those things where I'm just simply going to ask them, what do they think what would they do to put forth a solution because there is nothing that is more frustrating, there is nothing that will kill creativity faster than people Who just show up to point out the problems and aren't a part of the process? So I think it's one of those things of just asking them what their plan is asking them to risk something. And then here again, I think there's a lot of power in having that one on one conversation afterwards, to talk to them, to educate them to let them know why you're asking these things of them that you just need them to give it a chance. You need them to just trust a little bit. Because ultimately, that's the problem is that these are people who don't trust the only person that they're going to trust as themselves, that if anybody else does the work, it's not as good. If anybody else does the thinking it's not as smart. And that this is the idea because the inherent problem that they don't see is that creativity is a team sport. Nothing great is ever going to come out of a singular contribution and absolutely nothing great is going to come from somebody who just sits around and is that critic all the time. Another type that I deal with all the time that will come up are people who are Well, they're probably a bit more of a spotlight hog. And these are people who want the reassurance they crave to demonstrate that they get it. They crave acknowledgement. This is the, you know, every time do people want to do the stereotype of a millennial, this is what they always want to do, or the people who want the parade for doing their job. And I'm not saying that that's what this is. But I think that you will see this, that people who want to show you that they saw the keynote, they read the article, they have the insight, they know more, they need to prove their value, because there's just a base insecurity in them that needs to prove that they're often very enthusiastic, very loud. And I think that they can really trample and get in the way of other people sharing ideas of other people working and being a part of this process. So the enthusiasm is great. The investment and knowledge is great. You don't want to discourage any of that. It's just as with so many of these things, the way that it's expressed that because Comes such the problem. So I think that one of the things that you can do with this one is is to simply acknowledge them to say that it's fantastic that they get it to acknowledge their expertise to be able to do things like that. But if that's not enough for them, and if they're continuing to trample the meeting, then this is a case where you have to shift the spotlight. And you can do this by doing something like just cold calling on other people, that if there's a question, there's an insight, if there's a piece of feedback you want, just call on somebody else who's in the meeting, and pretend it's grade school. And to be able to do that you change a bit of that dynamic. You let the other voices come in. You give room for the other people to come in and talk where you really want them to. And I think it's one of those things where you can also try to turn it a little bit differently, where since they want that acknowledgement, encourage them to help encourage them to engage with other people, encourage them to help put this idea forward to help run the brainstorm, to help be able to get that recognition by Being a part of the people that are doing the presentation, because that's what they really want, is they want some piece of that spotlight. Well, the way that I can then control that is by giving them a little bit of it, I think that you have to be conscientious about how and where do you have that happen, so they don't trample you along with everybody else. But it's one of those things that can really, it can really work really well. And the fourth and the last one in these sort of archetypes that I see come up a lot. And everybody, as soon as I say this will immediately think of a client that's going to come to mind is it's that client or that person in your audience that always has to take a tangent. Here again, there's so often enthusiastic, they're entertaining. They tell really good stories, but they're easily distracted. They always want to just go someplace else with it. It's a tangent. That's why we call them that. They have a at best, they have another story, another project and other things. Something other stuff was going on. At worst, it's talking about the softball game they went to over the weekend, what they're doing that night, how suddenly you're talking about a creative idea. And then they take some tangent and name drop somebody that they did something with just so that again, they can be able to get some of that. The problem with what it really is, is that, in so many cases, they're just processing out loud. They don't have that inner voice, they don't have that inner filter. And because they do that, whenever you want them to be a part of the meeting, whenever you're trying to engage with them. They give these long roundabout answers or stories or things where it's so much of it is and I had somebody referred to them this way before that I thought was a really good way to phrase it. for them. It's all about me search. It's all about how do I talk about me and to do some of these things. The one thing that I would say with this is that it's challenging, it's hard because with all the other archetypes There's still based in or ignoring what it is that you want to talk about. This is a derailleur. This is somebody who has the potential of taking a totally different direction. The thing that I would do with somebody like this, is whenever you're talking to them, you're an engaging with them you're trying to sell to them. One of the things that you want to do is have fewer open ended and more bounded statements and questions, don't give them the on ramp to the tangent. And that can sometimes be hard to do, because I think it's one of those things where they can veer off wildly. If they continue to do that too much. The