Tag Archive for 'Connection'

Lessons when communicating to senior managers: Find common ground

Overcoming objections and challenges is essential to gaining acceptance for your proposal. While many presenters know their audiences well, they miss out on possibilities to connect their message with their manager’s interests. We call this “Create your Connection”, step 4 in the 8 step journey of  The One Minute Presenter.

Finding common ground is the landing pad for your presentation’s message. Making it clear to the audience will improve your chances in gaining agreement.

Find common ground. This is your preparation and research part. First think about the outcome for your presentation. How receptive will your manager be to your conclusion? Find areas that they will buy-into most easily. Connect your presentation flow and message to the things that you know your manager is motivated by

Example:

Your manager firmly believes in capturing market share through exceptional high-touch client engagement. Your proposal includes a section that proposes training all client-facing staff to resolve problems within 24-hours.

Your manager always wants to see the detailed numbers behind any major decision. Although you do not want to go into the spreadsheets in your short presentation, you print our and include the financial modelling as a handout.

Be explicit in showing the audience  your common ground. Be clear and lead the audience through the presentation. Show your manager that you know what he likes to hear. This is all part of connecting with your manager. When you see the nods, you know you have made that connection. A good presenter keeps making small connections through-out their presentation.

Samples:

“A major risk in fast expansion is lowering customer service consistency. We don’t want that to happen. In fact, we can’t let it happen. So here is our solution to deliver consistently high customer touches while we are aggressively growing into new markets”

“I know that you are interested in the financial modelling behind these projections. Although, in the short time we have available in this meeting, I don’t have time to get into the details, I have included a handout with our spreadsheet calculations and would be happy to share a soft copy with you after the meeting.”

Use common ground to overcome objections. Being challenged by a senior manager is a fact of life. Be ready for these challenges by starting your answer in a position that you can both agree on. This helps you get agreement in the starting position and then state your case in a logical fashion from there. Although this will not guarantee that your manager will always agree with your point-of-view, it does improve the chance of buy-in as it eliminates all confusion in the rationale behind your proposal.

Example:

Manager: “Why are you predicting a 12% increase when we have calculations of a 15% gain over the same time period.

Your answer: “As we confirmed earlier, customer retention is our most important priority. Our premium clients require a very hands-on service so rather than risk burning them as we expand too rapidly into new areas, we are recommending a slightly more conservative projection that will allow us time to re-train client facing staff while gaining exposure to attractive opportunities in second tier cities.”

Finding, sharing and returning to common ground is a great way to stay connected and aligned to the motivations, values and concerns of your senior manager.


Executive Presence: Bring your message to the audience

How well do you know your audience?

How well do you know your audience?

One common complaint about business presentations is that they are dull. Many executives that I coach have a tendency to deliver content-focused presentations rather than audience-focused ones. Content-focused means a heavy emphasis on your material and is often accompanied by the presenter reading off the slides. We learned above how to turn numbers into stories. Let’s make the next connection.

Being audience-focused requires the presenter to bridge the gap between content and the audience’s motivations. Invest time to learn more about senior managers’ needs, drives and trigger topics. Does one manager always focus on financial returns? Another on resource deployment. Perhaps another always challenges you? You can then use connecting phrases to address these motivations. Examples include: “Last quarter you expressed a concern on our raw material costs. Here is the new picture.”

Another technique is to use connecting questions, like “Why is this important? “ This rhetorical question allows you to then move onto the answer. “This is important to our business unit because.. “ This technique helps connect more with the audience by focusing your message on their motivations.

Spent an hour before your next presentation to learn more about your audience. What can you learn about your audience that will help you connect your message to them in a more favourable way. People are interest-driven. Find their interests and you will find a more responsive audience.

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