Tag Archives: keep it simple

Put Your Deck on a Diet

Posted by —

1

It’s that season again, the season for thanks, for family, for spirit and giving. But if you’re like me, you’re still in a food coma from one holiday meal or another, so it’s also the season for looking down at your stomach and saying, “Whoa, where’d you come from?”

Yes, it’s about this time of year a lot of us start making promises that include dropping that five, 15, 25 pounds we’ve been trying to lose since… forever. There are so many options out there for diets… low calorie, low carb, low fat. Atkins. Jenny Craig. Grapefruit. Avocado-only. South Beach. South Deck. Wait, what? South Deck?

That’s right, the South Deck Diet. Last month’s edition of The Feed showed you how your company’s packaging, collateral and presentations can get “plump” from letting too much well-intended input clutter your message. (Just like we tend to plump up around the holidays from all the well-prepared food.)

This month, we’re giving you a proven, five-step lifestyle change to get your slide deck looking leaner, hotter and healthier.

Step #1: Detox by watching this introductory video.

Step #2: Cut your intake. You can’t force your prospect to digest content if they don’t know how it helps them.  Take an honest and naked look at your marketing and sales slide deck and ask yourself:  Is it everything on the menu, or just what the buyer is looking for?  Is it loaded with extra, high-calorie content that contains little nutritional value?  Or does it deliver high-energy nutrients in every slide?

Challenge yourself to cut your slide deck by 75%.  (This means if it’s 100 slides, you need to lose 75, for your ideal figure of 25). Less is more. Increase your font size, and keep your slides to five bullet points or less, each one on a single line, if possible.

Also, don’t throw in ingredients that your buyer won’t understand. Propylene glycol alginate, carrageenan, and lecithin probably don’t mean anything to you when you read the back of an ice cream container, so don’t use unknown acronyms, abbreviations, or tech-speak in  your deck  or your delivery. You are looking for a decision, so use the slides that make it easier for a prospect to make that decision, don’t just pass out a lot of information.

Step #3: Dress for your body type. Nobody’s perfect. But you can make sure your deck flatters your company’s strengths and unique differentiators.  Show the parts of your solution that really make you stand out from your competition. Never show slides that you’re not willing to talk about, or that look like everyone else. Use the “B” key to black out the screen when telling stories, asking questions and after you present to keep eyes on you.

Step #4: Use the Buddy System. All successful South Deck Dieters have a support system.  Grab a colleague and show off your slimmer self.  Let them see and hear the new presentation.  And, ask them to hold you accountable to your deck dieting goals.

Step #5: Rest & Maintain. Once you’ve trimmed the fat, don’t forget to keep your newfound slim and sexy deck sharp by giving it a break. Force yourself to step outside the comforts of a PowerPoint-only presentation. Use it, but don’t abuse it. Spice up your presentation by adding in a healthy amount of variety. Try using a flipchart or a whiteboard. Bring in a physical object to help you illustrate a point. Tell a story. Finally, revisit the slide deck now and then to make sure it hasn’t gained back any of the excess baggage.

Stick with these five steps, and you’re sure to get results!

Enter our Slim Down Sweepstakes to win a Slide Deck Makeover by sending an email to newsletter@corpv.com with “Slim Down Sweepstakes” in the subject line. One lucky winner will receive a full makeover from one of Corporate Visions Inc.’s professional consultants, for one presentation.

How to Get Great Messaging Approved

Posted by —

1

What would happen if Microsoft did the packaging for the iPod?

Watch this video:

Pretty funny, huh? Probably made by Apple employees or an Apple fan, right?

Except it wasn’t. It was made by Microsoft!

Some folks at Microsoft wanted to show how their normal process creates boring, overloaded, emotionless packaging. And this video was the result. Microsoft never intended this video to get out to the public, but it has now been broadcast all over the Internet.

If someone who watched this video said, “Ha ha! Look how lame Microsoft is,” they missed the key lesson.

None of the decisions shown in that video were made through incompetence or bad intentions. Microsoft hires the most talented, driven, highest-paid people in the world. It’s just that, as more and more people give their well-meant input, the combined effect is a boring, overloaded, unremarkable result.

What is remarkable about this video is how well it messaged the problem to the company’s key players.

The people who created this knew there was a problem in packaging. So, what did they do first?

They showed the problem in such a way that everyone could see how each change, despite its best intentions, contributed to the problem.

Then the people in each functional area could see how seemingly small decisions added up to a big impact on the packaging. And that freed them to look at how to solve the overall problem, which was to create packaging that told the story they wanted to tell in a simple, compelling way.

Now, think about your messaging. Your “standard,” corporate-approved slide deck. Does it have the simplicity and emotional impact of Apple packaging? Or does it more closely resemble Microsoft’s efforts?

If it’s closer to Microsoft’s efforts, you’re not alone.

People often tell us that they would like to have better messaging, but they can’t get it approved through their gatekeepers. And so all too often, they give up.

The first thing to accept is that none of your messaging gatekeepers want to weaken your message. They’re simply looking at messaging through the filter of their own responsibilities.

So, how do you get them to see the problem beyond their immediate responsibilities?

Here’s where you can apply the key lesson from this video to get new messaging approved at your business.

Show people what great messaging looks like. Contrast that great messaging with what can happen to it after it touches many hands. And give everyone involved a chance to be part of the solution. In our experience, when people take that approach, the change can be dramatic.

One more thing.

In launching the Zune, Microsoft ended up creating a package remarkably out of the box. All because someone messaged the problem in a way that all key players knew how they could impact great packaging.