thing that I would tell you to do is that to take the tangent, tell them that it's great, it's brilliant, it's fantastic. You love it, you love everything about it, you want to be it for Halloween, but this isn't the place for it, that what we're going to do is we're going to put it in the parking lot. We're going to write it down, we're going to come back to it. But I think that the other thing that you can do is if you're trying to again run a brainstorm or something like that to to actually have them sketch or write down what they want to do first, so that it tries to focus it in. But also just enforced time limits, that if I'm getting feedback from everybody, everybody gets two minutes to give feedback. If it's a brainstorm, everybody gets four minutes to give their idea. Because what you can do is whenever they start to take that tangent, say, Okay, look, if you're going to go down that tangent, we've only got four minutes a person. And so either you're not going to get your idea out to finish the story. Or you need to tell us what it is you're actually going to contribute. You can't do both. And so I think those are generally the types of people that I think are the most problematic. Whenever you're going through and doing some of this stuff like this. Take some of those things and think about them. I think there's one other thing that I would talk about really quickly. It doesn't necessarily deal with your audience as much as it brings it back to you a little bit. And this is one of those things about whenever you have these problems whenever you're having these things come up. How do you think Think about and control your response to try to make it better. And I think there's a couple tricks that I picked up that I'll share that I think might help here as well. The first one is that with so many of these people where it's about attention, or it's about control, or it's about something else like that, they have an interesting aversion to the word know, a lot of times what I'll try to train myself to do is to not say no, but instead to say yes, but because the yes acknowledges them. The yes agrees with them. The yes lets them know that I've heard them and so that it's not that I'm disagreeing with them. But it allows me to pivot so that I can say yes, but I think something else. Yes, but that's not what we need to do right now. Yes, but whatever that might be. Because it gives it the positive tone, but it moves you on and it lets you pivot. So I think that it's one of those little little little tricks, but it's something that can really work. So it's just something to think about that whenever you're in that moment of getting stuck. Dressed to try to use something like that. The other challenge with whenever you have problem clients or you have a problem audience is that so often whenever I'm selling something, at the end of it, I need a next step I need to know is are we doing this? Are we not doing this? What's the feedback? What's the next step? And so often, if it's not going, Well, what I need to figure out is, what the hell am I going to do next? Where am I going? And what's the problem? And that's so often with so many of these sort of archetypes, the thing that you get are very big, very dramatic, but often very closed statements. You know, for example, you're selling a concept, you're selling a piece of creative you get to it, you say, okay, what's the feedback that everybody has? Your main client looks at it and says, I don't like it. I hate it. It doesn't work. It isn't what I was hoping for any number of these sort of statements. Well, the problem is, is that obviously this is now a Grenade I need to jump on this is a problem that I need to solve. But the problem is that there is no insight and that there is no direction that is coming out of that statement. So I don't know what the hell to do with that. What you need to be able to do is to figure out how do I quickly dissect and unpack this problem. If they look at it and say, You know what, I really don't like it. One of the first tricks that I'll do is what I was called a counter question. And this is to put it back on them put the ball back in their court, so I can find the real reason for what the problem is. And all that you simply do is to take your objection, I don't like it, ask the word why in front of it. So just why don't you like it? Why do you feel this particular way? Why did because you need an explanation. I think that that really can then start the dialogue because that's what I need is I need to understand, is it a lack of understanding is that a misperception? Did we genuinely miss something, but what are where is the problem so that I know How to go fix it. It is one of the bigger statements, I hate it, I don't like it, you guys really screwed this up something here again. Now not only do we have a problem, but we have a bit more emotion that's been infused into it. And in this case, there's a slightly different tack that I'll take on this. And for me this is taking whatever it is that they said and restating it back to them. What I want to try to do is to get rid of the emotion, reduce the magnitude. And here again, try to find out what's going on. So that if you'll say to me, I hate something, I'll stop the meeting, stand up and just simply say back to you and say, Okay, so what you're telling me is that of all the work that we've done, the way that we feel like this solves the problem. You're saying to me that you absolutely hate this and let it hang. It may be uncomfortable, there may be a moment of silence. But the reason that I'm doing it is because so often what you'll see people do is they'll come back and say, Well, no, it's not. I don't really hate it. It's just there's this one part that I think isn't working? Or no, I don't really hate it. I'm just thinking my boss doesn't like the color purple, or like whatever it might be. But so often what you're going to do is you're going to find that level of specificity and it will diffuse the emotion out of it. If they continue to say some answer, they just want to carry it on your say, okay, so you're