Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Team Vibrations

Before your team members go into that client meeting, be sure to have them read this post from Cultural Offering. An excerpt:

I often look at people other than the presenter during sales pitches. I'm amazed at how often they will give away a potential problem with their looks as their presenter touches on some topic.

Once a member of our team was having a problem with something being said by our presenter in response to a question. She made a sound, starting to interrupt and it was picked up by one of the people we were presenting too. He pointed at her and said "do you have a problem with that answer?" It wasn't a huge deal, but it added a wrinkle to the presentation and is one of the reasons that I usually limit the number of people participating in sales presentations to those necessary and sufficient to lay out the information, make the organizational commitments and close the deal.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Although maybe not specific to the situation, I think this goes along with a piece of advice given me by a former mentor of mine - "Praise publicly, criticize privately."
There's no reason to paint "bulls eyes" on people - especially if they're on your own team!

Michael Wade said...

Well said. I like frank and vigorous arguments behind the scene and then, unless a course of action is unethical, a closing of ranks once a decision has been made.