So, what are you going to do to get great messaging created and approved?
A good start might be to e-mail this article to some people you want to influence.

— by Erik Peterson,
Consultant, Corporate Visions Inc.

It’s Not Business. It’s Personal.

Posted by —

0

My two oldest boys (ages 5 and 9) love to play video games.  Last year, their constant requests to play the games drove my wife and me up the walls.  We wanted to come up with a way to put a stop to the constant requests to play, and at the same time, help our kids learn how to exercise self-control.

First, we tried a system where they could play video games for a specific number of hours per week.  The challenge was that they needed to keep track of how much time they were using and not go beyond the time they were given for that week.  Our nine year-old managed it pretty well, but Zack, our five year old, just couldn’t do it.  It’s not that he couldn’t tell time.  He could, and he knew how long an hour was.  He just couldn’t get his mind around the idea that if he played a lot on the first day of the week that he might not have any time left for the other six days.  By the end of the week, we still ended up with him being frustrated and feeling like he was being punished when he used up all his time, because the concepts were just too abstract for him.  Using concepts from Power Messaging ultimately solved the problem and brought some measure of peace to our home.

One of the things that you learn in Power Messaging is the importance of taking abstract ideas and making them concrete.  One of the ways you can do that is through the use of 3-D props.  This can be especially important when you are working with children.  How do you take something like the concept of base 10, as an example, and move it out of the abstract world? How do you make it concrete – something you can taste, touch, see, feel or hear?

This is a challenge that schools are facing today.  One of the ways that they attack this problem is with something called math-based manipulatives.  Math-based manipulatives are used to teach math concepts by letting students get their hands on things.  Another way you could accurately describe math-based manipulatives is by calling them 3-D props.

Math is one of the most abstract concepts out there.  It’s all numbers and symbols.  One of the most important things for young children to learn is the concept of base 10.  If you remember the concept of base 10, you certainly know how to use it.  Base 10 means that once the “one” space is filled to ten then you move it over to the “ten” space and once that is filled up you move it over to the “hundred” space, etc.  How can you take that concept and make it more concrete?  One of the ways you can do that is with a product called Digi-Blocks.  The explanation below is from www.digi-block.com.

The core of the Digi-Block Program is a system of small rectangular-shaped blocks and empty holders. These materials enable children as young as four to discover, for themselves, the important relationship between ones and tens — a concept crucial to understanding how arithmetic operations work.

 

Here, the ‘ones’ (or single blocks) pack into the small holders to make a larger block. The “smart box” design only allows the holders to close when there are 10 single blocks inside. This unique feature allows children to know that there are always exactly 10 blocks inside the new, larger block once it is closed. Since there can not be any more or any less, we are able to call it what it is: a ‘block-of-10’.

The “block-of-10” can then be turned on its end and placed into a “block-of-100” and so on.  Digi-block is one of many math-based manipulatives (3-D props) on the market that take the abstract ideas in math and make them concrete.

How did we use this lesson to help Zack?  Here’s what we did.  Instead of asking Zack to keep track of how much time he played video games and how much time he had left, we gave him a 3-D prop to make it easier.  At the start of every week, he got some poker chips (anything physical could be used for this).  Each poker chip represented 30 minutes of game time.  Every time he played a video game for 30 minutes, he had to take one of his chips and put it in a bowl.  He could now see how many chips he used and how many he had left.  He didn’t ask us permission to play video games, and he didn’t ask us how much time he had left.  If you asked him, he could tell you exactly how many chips he had left.  This reduced friction between parents and children.  We were not the time-keepers, anymore. An even bigger benefit was that it helped Zack with self-control.  The first week, he burned through all of his chips in one day (Hey, he is only five!).  But he didn’t complain when he couldn’t play video games for the rest of the week.  And he never did that to himself again.  Ever since, he’s always saved at least one chip for the last day.

Power Messaging® is not just a sales course.  It’s a course in human communications. How many personal challenges do you face as a result of communication problems? Reflect back on what you learned in Power Messaging, allow yourself to get creative, and you’ll see that most communication problems can be solved by using these concepts.

By Erik Peterson, Consultant, Corporate Visions Inc.

6 Tips for Creating a Mini Drama

Posted by —

0

Act out a “Day in a Life” Mini-Drama that magnifies your client’s life as it is now (without your product) and then how their world could be (with your product).

  1. Keep it concise, easy to follow.  Only include the elements that are important to the prospect and unique to you. Engage their emotions. Strong emotions, created early, play to your advantage.
  2. Always practice with your colleagues.  Never do a Mini-Drama before your prospect without a rehearsal and feedback.  The first run is almost always too long and needs fine-tuning to work.
  3. Never embarrass your prospect. If you are not sure that the entire audience will be comfortable when you dramatize today’s problems, set your mini-drama up as “A Day in the Life of Company ABC. Let’s see if you recognize what’s been happening to them.”
  4. Always show empathy, never create the feeling you are pointing a finger at them. Never make them feel stupid for having these problems.  “You know, Company ABC hires the hardest working, brightest people you’ve ever seen.  They aren’t the problem.  The system simply can’t support the work that is demanded of them.  I’d say the same is true of you.  Let’s see how different life is for them now.”
  5. Plan to incorporate a “Cooking Demo” with your Mini-Drama.  Remember, don’t get into product details… simply have your product/service solve the problems that are being dramatized.
  6. Create a sense of urgency by using time pressure. “Let’s pretend it’s Friday at 4:00PM and you get this call…” (It heightens the sense of pain).