gonna tell me you hate it? And they just say, Yes, well, okay, then that's where I need to dig in. I need to be able to kind of start asking them in Okay, say, look, I need something more than that. I need to understand what isn't working, I need something specific. That's the case of those sorts of things. But the thing that I would tell you is that don't be afraid of people having problems. Don't be afraid of problematic people that you're trying to sell to. Because the thing that I always try to remember and the thing that I always try to teach people, is the fact that if they have an objection, on some level, it does mean that you're selling them because of the fact that they're paying attention and it's some part of them is still invested in it. Because if they will Weren't this would be like you've walked down the street somewhere in the world. You've had somebody try to hand you a pamphlet for some cause some charity, some whatever it is some events, some rock concert, some something that you want to know, part of. And what do you do? You see them in the distance handing this out to people, either you physically move away from them, you suddenly look at the spot right in front of you, but you just you don't engage with them. It's just something that you want no part of. And so if people have objections, that's the thing is they are still engaged. So there's something in there that you can work with. You just have to figure out what that is. And I think that the other thing to do is to teach yourself, to teach your team to teach everybody, that it's also okay, if people have questions, if they have problems. It's okay not to have the answer in that moment, that there are some times that it's fine to be able to say, Okay, look, we need to get back to you on that. Obviously, if it's something that's big, If it's a core part of the brief for the work that then necessarily maybe doesn't hold true, then because that is something that you should have the answer to. But if they're asking a fringe question, if they're asking a follow up, don't give into that instinct to just say the first thing that comes to your mind, because there is nothing that would break that trust that will break that confidence faster than lying to people or just making Shut up. Because the reality is that I would much rather have them be disappointed in the meeting that I don't have the answer. But at the end, know that whatever it is, I'm going to tell them is going to be true. It's going to be right. And it's going to work because ultimately, that is going to be so much more impactful than me just simply saying anything. And then coming back later and saying, Well, you know, that thing I said funny story wasn't actually true. Don't feel like you always have to have the answer. And then the last part of this that we talked about a little bit in the beginning is the aftermath. And the aftermath is that selling any creative idea takes more than one meeting the problem So often is that the other meetings that happen? You are so rarely in, you present to your client, your client has a boss, your client has stakeholders, your client has an audience. consumer base is something and they want to go back and they want to float the idea past them. And that's really the problem is because what happens there. So whenever the person was there, I could talk to them. I could walk them through the story. I could teach them, I could tell them, I could do all these things to them to get them bought in. Well, the problem is, whenever they then become the presenter, My idea is now only as good as their ability to present it. So this is where you have to think about how do I teach them, evangelize them, and give them some of the tools that they need to go out and to be a really good presenter to be able to go out and do the sort of things that I would want them to do so that my idea stays sold. And it's not something where we have a great meeting. Everybody loves the idea. This is exactly where we need to be. The person goes off, the client goes off. One day, two day three days later, often in an email, the feedback comes back. Well showed it to my boss didn't really love it. Not sure they understand it, we're going to need to make some changes. What do we do to try to avoid that moment, and I think that there are a few things I would recommend doing. The first is to understand the difference and to think about creating two versions of your presentation. The one is the one that you show in the room. It's the one that controls the attention. It's the one that allows you to give it voiceover and to bring it to life. But that's the in the room deck. If I'm going to build that Deck, the information is going to be more minimal. I want to do it in voiceover, I want to control the attention to just one place. Well, the problem is whenever I need a deck that people can print out, they can circulate to a group they can show it to their boss, they can try to do it themselves without me there. That is a very different set of demands. And so that leaves behind deck the handout Deck, the one that gets used I think needs to be different. The narrative needs to be in there more detail needs to be in there so that it basically represents me. I'm not relying on whoever that other person is to give the voiceover. Because that is such a crapshoot. The best clients, the most responsible ones, they will understand it, they will take the time they will sell it really, really well. Not everybody is that client, there are some that will just simply, blindly blindly send it off to their boss saw this today thought it was interesting. Let me know what you think. That's it. And so I think for those, those are the ones that you need to try to head off at the past. So those are the ones where you need to be able to do these slightly more robust, slightly more interesting, slightly more verbose decks that really explain what it is you want to do. This is where in the last episode we talked about doing things like having a catchphrase that what's the one thing that I want them to walk out of there with? This is where this comes back into play yet again? Because the one thing that whenever their boss says, Oh, what's this idea about? They can recite what I want them to, this is where we talked about early on to make sure that they really can see and understand that you know, your audience that, you know, if you've given them sketches or wireframes, or a rough idea of something, they can understand it that they can communicate with it. This is where you do things and you teach your team to talk to them and to sell to them like they're your mother. Because especially as we get into digital as we get into a lot of different parts of design as technology becomes a bigger part of it. So two abbreviations. So does that want to look cool to talk about the new fringe technology to talk about the emerging trend to talk about those things because it makes you feel important, it makes you feel like you have the upper hand, and it makes them feel like they don't have a clue what it is that you're talking about. And it makes them feel like they are not going to stop this meeting to ask that question. This is one of those things where just you have to really understand that this is going to happen. These after meetings are going to happen, but you have to keep your work sold. You have to think about doing that extra little bit of work. So that you have this great idea, you give a great presentation and it doesn't stumble in that last mile. A quick recap of what we talked about. We talked about knowing your audience, how presenting to them thinking about how you're going to tell your story needs to be like that Bagga golf clubs, you need to figure out which are the right ones that you need to use for this meeting, this crowd, this person, this client, this project, to be able to get the results and to get you into the position that you want to think about doing things like standing up during the meeting to manipulate that 12 foot versus forefoot space where I can go and I can get close to somebody that's being a problem to try to get them under control to try to go next to somebody who I know needs that reassurance so that I'm sure that something that really is subjective, which is creative is something that they're okay with and that they understand that you take the time to study and understand how to deal with these problem audience members. You understand how to use controlled responses to help You get what you need out of the meeting to get that insight that you're missing. And that you're thinking about that aftermath. You're thinking about, where's this going to go, who else is going to see it, and all of these ways to make sure that your work gets sold. Because at the end of the day, that's why I want to talk about this stuff. That's why I want to teach this stuff. Because this is what brings the great ideas to life. Because at the end of the day, the thing that I see time and time, again, is that companies are not short of great ideas. There are tons of them floating around there tons of people who really understand what's going on and can really change things. The problem is they can't figure out how to get those ideas sold. They can't figure out how to get those ideas to go out the door. And that's the real problem. That's why in this creative economy, that's why in this time, I've seen design and creativity have such an increased value. That's why we have to get better at this stuff. We have to get better at business. We have to get better presenting so that these ideas and these game changers can get out the door because so Often, that's the difference between the startup and the big company, between the small client and the big client is the managerial debt that stands in the way of getting these ideas out the door. And it's a real problem. And we have to be the ones to solve it. We can't blame the system. We can't shrug our shoulders and say, What are you going to do? We have to figure out what are the ways that we can get these ideas out the door that we can get them sold and keep them sold. So that it's work that we're proud of. It's work that our team is proud of. So that it's something that we can point out and be proud that we were a part of, not something that got neutered down and cut down and made into this small, safe, bland version of what a great idea was that nobody's going to care about and that happens so often, because we don't know how to sell the idea. We don't know how to keep it sold, and we don't know how to control that client or that audience. Think about these things, put them to use and start to figure out how can you get more of your ideas sold and keep them sold? In the state that you want them in, because that is really where so much of this stuff falls apart. So we're gonna end it there. Because I think that really encapsulates what I wanted to talk about when we talked about presenting and presentation skills. As always, if you find any of this useful, if you like it, if you get some value out of it, the only currency I'm ever going to ask for is a review. Take a minute, go over to iTunes at the very least just click the number of stars that you like if you're feeling a little bit more generous. Write a couple words because it really does help get the message out there get the show out there. If you want to find those show notes I talked about those before once again, just head over to podcast Stephen Gates calm Stephen has STP h e n gates comm if you have any questions if there's something you want to find out more about love something hated something, shoot me an email you can always reach me at ask at Stephen Gates calm. I read them and we'll get back to you as quickly as I can. As always the boys down illegal always need me to remind you that the views and everything I talked about here My own, they don't represent any of my current or past employers. And finally, I say it every time because I mean it every time but thank you for your time. That's incredibly humbling that you want to spend any of it with me. Until next time as we move on to the next topic and on to the next part of this crazy adventure for now and as always, stay crazy